RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/oxford-and-imperial/

My dear old statistics teacher used to say that relying on any model, however good but founded on past data, was like driving by looking at the rearview mirror; fine as long as the future looked like the past. As governments struggle with their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the $64 trillion question is “which past does the future look like?”

Science writes how models have become supremely important:

Entire cities and countries have been locked down based on hastily done forecasts that often haven’t been peer reviewed.  … The Netherlands … Prime Minister Mark Rutte rejected “working endlessly to contain the virus” and “shutting down the country completely.” Instead, he opted for “controlled spread” of the virus while making sure the health system isn’t swamped with COVID-19 patients.

Other governments have chosen different models and in place of “controlled spread,” bet on total lockdown.

Just how influential those models are became apparent over the past 2 weeks in the United Kingdom. … a group at Imperial College London [recommended an approach] not unlike the strategy the Netherlands is pursuing. … But on 16 March, the Imperial College group published a dramatically revised model that concluded—based on fresh data from the United Kingdom and Italy—that even a reduced peak would fill twice as many intensive care beds as estimated previously, overwhelming capacity. The only choice, they concluded, was to go all out on control measures.

But as new data becomes available the “fog of war” is slowly lifting and rekindling the debate between the models.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/the_first_casualty_of_war_even_war_against_a_virus_is_truth.html

A few comments about how the leftists’ fanatic hatred for President Trump is erasing truth, facts, and debatable ideas.

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” – John Adams

The media has a fetish that Trump lies. According to the Washington Post (no link, because it’s behind a paywall), Trump has uttered more than 16,000 lies.

Drilling down, though, one discovers that, while Trump has lied (what politician hasn’t?), the WaPo’s humorless and biased habit of taking seriously puffery, exaggeration, and jokes turns everything into a lie. What reasonable people understand is that Trump exaggerates or jokes about things that don’t matter, but sticks with the truth about things that do.

Leftists do something even more serious, which is to classify as a lie anything with which they disagree. In other words, they set themselves up as the arbiters of absolute truth. From this pedestal, they shout down or completely censor statements they dislike – even if the statement is subjective or reasonably debatable – on the ground that the statement is a “lie.”

To support this tactic, leftists have to resort to blatant lies themselves. For example, when Trump expressed hope that chloroquine would help fight coronavirus, leftists immediately transformed the drug from a longtime, reputable standby into something evil. That’s how we got the “Trump made stupid American people eat fish tank cleaner” lie. And the “Trump made stupid Nigerian people eat fish tank cleaner” lie.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/28/blood-serum-coronavirus-cure/

A preliminary study released Friday found that blood serum from people who recovered from coronavirus was effective at treating critically ill patients, raising hope that the technique will curtail a pandemic that has already killed more than 30,000 people around the globe.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at only five patients, and the authors of the report acknowledged the need for more extensive research. But it showed promising results, and health officials have already expressed optimism that blood transfers can be used to fight the new coronavirus strain.

“That’s one of our top priorities,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top expert on infectious disease, said in a March 20 interview regarding clinical trials for convalescent serum.

Fauci expressed confidence in the technique because it has proved effective during other pandemics, including the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918 and the SARS outbreak in 2003.

All five patients in the study, conducted in Shenzhen, China, have dramatically improved since receiving injections of blood plasma from recovered patients.

The patients, who ranged in age from 36 to 65, were all on ventilators suffering from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) when the were provided plasma treatments.