[salmon30salmon]

The response to her actions seem to be overkill. With that said, what she is accused of doing is illegal (especially downloading PII from the government).

Also, she is reaching far beyond her grasp. And sensationalizing quite a bit. I am sure she is intelligent and competent in her role, but that role is not that of an epidemiologist, data scientist or public policy expert. Why does this matter?

Well, focusing mainly on the public policy, nothing is cut and dry. Understanding how semi-dependent systems work together is incredibly complex. She is so heavily focused on COVID that she lacks the insight into all of the competing forces that make up a society. And yes, getting those forces wrong will also cost lives.

Finally, her dramatization of the number of deaths implies (as many people imply) that any actions (that are not blatantly unconstitutional) could appreciably decrease deaths. Outside of the island nations and China, deaths have a weak correlation with public policy. More suggestive correlations exist for population density (cases) and average age (deaths). And yes, there are outliers (Japan is older, Vietnam is denser) but there are even more outliers on the shutdown argument.

The reason this is myopic focus on lockdowns is dangerous is that if undermines the effective mitigation efforts that can help without ruining society. As soon as any leader attempts to ease anything you have the pearl-clutching "give me lockdown or give grandma death" crowd sensationally crying foul. Our ability for reasoned disagreement was a dead horse years ago, but Covid continues to beat it senseless.

[TameAntelope]

I'm confused -- what did she do that "reached beyond her grasp" or "dramatized" the number of COVID-19 deaths in Florida?

Edit: You're all over this comment thread, what relationship do you have to this story, if any?

[salmon30salmon]

No relationship. Just bored on a day off. I am passionate about Covid related topics because I am frankly concerned by the rhetoric around Covid. It boggles my mind that this has become so politicized and opposition is equated with homicidal disregard for human life.

There is also so much sensationalism around Covid that it's impossible to actually discuss. Mask compliance for example. I've heard so many times that if only dumbfuck America would mask up we'd be sitting pretty. Except the US has some oh the highest mask compliance of western nations. People talk about anti-lockdown protests as being pawns for the far right and hating science, yet these protests are not unique to the US or the Right.

Essentially our response to a pandemic has devolved into people shouting memes at one another while 30 million unemployed are liking up at food banks. It's fucking crazy

[TameAntelope]

I think in this case, you're getting back what you put into the conversation. I've never been accused of disregarding human life, and I've had a bunch of conversations here and elsewhere about COVID-19 response.

It feels like you're in what I call a "contrarian headspace" where you believe you've discovered something that's under-reported or under-represented, and you've grabbed firmly onto that belief, riding it into every conversation you can. Here be dragons, especially on HN.

I think, to retain my own sanity, I'm going to bow out of this conversation, but I do suggest you take a good hard look at how your beliefs landed you on the same side as the system crushing Rebekah Jones. What they're doing to her is, regardless of legal technicality, problematic, and if you're not able to see that because of your feelings about COVID coverage, you're in some trouble.

[salmon30salmon]

And likewise, you inability to see her as anything but a martyr against an oppressive system is informed by your tightly held belief that the government is for some reason downplaying Covid.

Oh is that not the case? Then don't attribute some armchair psychology to my motives. I in no way think I've "discovered" something underreported. I know full well that millions of people, from credentialed scientists to dumbfuck hillbillies see the same things I rail against.

I've been accused of disregarding human life for my views on Covid response. Which is funny as Covid has touched my family in painful ways.

Humans are complex beings, more so than your coined phrase captures. But I still love you! I hope someday we all can have a calm, reasonable discussion about epidemics. Because this will happen again, so we need to study our response here as much as possible

[dang]

Please stop posting flamewar comments to HN. What you've been doing on this site is over-the-top excessive and it's time to stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[kaitai]

Wow, looks like free speech went here to die!

Police are raiding her house, pointing guns at her kids, continuing to come back with technically illiterate and nonsensical reasons to arrest her, because she's said something that someone in politics did not like. Why is this discussion even about covid? This is not an epidemic discussion, this is a political liberties discussion.

[dang]

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for and the guidelines ask everyone not to do it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[SpicyLemonZest]

The discussion is about covid because that's the only factor informing people's opinions on the matter. If we didn't know anything about her Covid work - if the only information we had was that some random government ex-employee was arrested for allegedly misusing government credentials - nobody would presume to know what the full story is or what's motivating the prosecution.

[salmon30salmon]

Beyond your nonsense about free speech..

This is a discussion about Covid because the accused was motivated by Covid. My argument is that the hysteria we've whipped up over this pandemic has caused people to take crazy risks to further a cause which only exists in our hysteria.

I believe Ms. Jones earnestly believes that she had to do these things to save tens of thousands of lives. If those weren't the stakes in her head, would she have downloaded PII and misused an alert system?

Essentially our rhetoric around Covid is mentally dangerous for many people and can cause them to act beyond reason due to their misinformed notion of risk

[xenophonf]

This:

> But I still love you!

comes off as _super_ disingenuous.

[rdiddly]

Essentially our response to [every issue] has devolved into people shouting memes at one another...

That is the unfortunate state of public "debate" in the US today. Questions never get settled, and as a result, very little gets done.

[hvac]

If the state’s data is garbage in the first place then the chance of a good-faith debate happening drops even further. I’m more than a little disturbed by the narrative that it’s OK for the state to lie as long as they are advancing a cause that you agree with. The underlying issue (covid) should not matter.

[Geminidog]

Just because someone is interested in a topic doesn't mean they're connected to the topic.

[mrhyyyyde]

Has a real interest in only this subject apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=salmon30salmon

[monoideism]

What are you insinuating, exactly?

[elliekelly]

I’m not the person you’re replying to but I do think anyone who comes to HN to discuss primarily one narrow (and politically contentious) topic isn’t participating in HN in good faith. There’s no effort to “gratify one’s intellectual curiosity” or “have curious conversation” if you’ve arrived with an agenda.

[monoideism]

Fair enough, but you don't think we all come to HN with agendas?

[salmon30salmon]

Because you know the links I click on. Or maybe, and I know this is crazy, but maybe this isn't my primary account as people have been mobbed and cancelled for having contrarian views on Covid!

[salmon30salmon]

He is saying I am either a troll or a pawn.

[nobody9999]

>He is saying I am either a troll or a pawn.

I didn't interpret that comment the same way at all.

I think the gist of it can be summed up by (purportedly) Winston Churchill:

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

If, as you suggest, you're using a semi-throwaway account specifically to discuss COVID, unless other folks know that, your posting history with this account would likely give that impression.

[salmon30salmon]

See my response to the parent. Yes, coronavirus gets me all hot and bothered.

[_Understated_]

Well, in salmon30salmon's defence: the mainstream media are completely and utterly missing in action when it comes to COVID.

They only parrot what the gov tells them and investigate nothing these days.

There are countless credible scientists saying that we are getting this incredibly wrong on so many levels yet mainstream media does not mention anything other than government narrative.

When did you see any news coverage of criticism of the "vaccine"? I mean, on a scientific level, not government ineptitude at rolling it out.

Edit: I can't reply for some reason but here's a video talking about the "vaccine"[0] and here's the Great Barrington Declaration[1]. Here is criticism from the BMJ [2] stating that (according to my maths) it's only 19% effective... in addition, it's designed to TREAT the symptoms, not cure you... what kind of vaccine is that?

[0] - https://www.bitchute.com/video/edombs4NcvQ6/

[1] - https://gbdeclaration.org/

[2] - https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/04/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-...

[selimthegrim]

Which credible scientists? Levitt? Bhattacharya?

[disgruntledphd2]

That BMJ article he linked is relatively worrying, so much so that I may actually read the FDA reports for the Pfizer vaccine.

[selimthegrim]

See my reply above - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25826062

[salmon30salmon]

I love you and thank you for coming to my defense but please do not link vaccine distrust with my views. I trust the data and the science behind the vaccines and believe we need to be getting them distributed as soon as possible

[_Understated_]

No worries. Noted.

My point wasn't about vaccine distrust although that's part of it. It's more about not having a competent media that will at least say "we will question everything" and investigating along those lines. COVID is the prime example in my opinion so I provided links when asked.

[salmon30salmon]

I think it isn't the media not questioning, I think the media realizes that Covid is the gift that keeps on giving and they won't look that gift horse in the mouth.

It's like the trope about media coverage of plane crashes except instead of being an acute incident the media can play off of our fears day after day

[selimthegrim]

The comments on the blog in [2] rightly criticize his assumption of high false negatives in the symptomatic but excluded arm

[disgruntledphd2]

So, I went and followed the link (helpfully it goes to the correct table, though you'll need to scroll down a bit).

https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download#page=18

This is the first point where 300 odd people were excluded from the analysis because of protocol deviations. Worryingly, this number was much higher in the treatment group. While I hope that blinding would have prevented any motivated exclusion, it's still quite concerning.

His second main point (which is actually really interesting), is that there were 3500 cases of symptoms consistent with Covid-19 that weren't revealed by a PCR test. I'm not sure what to think of this (and note that this number swamps the actual numbers of confirmed cases by about 10x), except that it matches with anecdotal evidence I've seen around negative tests in the presence of symptoms.

The details of the second point can be found here: https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download#page=42

As a meta-point, the world would be a better place if more people clicked on linked and attempted to interrogate the soruces of things.

[selimthegrim]

I was referring to his second main point.

[DanBC]

> When did you see any news coverage of criticism of the "vaccine"?

There's no credible criticism of the vaccine. Can you point to any?

[fatsdomino001]

I suspect what you deem credible is substantially different from what's credible to people who are critical of the covid mrna treatment.

[_Understated_]

But there is NO criticism at all... credible or not.

[_Understated_]

See my edit above... couldn't reply at the time for some reason

[salmon30salmon]

The message sent via emergency comms was quite dramatic. Her insistence that the numbers were being cooked with malice to justify reopening is also attributing to conspiracy that which could be explained by differing opinions on how to clean up messy data (if someone tested positive on vacation, will they count in their home state or Florida?)

[TameAntelope]

She was told to turn an 18% to a 10% so more counties would appear ready to reopen, according to the article linked within this one.

I may need some help understanding how that's a "differing opinion" about how to clean up data.

[salmon30salmon]

To me that doesn't pass the smell test. In my state, they've just changed the thresholds. "New science is showing XYZ so in response counties can now eat at restaurants if their shits under 20"

[esoterae]

Changing a threshold is not changing the underlying data. One is attempting to be rational and iterate through policy, and the other is lying.

Edit: Just to be explicit, yes I'm calling out the false equivalence as a logical fallacy.

[salmon30salmon]

Right no shit. What I'm arguing is that people take the path of least resistance and it would have been far easier to announce a policy change than cook the books. I am saying that if opening up was the only reason, I do not believe that's the path they would take. Of course I'm just basing this off of my own feels.

[pbourke]

> Outside of the island nations and China, deaths have a weak correlation with public policy.

South Korea, Vietnam, Finland, Norway and Thailand are not island nations and yet have a rate of death an order of magnitude lower than the US.

[salmon30salmon]

South Korea is basically an island. Their only border is an impregnable military zone. Norway and Finland speak more to density than their geography.

But yeah, we need to learn what was different in Vietnam and Thailand. Vietnam is especially interesting, but it could be easily argued that one of their tools is unavailable here (forced detention at camps for the infected)

[pbourke]

Chalking anything up to geography or density seems like a reach. Ireland and the UK are islands and are doing rather poorly. South Korea has high density. Canada has low density, but a highly urbanized population. It’s done better than the US which has similar urbanization but worse than the nations that I mentioned earlier.

[toast0]

England is an island in geography, but it has a lot of truck (lorry) traffic to and from the continent, via ferries and the rail line under the channel. It's not just containerized freight, the trucks with drivers drive on and drive off the other modes of transit.

Being an island isn't required; you need effective border controls, and effective control of population behavior. It's just a lot easier to have effective border control with an island; but England certainly didn't make use of that possibility.

[salmon30salmon]

Right it's pretty fucking willy-nilly no matter the conditions you are testing for correlation. The nations you mentioned all had pretty different public responses as well.

That is why I think it's dangerous to proclaim lockdowns are a panacea because with a few exceptions you end up with similar results but a fucked economy

[pksebben]

how is that more dangerous than avoiding a lockdown claiming that public policy doesn't matter? In what ways is the economy killing people right now?

[salmon30salmon]

Suicides are way up. So are overdoses.

But the real tragedy is the lack of support for third world countries due to the contraction of the global economy. Millions will die due to a reduction in vaccines and treatable illnesses in the developing world. Millions. But it seems we are okay with that as long as _we_ don't get covid

[SpicyLemonZest]

It's dangerous because poorly executed lockdowns can be counterproductive. New cases are currently higher in many locked-down states than they are in Florida - this is of course a multifactorial process, but part of the story has to be that people have stopped complying with the lockdowns.

[DiogenesKynikos]

It's relatively simple: lockdowns are effective to the extent that they reduce contacts between people. In countries that actually implemented strict lockdowns that substantially reduced contacts between people, transmission fell, R went below 1, and the epidemic receded.

The most effective strategy for countries that have large numbers of cases is to go into a strict lockdown, in order to bring case numbers down as quickly as possible. Then they can reopen to a much larger extent than they would otherwise be able to. China and several other countries have successfully done this.