#Predictions as #IdleMusings.
a/ Be prepared for a ton of US media-adjacent & politics-adjacent folk to soon start suddenly telling you at profuse length why case numbers, infection numbers, just. don't. matter. (according to them).
b/ Of course case numbers will actually only matter in practice up to the point where no-one can count more anyway, because testing capacity got overwhelmed. But anyway.
c/ Be prepared for an awful lot of folks in Florida suddenly finding out, the hard way, that vaccine-made Abs >>>>>> mAbs, and for many of them their fav mAbs just won't work on omicron.
Advice? Make your own antibodies, #GetVaccinatedNow
d/ I guess, if your name is Birx, you should prepare yourself for being retrospectively blamed for everything, including vampires & giant asteroids, by everyone in the US, Democrats and Republicans. See the futures market in goats, sub-category scape-.
e/ A different way of looking at this would be as, "How to get 100% positivity in YOUR life!"
1/n In London, the Great Stink happened. The entire sewer system, such as it was, emptied directly without treatment into the open sewer that was the river Thames. In 1858, for 2 months, the odor became so unbearable that everyone who could remotely afford it fled central London.
2/n Just before the Great Stink, cholera — then a very *new* disease for 99% of the world — also happened in 1854 in London. And so did John Snow (as in the famous John Snow Memorandum johnsnowmemo.com/john-snow-memo…), who just removed a pump handle, & thereby slashed cholera right down.
3/n *Amazingly*, sense happened. Everyone said, we must build better sewers, maybe even better drinking water. And Joseph Bazalgette happened, & got the job of building a new sewer system. Astonishingly, he said "Bugger small limits", & built a system for >10x the then population
New thread, continuing on from old thread. Next:
just how dangerous IS #polio? And I'm going to give y'all two separate, different answers. First off, we need the difference between CFR & IFR. Because especially with polio, people confuse these.
2/n ➡️ CFR: Case Fatality Ratio.
Out of all the people you document with an infection by a particular bug, how many of them die, the %.
I.e., CFR only measures the percentage of those who die among the infections you *noticed & documented*.
3/n ➡️ IFR: Infection Fatality Ratio
Out of ALL the people who get infected by that particular bug, including ALL the ones you didn't notice or document, what percentage of them cark it?
Apparently @umairh, who's a rather nasty nutcase, wrote the below snippet, in a blog post (eand.co/the-lesson-of-…) that he's now deleted, after virologists laughed at him
*sigh*
you can have either:
a/ Toby Young really doesn't understand statistics and causality, Example no.# 958,689,
or
b/ Toby Young actively peddles misinformation.
Whichever you prefer. But you must pick one.
oh, I see. At this time, 175 replies under that tweet of Toby Young's, every single reply (not kidding) telling him he's completely misread or wilfully dishonestly misrepresented the stats. He hasn't taken any notice, of course.
Actual report is written by Will Jones "Dr Will Jones is a writer currently focused on countering misinformation around the COVID-19 crisis. He has a PhD in political philosophy & a BSc in mathematics, ... an MA in ethics .. a diploma in theology."
At least 3 degrees wasted.
1/ New thread, from the old thread (below). What do you think the average denialist or antivaxxer would have made of polio today, if it came in a 'new' epidemic form (like it did from @ 1890)? The excuses to do absolutely nothing would come thick & fast.
2/ Taxes for a big global eradication? You know as well as I do what the usual denialists & antivaxxers would say.
"But it's always been around! It's everywhere! It's *endemic*!"
And you know what? They would have been right, even though wrong as excuse
3/ Universal vaccinations? Every denialist would scream, "But #polio only kills very few!"
And that was absolutely right, especially before 1920. Polio killed very very few. It crippled many more, but still "only a few".
Do you think the denialists really care about children?