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On September 04 2020 16:42 Amui wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2020 12:19 StalkerTL wrote:There's long been suggestions that this coronavirus hits the cardiovascular, not just the respiratory system. Probably going to be a problem in America, there's been lots of evidence showing Troponin T blood markers in coronavirus patients. Which is used to diagnose heart attacks and heart disease in general. On September 04 2020 03:27 LegalLord wrote:
It seems to be a trend (noted enough months back that I don't remember where) that individuals who take on more aerobic exercise, even if healthy, tend to suffer worse from corvid disease infections. Makes sense for a respiratory illness. The evidence would point to a cardiovascular illness, not just a respiratory one. Which is probably worse? I saw some stuff that mentioned that it was more of a blood based disease of which the most immediately lethal symptoms were respiratory related, which is why it is so damaging. There's been evidence flying around of people with decreased liver, kidney, heart, lung, etc. function months after recovering from covid. I would bet that for every death to covid, the survivors probably lose at least a century of longevity and a millenium of decreased QoL. That's the true cost of the disease.
I could have sworn I read it here, but I don't see the link, so I guess it was in my medium feed. Anyway, the Bradykin hypothesis appears to be getting some traction. It explains quite a bit about the cardiovascular effects of Covid.
https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63
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I'm curious if we have anyone from France here who would like to comment on what cultural challenges they think are contributing to France having a hard time containing infection.
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I think that's just challenging people to explain that which is generally unexplainable. Every community has its own level and it finds it.
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On September 05 2020 01:39 cLutZ wrote:
I think that's just challenging people to explain that which is generally unexplainable. Every community has its own level and it finds it.
No one suffers for trying to characterize things difficult to characterize. I wouldn't have a job if that were the case 
Other topic: I think people are overly-skeptical of Russia's vaccine. Russia, much like China, has deep insecurity and is trying to show itself as a first world country. If their vaccine ended up having negative side effects, it would basically completely ruin their scientific reputation forever. There would be no coming back.
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France update : not going well. Up to 9000 cases a day, ICU are very slowly picking up thankfully, but regular hospitalisations are ticking up significantly these past few days.
Positivity ratio is still going up, even with the large amount of increase in testing. Now over 4.5%... R0 seems to be lowering, but is still largely above 1.
On September 05 2020 02:27 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2020 01:39 cLutZ wrote:
I think that's just challenging people to explain that which is generally unexplainable. Every community has its own level and it finds it. No one suffers for trying to characterize things difficult to characterize. I wouldn't have a job if that were the case Other topic: I think people are overly-skeptical of Russia's vaccine. Russia, much like China, has deep insecurity and is trying to show itself as a first world country. If their vaccine ended up having negative side effects, it would basically completely ruin their scientific reputation forever. There would be no coming back.
Think that stopped them having state-level doping during olympics held in their country ? They got busted, didn't bat an eye.
I really don't believe China is insecure. On the contrary, they know their place, strengths and weaknesses and are being really bold in their actions, in a lot of ways (economically mainly) around the world and at home. They don't really care about what other countries do or say, it doesn't deter them.
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On September 05 2020 03:07 Nouar wrote:France update : not going well. Up to 9000 cases a day, ICU are very slowly picking up thankfully, but regular hospitalisations are ticking up significantly these past few days. Positivity ratio is still going up, even with the large amount of increase in testing. Now over 4.5%... R0 seems to be lowering, but is still largely above 1. Show nested quote +On September 05 2020 02:27 Mohdoo wrote:On September 05 2020 01:39 cLutZ wrote:
I think that's just challenging people to explain that which is generally unexplainable. Every community has its own level and it finds it. No one suffers for trying to characterize things difficult to characterize. I wouldn't have a job if that were the case Other topic: I think people are overly-skeptical of Russia's vaccine. Russia, much like China, has deep insecurity and is trying to show itself as a first world country. If their vaccine ended up having negative side effects, it would basically completely ruin their scientific reputation forever. There would be no coming back. Think that stopped them having state-level doping during olympics held in their country ? They got busted, didn't bat an eye. I really don't believe China is insecure. On the contrary, they know their place, strengths and weaknesses and are being really bold in their actions, in a lot of ways (economically mainly) around the world and at home. They don't really care about what other countries do or say, it doesn't deter them.
I would argue scientific reputation ends up being significantly more important to a country than athletic reputation. I think it is critical for Russia that their vaccine has absolutely no negative side effects.
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So, looking at daily stats again.
India and Mexico stand out as among the worst right now. Mexico is quietly recording very large death tolls with an obviously undercounted case load. And India has recorded the highest in the world case numbers as it quietly continues on an exponential rise. That its infection/death numbers are a significant undercount is hardly in doubt; the real question is how much worse it's going to get there before finally quieting down. Certainly a far cry from the May headlines like, "Is India immune to Coronavirus?"
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On September 06 2020 01:25 LegalLord wrote:So, looking at daily stats again. India and Mexico stand out as among the worst right now. Mexico is quietly recording very large death tolls with an obviously undercounted case load. And India has recorded the highest in the world case numbers as it quietly continues on an exponential rise. That its infection/death numbers are a significant undercount is hardly in doubt; the real question is how much worse it's going to get there before finally quieting down. Certainly a far cry from the May headlines like, " Is India immune to Coronavirus?"
(I really wish people would stop using the term exponential when talking about linear increases... Don't worry, you're not the only one.)
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On September 06 2020 01:34 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 01:25 LegalLord wrote:So, looking at daily stats again. India and Mexico stand out as among the worst right now. Mexico is quietly recording very large death tolls with an obviously undercounted case load. And India has recorded the highest in the world case numbers as it quietly continues on an exponential rise. That its infection/death numbers are a significant undercount is hardly in doubt; the real question is how much worse it's going to get there before finally quieting down. Certainly a far cry from the May headlines like, " Is India immune to Coronavirus?" (I really wish people would stop using the term exponential when talking about linear increases... Don't worry, you're not the only one.)
The logarithm looks only very slightly shy of linear, so "exponential" fits just fine. A slowing exponential, perhaps, but exponential nevertheless.
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Ok, I'll cut you some slack and say I misinterpretated your sentence. When you said "recorded the highest in the world case numbers" (ie. highest DAILY), "as it continues an exponential rise."
I thought you meant that the daily cases were increasing exponentially. They are not. Daily cases are increasing linearly.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/pKnwMcw.jpg)
However, since daily cases are increasing, overall cases of course look like a slow exponential, like a lot of other countries, and that's probably what you meant.
It's not technically wrong. However, it's definitely not linear on the log scale.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/51zRImn.jpg)
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Well gee, I guess we've got some serious pedantism at play today. Is the word "exponential" really so deeply upsetting, even when it seems pretty damn accurate? Even for an arbitrary line drawn through a very large chunk of time, "slightly shy of linear" seems to be quite a reasonable interpretation.
Of course it's not perfectly accurate. Real-world data seldom is. But does it really matter so deeply if the growth is exponential versus some polynomial (i.e. "linearly growing daily infection rate") when the interpretation is all but identical and it's a best estimate anyways? Seems like a "well akshually" to me, one with questionable correctness at that.
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On September 06 2020 03:34 LegalLord wrote:
Well gee, I guess we've got some serious pedantism at play today. Is the word "exponential" really so deeply upsetting, even when it seems pretty damn accurate? Even for an arbitrary line drawn through a very large chunk of time, "slightly shy of linear" seems to be quite a reasonable interpretation.
Of course it's not perfectly accurate. Real-world data seldom is. But does it really matter so deeply if the growth is exponential versus some polynomial (i.e. "linearly growing daily infection rate") when the interpretation is all but identical and it's a best estimate anyways? Seems like a "well akshually" to me, one with questionable correctness at that.
I did say that I misread, didn't I ? That is the explanation for my first comment. It was not pedantic, it was me misunderstanding a sentence. Should I bow down and commit seppuku for you to be happy ?
You DID cut corners though, I also pointed that out, WHILE STILL BEING WRONG. I have a science background, exponential has a very specific meaning, and it is being used everywhere without care for the meaning. Which is a bit tiring. If that's pedantic to you, then so be it.
Your "slightly shy of linear" translates to roughly doubling the country's cases (meaning randomly adding 5M). This is your "slightly shy" when talking exponentials and log scales.
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Also note that when daily counts are raising linearly, that means that total counts are raising quadratically, not exponentially. And the main problem with exponential is that it actually has a meaning, but people who don't know that meaning use it to mean "a lot". Which is not what exponential means.
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On September 06 2020 04:54 Simberto wrote:
Also note that when daily counts are raising linearly, that means that total counts are raising quadratically, not exponentially. And the main problem with exponential is that it actually has a meaning, but people who don't know that meaning use it to mean "a lot". Which is not what exponential means.
Yup, if my memory is not completely useless, exponential means that the rate of increase is... increasing. When you have linear daily increases, the rate of increase actually decreases (the "total case numbers have increased by X% a day/week" etc)
But it seems that's being pedantic.
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On September 06 2020 05:03 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 04:54 Simberto wrote:
Also note that when daily counts are raising linearly, that means that total counts are raising quadratically, not exponentially. And the main problem with exponential is that it actually has a meaning, but people who don't know that meaning use it to mean "a lot". Which is not what exponential means. Yup, if my memory is not completely useless, exponential means that the rate of increase is... increasing. When you have linear daily increases, the rate of increase actually decreases (the "total case numbers have increased by X% a day/week" etc) But it seems that's being pedantic.
That is also not exactly what exponential means.
Exponential means that the percentage increase per time (or whatever else your independent variable is) is constant. So, for example, something which doubles every five days is growing exponential. Functions of this type can be written as some variant of b*a^t. Anything which does not work like that is not growing exponentially.
All of this "daily increase" stuff is differential calculus. The daily new cases are nothing but the derivative of your total cases. (Or, according to the fundamental theorem of calculus, the total cases are a antiderivative of the daily new cases). If something growth exponentially, then its derivative (daily change) also growth exponentially.
A few other things which are not exponential are:
Daily increase is constant (Means that total cases rise linearly)
Daily increase raises linearly (Means that total cases rise quadratically)
Daily percentage increase increases (This would actually be stronger growth than exponential)
The reason exponential stuff is scary is because it can grow very rapidly, even from small starting amounts. The classic example of this is the chess board with a grain of rice on the first square, and always double the previous square on the next one. This leads to a basically absurd amount of rice on the last square. Another example of exponential growth is compound interest.
And it is not pedantic. I like my words to have meaning. And sadly people steal science terms, and fill them with stupid meaning which isn't what that word actually means. And they often even get angry when you use the word in its original meaning, and not the stupid unexact meaning people fill it with. This also makes teaching science needlessly hard, because you have to explain to children that you are using words in a different way than they do, and that the way they are using them is incorrect. We don't need this shit to happen to even more words, especially not to words which people who have finished school should know the exact meaning of.
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On September 06 2020 03:47 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 03:34 LegalLord wrote:
Well gee, I guess we've got some serious pedantism at play today. Is the word "exponential" really so deeply upsetting, even when it seems pretty damn accurate? Even for an arbitrary line drawn through a very large chunk of time, "slightly shy of linear" seems to be quite a reasonable interpretation.
Of course it's not perfectly accurate. Real-world data seldom is. But does it really matter so deeply if the growth is exponential versus some polynomial (i.e. "linearly growing daily infection rate") when the interpretation is all but identical and it's a best estimate anyways? Seems like a "well akshually" to me, one with questionable correctness at that. I did say that I misread, didn't I ? That is the explanation for my first comment. It was not pedantic, it was me misunderstanding a sentence. Should I bow down and commit seppuku for you to be happy ? You DID cut corners though, I also pointed that out, WHILE STILL BEING WRONG. I have a science background, exponential has a very specific meaning, and it is being used everywhere without care for the meaning. Which is a bit tiring. If that's pedantic to you, then so be it. Your "slightly shy of linear" translates to roughly doubling the country's cases (meaning randomly adding 5M). This is your "slightly shy" when talking exponentials and log scales.
I mean, fuck, if you want to go off on a rant about someone being "technically wrong" about something, it helps to be technically correct to start with.
The two random-ass lines you drew aren't entirely internally consistent either, for that matter. Different date ranges between them, and for your "linearly increasing case rate" line fails to account for the case rate being very nonzero indeed before June. Oh sure, maybe a piecewise look at the data might make sense, and it wasn't always a "linearly increasing case load." But then maybe the same goes for an exponential piecewise fit, where "10% increase per day" dropped to "5% increase per day" over time. It'd be very easy to fit six months of data to two 3mo lines and have it look quite good indeed.
Point being? No shit, corners have been cut - we both cut a few in the assumptions we made. That's what happens when you make sense of real-life data rather than something straight out of a first-year biology or statistics class. "Exponential" seems pretty appropriate here - you can reasonably explain a lot of data with it, there's nice inherent reason to support its accuracy in this use case (every person infects X others per day etc), and it's reasonably predictive of what happens. No, it's not a perfect fit, but in this context that seems to be quibbling over semantics rather than making a useful point.
Your point seems to be along the lines of, "it's not exponential! It's only growing in a fashion that vaguely looks like and can be effectively modeled as something exponential!" And yeah, that might be true. But what point is being made here other than grandstanding? For all intents and purposes, "exponential" looks like a reasonable description of the long-term trend, subject to the limitations of real-world data.
On September 06 2020 05:35 Simberto wrote:
And it is not pedantic. I like my words to have meaning. And sadly people steal science terms, and fill them with stupid meaning which isn't what that word actually means. And they often even get angry when you use the word in its original meaning, and not the stupid unexact meaning people fill it with. This also makes teaching science needlessly hard, because you have to explain to children that you are using words in a different way than they do, and that the way they are using them is incorrect. We don't need this shit to happen to even more words, especially not to words which people who have finished school should know the exact meaning of.
Well (akshually), "exponential" is certainly far more of a math term than a "science" one. In the context of how it's used for this data, it's mostly statistics, in the sense of "exponential fit to the data." Which, in the words of a famous statistician, is wrong but sometimes useful.
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On September 06 2020 05:40 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 03:47 Nouar wrote:On September 06 2020 03:34 LegalLord wrote:
Well gee, I guess we've got some serious pedantism at play today. Is the word "exponential" really so deeply upsetting, even when it seems pretty damn accurate? Even for an arbitrary line drawn through a very large chunk of time, "slightly shy of linear" seems to be quite a reasonable interpretation.
Of course it's not perfectly accurate. Real-world data seldom is. But does it really matter so deeply if the growth is exponential versus some polynomial (i.e. "linearly growing daily infection rate") when the interpretation is all but identical and it's a best estimate anyways? Seems like a "well akshually" to me, one with questionable correctness at that. I did say that I misread, didn't I ? That is the explanation for my first comment. It was not pedantic, it was me misunderstanding a sentence. Should I bow down and commit seppuku for you to be happy ? You DID cut corners though, I also pointed that out, WHILE STILL BEING WRONG. I have a science background, exponential has a very specific meaning, and it is being used everywhere without care for the meaning. Which is a bit tiring. If that's pedantic to you, then so be it. Your "slightly shy of linear" translates to roughly doubling the country's cases (meaning randomly adding 5M). This is your "slightly shy" when talking exponentials and log scales. I mean, fuck, if you want to go off on a rant about someone being "technically wrong" about something, it helps to be technically correct to start with. The two random-ass lines you drew aren't entirely internally consistent either, for that matter. Different date ranges between them, and for your "linearly increasing case rate" line fails to account for the case rate being very nonzero indeed before June. Oh sure, maybe a piecewise look at the data might make sense, and it wasn't always a "linearly increasing case load." But then maybe the same goes for an exponential piecewise fit, where "10% increase per day" dropped to "5% increase per day" over time. It'd be very easy to fit six months of data to two 3mo lines and have it look quite good indeed. Point being? No shit, corners have been cut - we both cut a few in the assumptions we made. That's what happens when you make sense of real-life data rather than something straight out of a first-year biology or statistics class. "Exponential" seems pretty appropriate here - you can reasonably explain a lot of data with it, there's nice inherent reason to support its accuracy in this use case (every person infects X others per day etc), and it's reasonably predictive of what happens. No, it's not a perfect fit, but in this context that seems to be quibbling over semantics rather than making a useful point. Your point seems to be along the lines of, "it's not exponential! It's only growing in a fashion that vaguely looks like and can be effectively modeled as something exponential!" And yeah, that might be true. But what point is being made here other than grandstanding? For all intents and purposes, "exponential" looks like a reasonable description of the long-term trend, subject to the limitations of real-world data.
Again because you seem to have been oblivious to what I wrote : I MISREAD YOUR FIRST SENTENCE. The daily increase in cases was clearly linear over more than 2 monthes, and I thought you were talking about THAT.
I wouldn't have complained about the exponential part of your post if I had read it correctly the first time, even if it's not entirely correct as Simberto explains thoroughly, because it would have been minor.
The points you raise just above are correct, I contemplated making an exact comparison between an exponential and the daily numbers from worldometers over the last 2 months (consistent with my first very rough line on the daily cases), then decided it would have been a complete waste of time. Can we stop there ? Or are you again going to answer and tell me I am quibbling when I very clearly admitted twice now I was wrong in my initial assessment ?
Though I still maintain that I'd like people to refrain from using exponential "à toutes les sauces", as we say here.
On September 06 2020 05:40 LegalLord wrote:
I mean, fuck, if you want to go off on a rant about someone being "technically wrong" about something, it helps to be technically correct to start with.
More specifically about that... My post said that you were "not technically wrong". Like, the contrary. You know ? (though Simberto says that it's still technically wrong)
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On September 06 2020 05:47 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2020 05:40 LegalLord wrote:On September 06 2020 03:47 Nouar wrote:On September 06 2020 03:34 LegalLord wrote:
Well gee, I guess we've got some serious pedantism at play today. Is the word "exponential" really so deeply upsetting, even when it seems pretty damn accurate? Even for an arbitrary line drawn through a very large chunk of time, "slightly shy of linear" seems to be quite a reasonable interpretation.
Of course it's not perfectly accurate. Real-world data seldom is. But does it really matter so deeply if the growth is exponential versus some polynomial (i.e. "linearly growing daily infection rate") when the interpretation is all but identical and it's a best estimate anyways? Seems like a "well akshually" to me, one with questionable correctness at that. I did say that I misread, didn't I ? That is the explanation for my first comment. It was not pedantic, it was me misunderstanding a sentence. Should I bow down and commit seppuku for you to be happy ? You DID cut corners though, I also pointed that out, WHILE STILL BEING WRONG. I have a science background, exponential has a very specific meaning, and it is being used everywhere without care for the meaning. Which is a bit tiring. If that's pedantic to you, then so be it. Your "slightly shy of linear" translates to roughly doubling the country's cases (meaning randomly adding 5M). This is your "slightly shy" when talking exponentials and log scales. I mean, fuck, if you want to go off on a rant about someone being "technically wrong" about something, it helps to be technically correct to start with. The two random-ass lines you drew aren't entirely internally consistent either, for that matter. Different date ranges between them, and for your "linearly increasing case rate" line fails to account for the case rate being very nonzero indeed before June. Oh sure, maybe a piecewise look at the data might make sense, and it wasn't always a "linearly increasing case load." But then maybe the same goes for an exponential piecewise fit, where "10% increase per day" dropped to "5% increase per day" over time. It'd be very easy to fit six months of data to two 3mo lines and have it look quite good indeed. Point being? No shit, corners have been cut - we both cut a few in the assumptions we made. That's what happens when you make sense of real-life data rather than something straight out of a first-year biology or statistics class. "Exponential" seems pretty appropriate here - you can reasonably explain a lot of data with it, there's nice inherent reason to support its accuracy in this use case (every person infects X others per day etc), and it's reasonably predictive of what happens. No, it's not a perfect fit, but in this context that seems to be quibbling over semantics rather than making a useful point. Your point seems to be along the lines of, "it's not exponential! It's only growing in a fashion that vaguely looks like and can be effectively modeled as something exponential!" And yeah, that might be true. But what point is being made here other than grandstanding? For all intents and purposes, "exponential" looks like a reasonable description of the long-term trend, subject to the limitations of real-world data. Again because you seem to have been oblivious to what I wrote : I MISREAD YOUR FIRST SENTENCE. The daily increase in cases was clearly linear over more than 2 monthes, and I thought you were talking about THAT. I wouldn't have complained about the exponential part of your post if I had read it correctly the first time, even if it's not entirely correct as Simberto explains thoroughly, because it would have been minor. The points you raise just above are correct, I contemplated making an exact comparison between an exponential and the daily numbers from worldometers over the last 2 months (consistent with my first very rough line on the daily cases), then decided it would have been a complete waste of time. Can we stop there ? Or are you again going to answer and tell me I am quibbling when I very clearly admitted twice now I was wrong in my initial assessment ? Though I still maintain that I'd like people to refrain from using exponential "à toutes les sauces", as we say here.
Sure. I'll note that my response is as much to the follow-up posts as to the one I actually responded to. Wouldn't have posted it in the first place if not for the following discussion.
Perhaps the last little remark is the one that is most relevant to top it off: technically wrong (about being exponential), but nevertheless practically useful.
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EPT
