COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

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sTeamTraen
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by sTeamTraen » Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:47 pm

It's funny how conspiracy loons will interpret any microscopic detail that looks like it supports their view, no matter how random, while ignoring the trillions of data points that contradict it. The comments under that tweet are completely batshit. How do these people get through a normal day?
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jimbob
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Tue Sep 08, 2020 5:30 am

Anyone fancy fisking this:
I'm busy today:

https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1 ... 7394755593
Simon Dolan #KBF
@simondolan
In essence, it is estimated (by non Govt funded scientists), that you would need to have contact with 6.7m people to catch and then die from CV

"The median estimate of the county level probability of a fatality is 1 in 6,670,000 person contacts"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20124446v2
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by bob sterman » Tue Sep 08, 2020 6:54 am

jimbob wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 5:30 am
Anyone fancy fisking this:
I'm busy today:

https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1 ... 7394755593
Simon Dolan #KBF
@simondolan
In essence, it is estimated (by non Govt funded scientists), that you would need to have contact with 6.7m people to catch and then die from CV

"The median estimate of the county level probability of a fatality is 1 in 6,670,000 person contacts"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20124446v2
The risk of maternal death in the UK is around 1 in 10,000 pregnancies. So as no mothers have 10,000 babies does this mean we don't need to worry about it? Of course not.

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:12 am

bob sterman wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 6:54 am
jimbob wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 5:30 am
Anyone fancy fisking this:
I'm busy today:

https://twitter.com/simondolan/status/1 ... 7394755593
Simon Dolan #KBF
@simondolan
In essence, it is estimated (by non Govt funded scientists), that you would need to have contact with 6.7m people to catch and then die from CV

"The median estimate of the county level probability of a fatality is 1 in 6,670,000 person contacts"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20124446v2
The risk of maternal death in the UK is around 1 in 10,000 pregnancies. So as no mothers have 10,000 babies does this mean we don't need to worry about it? Of course not.
Having had a very quick look at the abstract, it looks lti be in June in the US.

I haven't even had time to read the whole abstract, but if I made some stupid assumptions*, I might be able to come up with a similar number.

* like the reported 20k daily cases being all the cases, and they're only infectious for a very few days as everyone symptomatic would isolate...
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Bagheera » Wed Sep 09, 2020 1:56 pm

A social media acquaintance has just posted a meme that's doing the rounds:

"SERIOUS QUESTION. WHY ARE THERE NO BIOHAZARD BINS FOR USED MASKS AND GLOVES IF THIS VIRUS IS SO CONTAGIOUS AND DEADLY?"

Her cronies have replied with comments like "Glad we're on the same page babe ✊✊❤️❤️"

I don't have time to get into this today. Anyone have a short and pithy, "serious" answer for her? Her heart's in the right place, she needs educating.

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Martin Y
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Martin Y » Wed Sep 09, 2020 2:05 pm

Because we don't know that a mask or glove is any more or less of a biohazard than the apple core, newspaper and Mars bar wrapper in the same bin. Stuff other people touched might be contaminated. You don't normally go raking through bins just because they don't say "biohazard".

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Martin Y » Wed Sep 09, 2020 2:16 pm

Maybe to put it another way, masks and gloves aren't a special category of waste these days because *all* waste is potentially infectious.

Sure, clinical waste from people who are being treated or isolating with symptoms is a higher risk category than the mask someone wore to go to the supermarket, but everything handled by other people, including the pen you mustn't borrow from your colleague's desk is the same low-level but real risk, so don't touch it.

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by shpalman » Wed Sep 09, 2020 2:29 pm

There were special protocols for waste from the house of someone who was isolating due to covid - not sure if they're still in force. Involved considering everything "undifferentiated" and double-bagging it I think.
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Sciolus » Wed Sep 09, 2020 4:50 pm

I vaguely remember seeing advice that potentially infected waste should be quarantined for 48 (?) hours before further handling and disposal. I forget where though.

I hope that helped.

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by sTeamTraen » Wed Sep 09, 2020 4:57 pm

jimbob wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:12 am
Having had a very quick look at the abstract, it looks lti be in June in the US.

I haven't even had time to read the whole abstract, but if I made some stupid assumptions*, I might be able to come up with a similar number.
You only need to read the first sentence of the abstract:
sh.tty irresponsible preprint from Stanford, source of a lot of terrible COVID-19 research wrote:Our objective is to demonstrate a method to estimate the probability of a laboratory confirmed COVID19 infection, hospitalization, and death arising from a contact with an individual of unknown infection status.
So this is the chance of you dying if you have a single social interaction with another human being. You go to the pub, meet a friend, have a drink, and leave. Your chance of dying from COVID as a result of doing that --- without knowing anything about the virus status of the other person --- is one in a few million.

That doesn't actually surprise me at all; I have an informal rule of thumb that one in a million is your chance of dying (a) today, in a road accident, if you commute to work by car, or (b) in the next 15 minutes, if you are 60 years old. If having a drink is only 10 times less dangerous than driving 30 miles, I'd say that was actually non-negligible at a population level.

Of course, the far-right c.nts' fave new outlets are changing that into "Stanford survey says your chance of dying is 1 in 20 million", which would might come as news to all but 16 Americans who have died so far.

[Edit: I had thought that "contact" could be less than a social interaction, e.g. buying a newspaper. Updated to reflect that it means spending time with another in a social setting.]
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Bagheera » Wed Sep 09, 2020 5:37 pm

Thanks to anyone who's weighed in re mask disposal.

FYI:

------ ------ ------

Current gov advice

Remove PPE carefully, and avoid touching the inside of your face covering.

After you remove your PPE or face covering, wash your hands or use hand sanitiser.

If you need to throw away used face coverings or PPE, such as gloves:

dispose of them in your ‘black bag’ waste bin at home or at work, or a litter bin if you’re outside
do not put them in a recycling bin as they cannot be recycled through conventional recycling facilities
take them home with you if there is no litter bin - do not drop them as litter

You do not need to:

put them in an extra bag
store them for a time before throwing them away

If you’re self isolating

double bag them
store them for 72 hours before putting them in a ‘black bag’ waste bin
Do not put them in a recycling bin.

------ ------ ------

All very reasonable IMO.

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Wed Sep 09, 2020 6:14 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 4:57 pm
jimbob wrote:
Tue Sep 08, 2020 7:12 am
Having had a very quick look at the abstract, it looks lti be in June in the US.

I haven't even had time to read the whole abstract, but if I made some stupid assumptions*, I might be able to come up with a similar number.
You only need to read the first sentence of the abstract:
sh.tty irresponsible preprint from Stanford, source of a lot of terrible COVID-19 research wrote:Our objective is to demonstrate a method to estimate the probability of a laboratory confirmed COVID19 infection, hospitalization, and death arising from a contact with an individual of unknown infection status.
So this is the chance of you dying if you have a single social interaction with another human being. You go to the pub, meet a friend, have a drink, and leave. Your chance of dying from COVID as a result of doing that --- without knowing anything about the virus status of the other person --- is one in a few million.

That doesn't actually surprise me at all; I have an informal rule of thumb that one in a million is your chance of dying (a) today, in a road accident, if you commute to work by car, or (b) in the next 15 minutes, if you are 60 years old. If having a drink is only 10 times less dangerous than driving 30 miles, I'd say that was actually non-negligible at a population level.

Of course, the far-right c.nts' fave new outlets are changing that into "Stanford survey says your chance of dying is 1 in 20 million", which would might come as news to all but 16 Americans who have died so far.

[Edit: I had thought that "contact" could be less than a social interaction, e.g. buying a newspaper. Updated to reflect that it means spending time with another in a social setting.]
They are also using an infection rate of 6/100k as opposed to the covidzoe estimate https://covid.joinzoe.com/us/data of 1-million infected, which I make 1/300
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Brightonian » Wed Sep 09, 2020 9:10 pm

Bagheera wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 5:37 pm
Thanks to anyone who's weighed in re mask disposal.

FYI:

------ ------ ------

Current gov advice

Remove PPE carefully, and avoid touching the inside of your face covering.

After you remove your PPE or face covering, wash your hands or use hand sanitiser.


If you need to throw away used face coverings or PPE, such as gloves:

dispose of them in your ‘black bag’ waste bin at home or at work, or a litter bin if you’re outside
do not put them in a recycling bin as they cannot be recycled through conventional recycling facilities
take them home with you if there is no litter bin - do not drop them as litter

You do not need to:

put them in an extra bag
store them for a time before throwing them away

If you’re self isolating

double bag them
store them for 72 hours before putting them in a ‘black bag’ waste bin
Do not put them in a recycling bin.

------ ------ ------

All very reasonable IMO.
I've managed to fairly successfully (I think) train myself to always wash my hands before and after touching my face mask, to the extent that I'm hyper aware when others touch their masks without sanitising their hands, even getting a little "triggered". So just imagine my anxiety levels when I was in a small shop where the manager was scanning my items: half way through scanning I suppose his nose was itching because he then stuck his hand into his mask, rubbed for a few seconds, then carried on scanning my items without stopping to do any sanitising. I meekly thanked him, and after I put my items in my bag I slathered my hands with gel. He then did the same, but I suspect only after seeing me do it.

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Bagheera » Thu Sep 10, 2020 7:25 pm

Brightonian, I am glad he used gel afterwards at least. That was his saving grace; otherwise, I hope you'd have given him a stiff talking-to. Or at very least your most withering and most scientific glare!

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Sun Oct 18, 2020 9:02 pm

Cross posted as I put it in relaxation station because it was too stupid.

But then found it was actually being used as an argument elsewhere.
jimbob wrote:
Fri Oct 16, 2020 5:19 pm
That there's *always* a more stupid conspiracy theory round the corner...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56bAoB5 ... e=youtu.be

That was tweeted to me in response to this exchange:

https://twitter.com/ParkinJim/status/13 ... 3530504193
Because Bill Gates, who was the richest person on Earth before giving billions of dollars away, has decided:

1) Fund Vaccine research
2) Eliminate COVID and reduce deaths.
3) Profit from this evil plan

As far as stupid memes go, this is a frontrunner.
Image
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat Nov 14, 2020 12:02 pm

Professor Raoult has an explanation for why hydroxycholorquine doesn't work. The virus has mutated (or, as one of the HCQ fans suggested, "been upgraded by the Chinese") to be HCQ-resistant. It totally used to work, but it doesn't any more. So he used to be right, but now he's all out of ideas (or at least, until he can think of another adjuvant and fake a trial with it).
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by badger » Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:52 pm

Some US patients with Covid in extreme denial:

https://twitter.com/jodidoering/status/ ... 9555292162

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Mon Nov 16, 2020 4:44 pm

badger wrote:
Mon Nov 16, 2020 2:52 pm
Some US patients with Covid in extreme denial:

https://twitter.com/jodidoering/status/ ... 9555292162
Grimly predictable
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:17 pm


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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Mon Nov 23, 2020 4:02 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:17 pm
Excellent debunking by an MP: https://twitter.com/NeilDotObrien/statu ... 18785?s=20
Yup...

Also discussed in another thread:
jimbob wrote:
Sun Nov 22, 2020 1:48 pm
Not Ian Brown's... *yet* but I suspect they might be soon.


Daily mail article:

Code: Select all

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8971669/What-DONT-tell-Covid-facts-twisted-strike-fear-hearts.html
With a very dodgy graph that a Twitter friend has posted about
Image

https://twitter.com/gordonrlove1/status ... 51072?s=20
Gordon:Covid grapher, data hunter-gatherer
@gordonrlove1
My first-ever complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation

About the Daily Mail's publication of the out-of-date & fake data about this year's all-causes deaths in England & Wales

To make your own complaint, please contact via
https://ipso.co.uk/complain/
10:40 AM · Nov 22, 2020·Twitter for Android
Complaining about accuracy. And pointing out the very dubious corrections used by the self-proclaimed "Statistics Guy"
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:51 pm

Sorry, missed that.

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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Wed Nov 25, 2020 12:58 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:17 pm
Excellent debunking by an MP: https://twitter.com/NeilDotObrien/statu ... 18785?s=20
And Statistics Guy blocked me for this tweet:

https://twitter.com/ParkinJim/status/13 ... 9066883072
Jim Parkin🕯 #BLM #FBPE
@ParkinJim
Replying to
@Jon_statistics
You seem to be trying to reinvent Age Standardised Mortality Rates, which people like
@longevitymatt
use in their day jobs.

But you have only done part of it. Which is worse than useless.
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:17 am

Thierry Baudet, the de facto leader of what has recently become the leading far-right party in the Netherlands, FvD, is in the process of being forced out by other senior party figures after he went a bit far even for his fellow frootloopers. He was reported as saying that 3 million deaths (in a population of 17 million) would be an acceptable price to pay to "get our freedom back" (the Netherlands has never had a lockdown remotely comparable to the first ones in Italy or Spain). But he also claims that the vaccine was made by George Soros and rambles on about Hilary and the paedos.

Amusingly, this makes Geert Wilders look like a voice of sanity. Wilders' "party", PVV, isn't a political party in any normal sense. It only has one member, so he doesn't have to worry about internal dissent. And the fully proportional Dutch system (150 seats, 0.67% of the vote gets you one seat) means he has a job for life. He also doesn't attempt to engage with any sort of intellectual arguments, because he knows his own limitations, whereas Baudet tries to look and talk clever and regularly gets his arse handed to him on a plate. Wilders is kind of halfway between Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, perhaps a little bit closer to the latter, which I think is quite a good sweet spot if you're going to be a Nazi c.nt.
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by jimbob » Wed Dec 02, 2020 7:06 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Nov 23, 2020 5:51 pm
Sorry, missed that.
And this shows how unjustified the idea of adjusting for population without correcting for everything else and using ASMR - which I leave to proper actuaries:
jimbob wrote:
Wed Dec 02, 2020 7:03 pm
Finally, I got tired of the "bUt WhAt aBoUt cOrReCtInG fOr PoPuLaTiOn"? in the excess death statistics.

This shows the medians for 2000-2004 and 2015-2019

The background death rate decreased at about the same amount as the background population growth.

Image
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Re: COVID-19 conspiracy motherlode

Post by sTeamTraen » Tue Jan 05, 2021 6:52 pm

Apparently. wearers of cappelli di carta stagnola have been circulating top-secret circuit diagrams of the 5G tracking chip that the vaccine deposits in your branes. Pleasingly, it is very similar to the design of a guitar effects pedal. <rockfingersemoji.gif>

(For shpalman: Is there a shorter Italian term for wearers of tinfoil (or any other kind of) hats, as opposed to the hats themselves?)
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