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New Ipsos US polling finds HALF of Republican voters oppose the plan to fill the Supreme Court vacan
New Ipsos US polling finds HALF of Republican voters oppose the plan to fill the Supreme Court vacancy before the election – politicalbetting.com
The Supreme Court building in Washington DC pic.twitter.com/coXYrJYuah
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On the other hand if Trump wins, why rush?
So yes, I think the appointment takes place after inauguration, whatever the election outcome.
The public needs to know the answer.
"The actual or operational false positive rate differs, sometimes substantially, under different settings, technical operators, detection methods and equipment."
"What do we know about the false positive rate? Well, we do know that the Government’s own scientists were very concerned about it, and a report on this problem was sent to SAGE dated June 3rd 2020. I quote: “Unless we understand the operational false positive rate of the UK’s RT-PCR testing system, we risk over-estimating the COVID-19 incidence, the demand on track and trace and the extent of asymptomatic infection”.
In that same report, the authors helpfully listed the lowest to highest false positive rate of dozens of tests using the same technology. The lowest value for false positive rate was 0.8%. "
And it means the positivity rates increase is even worse not better. It is the R, the increase in case percentages, that is the problem not the baseload of cases.
The lockdownsceptics man is barking up the wrong tree, I suspect. There is nothing massively wrong with the statistics. The test tests what it does. If there are ten times more positives it's because the epidemic has grown tenfold. What does he want? Stop all testing so we have no idea what's going on?
The problem is people being asked to self isolate because they are no longer infectious or because they have come into contact with someone who is no longer infectious. Also Test and Protect can't focus on the traces that really matter because they don't know who is infectious and who isn't.
I don't believe them. If there is no working and mass available vaccine by next spring then we go through the cycle again.
It tends to confirm the belief that perceived blatant unfairness often transcends voters’ political affiliation.
Lets say that hypothetically there were 3000 cases but 90% were false, then there were just 300 real cases. 2700 false cases should remain the baseline.
If suddenly ceteris paribus we have 5000 cases with 2700 being false then now we have 2300 real cases.
If there aren't so many false positives then the caseload has gone up by just 66%.
If there are so many false positives then the caseload has gone up by 666%.
The worrying news isn't the number of cases it is the increase in cases. That is the problem and if your theory is right then the increase is more concerning not less.
Surely more tests = more positive tests, even if the infection rate stayed the same?
This is a problem. Rather than taking the perplexingly ad hominem point that he is retired, explain why it is not a problem please?
But maybe read the article, it is a long time since I studied maths so maybe I have got the wrong end of all this.
All I'm saying is we need some debate on all this and we aren't getting it. Hancock appears unwilling to discuss the FPR.
In real terms the economy will shrink, but the only escape route for the government is massive printing of money, so perhaps not in nominal terms. It is the right escape route as it's basically a blanket tax on everything. The normal resultant inflationary risk is there, but probably won't come into play.
If the number of cases were there but flat then that would not be concerning. It is the increase that is concerning. Unless the FPR rate is consistently rising that makes no sense whatsoever.
Thinking about this further, a tenfold increase in test positives will actually underestimate the increase in cases in this situation. The base date tests will include those holding the virus from earlier while tests today will be picking up additional cases that are all new. The reverse happens on a fall in cases, where the fall will be overestimated.
The number of false positives will be proportional to the number of tests. If the number of positive cases doubles, but the number of tests in that same period has gone up by 10%, then the increase will not have be dominated by false positives. Also if the number of positives almost entirely consists of false, positives the R value will not increase and this will be picked up by the very short infection chains, as a false positive by definition cannot infect anybody else.
Good night!
How many were tested in your second case?
If the % coming back positive was flat then yes it could be explained by the # of tests going up. But that's not the case.
And how does it deal with the false positives - the challenge presented by which is well aired in several other posts on this thread?
The percentage of tests giving positive results (in Pillar One and Pillar Two) has gone up as well as the ONS survey data going up.
"What do we know about the false positive rate? Well, we do know that the Government’s own scientists were very concerned about it, and a report on this problem was sent to SAGE dated June 3rd 2020. I quote: “Unless we understand the operational false positive rate of the UK’s RT-PCR testing system, we risk over-estimating the COVID-19 incidence, the demand on track and trace and the extent of asymptomatic infection”. In that same report, the authors helpfully listed the lowest to highest false positive rate of dozens of tests using the same technology. The lowest value for false positive rate was 0.8%."
Should be pretty easy to tell the difference.
He has assumed that the people getting pillar 2 tests are a completely random sampling of the population.
He writes a lot of purple prose to try and justify this but that is unsupportable.
The second point is if the case rate is driven by the alleged massive false postivie rate we should have seen an enourmas rise in cases for 2-17 year olds in Scotland when there was the massive post school start spike in tests for that age group.
There was no massive spike in the case rate for that age group.
Reality is once again staring the Covid sceptic straight in the eye and the Covid Sceptic does not blink.
If nothing else, trust the ONS survey.
--AS
In reality in recent weeks our number of tests conducted have gone up by about 33% while the number of positive cases has gone up by about 100%. That can't be explained by increased testing. Nor can the ONS survey data.
The problem is tilting at the wrong argument. Nobody is that worried about the base amount of cases, had the number of cases remained flat then that would be fine, it is when the number of cases is going up potentially exponentially that it is worrying. The false positive argument doesn't explain why the positivity rate is increasing - and means the increase in positivity rate is worse not better than we think.
It is not.
It is the increasing positivity rate that is the worry.
The only thing that brought our cases down was a full lockdown.
We're headed there again
As a consequence, the aim of the sceptics is to persuade us to take no lockdown measures - since most of the cases don't exist in their view, it's a useless and wasteful effort.
My overall issue is that in the current circumstances, the burden of proof falls on them to explain why we should take the risk of repeating the experience of the spring, when both cases and deaths did rise dramatically (and the cases then were if anything greatly underestimated). What prevents that from happening again if they're wrong? Are the cases really rising in exact proportion to the increase in testing, which is what we would expect if their hypothesis is correct? Why are hospitalizations and deaths rising in other countries with rising cases rates? Are their tests more accurate? What has changed to prevent the spread of the virus now that normal social mixing has largely resumed?
All this needs to be accounted for before we get blithely told to risk life and limb by people who are in many cases obviously working backwards from their own ideological preferences and wishful thinking.
But wishing it hadn't returned and then clutching at straws to prove one's desired situation just clouds the real issue.
Which is what do we do about it.
Say 100 tests a day, fpr 10%.
Day 1 100 tests - 20 positives = 10 true cases
Day 2 100 tests - 30 positives = 20 true cases.
So the rise is *worse* than the rise in positives makes it look - your rate has risen by 100% from 10 to 20, not 50% 20 to 30.
Comments dominated by discussion of testing stats, false positives, Bayes' Theorem... and some Retired Bloke.
There is something rather sweetly innocent about the site having an off topic button to press on the below the line posts.
--AS
Oh wait, the exact opposite happened, despite all the predictions on here.
So it might be impossible to get a conservative judge even if Trump did win.
Of course almost any judge would be more conservative than RBG was but I suspect some Republicans are hoping for someone fully to their liking.
The messaging should be focused on do this otherwise your loved ones will suffer horribly and might well die...insert videos of people struggling to breath, crying relatives and recovered people who still look like a ghost.
I know someone who this might apply to.
Hospitals failing, unburied dead. I'm not at all sure that stomaching that sort of thing isn't the better choice, but I can see why no politician would allow it, and if I was a politician I'd run away from such a choice too.
The followers are hurting the economy, the non-followers are spreading the disease just as before.
So the only effect really has been to keep the compliant away from spending any money.
If they want to stop the disease then it is those who won't comply who need dealing with.
As I said that is a choice.
Ironically, given the rise of the sceptic tendency, if Cummings did the same thing again today he'd be treated like a hero by them!