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COVID-19 (Aka China Virus)


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“Again...you don't need to interview every single American to build statistical models that represent the population.”
 
Of course polls are scientific.   Just ask President  Hillary.  Or ask 538 what happened to the 2020 Blue Wave in the congressional election.


Not all polls are scientific/rigorous or representative of the population at large. But there are many statistical and experiment design techniques to increase how well a poll represents the population. And they are based on probabilities, and reality can fall at the extremes of those fancy bell curves.

Election polls build a model for the election results itself. But the model is only as good as the data put into it (garbage in, garbage out), and you have to keep in mind rule #1 of modeling: all models are wrong, but some are useful. The trick is making sure the poll is useful. Many exit polls really are just entertainment, they aren't rigorous polls.

The other thing that gets people in trouble is using a descriptive model to do predictions-they are designed differently, and models tend to break down quickly when you extrapolate if they weren't designed to do that.

And finally, yes, in a sense you're right: the only way to find the truth regarding an issue in a population is to ask every person, and no statistical model is the "truth". That's a fact. And it's the underlying principle behind a direct democracy. But it's very hard to do that in a realistic or timely manner, and an exact truth may not be needed when an approximate truth is acceptable or sufficient.

But even our government is not set up like that-it's too difficult to scale up direct votes on a national level. So we select representatives to do most of our voting for us. Our representatives are nothing but a small sample of our population, selected in a particular way (geographical representation), and in theory they represent the opinions of the population at large. So a democratic republic attempts to model the "will of the people" through electing a democratically selected sample of the population to decide issues.

That's why things like gerrymandering are so dangerous, it games the model to produce a biased outcome.

It's also why political parties are so dangerous, as the representatives may decide (and increasingly seem to) represent their party's interests instead of their constituency (which is defined geographically, not politically).

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As I recall...the US Army has had an office just for spotting pathogens like this Covid virus among others...warning the big system and starting response and prevention.  Gotta wonder if they spotted this bug at the start and what the response was.

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There is a difference in understanding why people are declining opposed to running a statistical model. It's like running a model as to why pilots keep leaving opposed to actually talking to the pilots themselves as they 7 day opt. 


You have to do both.

AF needs to do exit interviews of a pilots leaving (all would be great), and take that information to build a model. And then continue to do exit interviews to assess the model and correct it if needed.

Or even better, survey why pilots leave AND why they stay (maybe every year when you your flight records review, or every other year, or at "critical" points in your career)

You need a model, because it's difficult to sort through reams of responses to figure out what's wrong. And even if you can extract data from it, it's frigidly to determine what factors are correlations versus causal. And without a model, it gets near impossible to see how two or more factors interact to create new correlations or causal interacting factors.

Problem is that the AF isn't really doing the surveys, so their model may not be accurate. Or maybe it is reasonably accurate, but they don't take action for one reason or another (limited budget, statutory requirements, or don't care). Maybe the retention model shows that given the limits on the AF, they can't fix pilot retention and can only slow the bleeding, and the only viable solution is to increase pilot production and accept the situation for the next 10 years.
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WHO will end research into 'extremely unlikely' theory that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan lab

"The investigators have visited hospitals, research facilities and the seafood market where the first outbreak was identified, although their contacts in Wuhan are limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts."

I feel so much better...

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WHO will end research into 'extremely unlikely' theory that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan lab
"The investigators have visited hospitals, research facilities and the seafood market where the first outbreak was identified, although their contacts in Wuhan are limited to visits organized by their Chinese hosts."
I feel so much better...

The organization that did all it could to carry China’s water at the beginning of this wants to assure us, it couldn’t possibly be anything from a Chinese lab... not at all... stop looking there.

Look I don’t really buy the conspiracy theory or anything, but at this point anything the WHO publishes on “where it came from” is at best suspect.


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Speaking of vaccines...

I’d advise anybody getting the series to deliberately plan the backside of those shots to not be busy.

1st shot didn’t do much, just a little muscle stiffness in my arm/neck which meant a poor nights sleep and a touch of hangover...

2nd shot put me solidly on my ass 6 hours after getting it, basically it’s the 24-36 hour flu without the nausea/vomiting.

Needless to say if you told your wife you were gonna paint the bathroom that weekend or something, think about maybe putting something else on the schedule.


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2 minutes ago, Lawman said:

Speaking of vaccines...

I’d advise anybody getting the series to deliberately plan the backside of those shots to not be busy.

1st shot didn’t do much, just a little muscle stiffness in my arm/neck which meant a poor nights sleep and a touch of hangover...

2nd shot put me solidly on my ass 6 hours after getting it, basically it’s the 24-36 hour flu without the nausea/vomiting.

Needless to say if you told your wife you were gonna paint the bathroom that weekend or something, think about maybe putting something else on the schedule.


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Reports from several coworkers that it is also with the nausea/vomiting which honestly really has me panicked. 

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Just got the first shot and that night I slept for a solid 12 hours.  Next day I had some body aches, 800mg motrin solved that.  A squadron mate was down for the count for a day or two.  Hoping shot two doesn't take me down long since I'll be in the midst of airline training.  

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Speaking of vaccines...

I’d advise anybody getting the series to deliberately plan the backside of those shots to not be busy.

1st shot didn’t do much, just a little muscle stiffness in my arm/neck which meant a poor nights sleep and a touch of hangover...

2nd shot put me solidly on my ass 6 hours after getting it, basically it’s the 24-36 hour flu without the nausea/vomiting.

Needless to say if you told your wife you were gonna paint the bathroom that weekend or something, think about maybe putting something else on the schedule.


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This is my experience. 2nd shot yesterday morning. Felt like shit last night thru lunch today. Just a little tired now.


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1st shot (moderana) was absolutely nothing.  Second shot in a little short of 24 hours later I was on my ass with high grade fever, then chills, and constant headache for about 8 hours.  All symptoms ceased after 8 hours and I was back to normal.  I basically slept the entire day.  We are scheduling at work based on that timeline.  48 hour DNIF.  

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1 hour ago, uhhello said:

1st shot (moderana) was absolutely nothing.  Second shot in a little short of 24 hours later I was on my ass with high grade fever, then chills, and constant headache for about 8 hours.  All symptoms ceased after 8 hours and I was back to normal.  I basically slept the entire day.  We are scheduling at work based on that timeline.  48 hour DNIF.  

Are your MDGs telling you it's a 48 hour DNIF?  Mine is. No factor because a)non-flying job and b)my MTF ran out of vaccines.

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6 hours ago, MyCS said:

Civilian: I need you to really collect vaccine numbers weekly for the Groups in the wing. CC feels like people are being skipped.

Me: I guess you both don't read the SITREP. We don't have any vaccine and the medical office for scheduling is overwhelmed for this huge joint base. Giving you and the boss numbers isn't going to resolve a supply and scheduling issue. This is prevalent throughout the US right now. 

People aren't purposely skipping over others. Y'all acting like you're 75+ years old or something. 

 

1.) Commanders should not be asking people whether they got the vaccine or not. As long as it's on an emergency authorization thats health privledged information between a person and their provider. 

2.) People are definitely skipping at my OCONUS base, but that probably has more to do with talks on vaccine passports accelerating and people in a hurry to travel this summer. EUCOM, I think, has had the most oppressive lockdown restrictions of those I've I informally surveyed. People are pretty pent up here and want to get out. If the vaccine is the ticket, than so be it. 

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5 hours ago, Buddy Spike said:

I got the second dose of the vaccine yesterday (about 17 hours ago).  First dose I had a mild fever the next morning and joint pain the day of.  So far on the second dose, zero side effects.  Pfizer version.

I got the second Pfizer dose Thursday. Yesterday I was achy but it was nothing that some Motrin didn't ease.

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Using COVID-19 as an opportunity for political retribution, our wonderful new White House administration had discussions (which they are trying to walk back), about imposing travel restrictions on those traveling from Florida.  The Fla governor has justifiably pushed back using actual infection ratesThe shocking thing is Florida's infection rate, even with the spike, it not in the top 20 of U.S. states.  Oddly, California has a higher rate than Florida but the White House doesn't see a need for restrictions on them.  I don't really like DeSantis but he had a great line - “And if you think about it, restricting the right of Americans to travel freely throughout our country while allowing illegal aliens to pour across the southern border unmolested would be a ridiculous, but very damaging farce.”

‘Absurd': DeSantis Pushes Back on Possible Florida Travel Restrictions by Biden Administration

These is some good news this morning as nationwide infection rates have dropped dramatically (Coronavirus infections are plummeting) in the past 30 days.

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On 2/13/2021 at 3:14 AM, FLEA said:

1.) Commanders should not be asking people whether they got the vaccine or not. As long as it's on an emergency authorization thats health privledged information between a person and their provider. . 

At some point you have to collect numbers and names to communicate the demand signal and schedule shots.  My motley crew (mil, civ, ktr) is tracking to a high percentage vaccinated, and we protect privacy of responses (and non-responses).

If you worked at a base where 100% of the population had MDG PCMs, then it could be provider-to-person and that would be preferred.

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3 minutes ago, gimmeaplane said:

At some point you have to collect numbers and names to communicate the demand signal and schedule shots.  My motley crew (mil, civ, ktr) is tracking to a high percentage vaccinated, and we protect privacy of responses (and non-responses).

If you worked at a base where 100% of the population had MDG PCMs, then it could be provider-to-person and that would be preferred.

Or the MDG could do that since it's their job. I see what you're getting at and I work in mixed company as well. But this was not a problem for us. Not sure why your MDG is pushing back. 

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6 minutes ago, FLEA said:

Or the MDG could do that since it's their job. I see what you're getting at and I work in mixed company as well. But this was not a problem for us. Not sure why your MDG is pushing back. 

Like, our MDG asked us to do this to. Then we flat out told them no, it's health privledged information so long as the shot isn't a deployment requirement, to which they agreed. Then they complained, then they staffed a staff sgt to sit a desk and take names and keep all of that shit in house. But never should convenience of the command take priority over the ethics or rights of our personnel. 

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