Board 8 > Coronavirus Topic 10

(+) Yeah! (+)

500 million people are predicted to die from COVID 19 by october in a new model

Thats how you get points here Corrik

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Corrik7 posted...

https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535

In Ulti and iattgg's defense... I have no idea what to think about it either. Too political to me. I hear the steroid dexmethasone works tho.

Yeah, the drug has been heavily politicized. In the end, Hydroxychloroquine isn't anything special in regards to off-label drug options and the debate has caused the public to lose sight on work done for better treatments and vaccines.

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https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1288234943479414786

The average American thinks that 9% of the US population has already died of COVID.

This is what media intentionally inciting a panic gets you. No wonder lockdowns are popular!

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SmartMuffin posted...

https://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1288234943479414786

The average American thinks that 9% of the US population has already died of COVID.

This is what media intentionally inciting a panic gets you. No wonder lockdowns are popular!

I don't think those case guesses are far off from actuality. Or at least much closer than confirmed numbers.

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The media is literally reporting the number. People just have no clue how many people actually live in the country, which is why guesses aren't going to be accurate.

EDIT: As one of the comments says, people aren't good at estimating percentages at all. The average person doesn't grasp the difference between 0.3% and 3% on the daily. They just think "3's a low number."

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I don't think those case guesses are far off from actuality.

You think the official estimates of deaths are off by over 200x. Because that's how far off the guess is.



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StealThisSheen posted...

The media is literally reporting the number. People just have no clue how many people actually live in the country, which is why guesses aren't going to be accurate.

The survey asked for a percentage, not a number.

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SmartMuffin posted...

The survey asked for a percentage, not a number.

...Yes, and that's the problem with it. The average person can't convert the number to a percentage on a whim.

It doesn't mean they think there are more deaths than they are. It just means the average person either sucks at math, doesn't know the population, or any other number of obvious factors.

Of course asking people a percentage is going to give stupidly wrong results.

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And keep in mind that's the AVERAGE. It strongly implies half of the people said more than 10%. Yeah, sure, 3 is a low number. If the average response was 3, that'd still be pretty bad... but it's not nearly as bad as 9!

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SmartMuffin posted...

The survey asked for a percentage, not a number.

That's what he said, people don't know how many people live in their country which is why they can't divide properly to get the accurate percent.

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You really believe the average person knows, off the top of their head, the exact amount of COVID deaths that have been reported, but cannot even so much as estimate, within an order of magnitude, the US population? Seriously?

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You ask anybody to name the percentage of the US population that does ANYTHING and the average person is going to be wrong, period.

The average person doesn't know how many people live in the country.
The average person isn't going to sit there and actually do the math even if they have a vague idea of how many people are in the country.
The average person considers anything under 10-20% to be a low number.

EDIT: Hell, I'd say the average person considers anything under 30% to be a low number. Anything under 10-15 to be REALLY low. Because the average person doesn't compute with numbers that large daily.

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StealThisSheen posted...

People just have no clue how many people actually live in the country, which is why guesses aren't going to be accurate.

yeah, i see this as a "people are ignorant" thing. not excluding myself here either - if i had to take a guess at the covid death percentage in my country, i'd be way off too, i'm sure.

of course people like muffin and that guy are going to use this to go "THE PANIC PORNERS WON," though.

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Let me be very clear about this: There is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE that the average person is answering this question by correctly recalling from memory the reported amount of COVID deaths, and then dividing by a population estimate so wildly wrong it produces a fatality rate of 10%.

To get at that figure, even if you rounded current COVID deaths up to 200,000 - that would require you to estimate the US population is ~2 million people. That's not just wrong, it's wrong by over 100x.

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SmartMuffin posted...

You think the official estimates of deaths are off by over 200x. Because that's how far off the guess is.

I said the cases.

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SmartMuffin posted...

You really believe the average person knows, off the top of their head, the exact amount of COVID deaths that have been reported, but cannot even so much as estimate, within an order of magnitude, the US population? Seriously?

I severely doubt people think ~30 million Americans have died. I bet if you ask people how many Americans have died most responses will be well under a million. Anyone following the news to know that COVID is a threat is also getting blasted by death stats.

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yeah, i see this as a "people are ignorant" thing. not excluding myself here either - if i had to take a guess at the covid death percentage in my country, i'd be way off too, i'm sure.

of course people like muffin and that guy are going to use this to go "THE PANIC PORNERS WON," though.

I don't expect everyone to get the answer right. But if everyone is getting it wrong in the same direction, as well as getting it wrong by over 200x, then that does, in fact, say something about what the public has been led to believe, in comparison to reality.

To flip the topic, If they did a survey and asked "what percentage of welfare goes to black people" and the average response was "99%" would you just shrug that off and say "well people just don't understand numbers very well", or would you take it as a sign of ignorance/racism/etc?

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I don't think the death % was of total population but of total cases.

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Muffin, what you're literally arguing is that if the pollsters went to people that answered the average, 9%, and said "So you think 30 million people have died?" they'd say "YUP, I SURE DO."

No. The average person is going to go "Oh, wait, no."

People. Suck. At. Percentages.

People can't figure out fucking sales tax on a $10.00 purchase. You think they can figure this out?

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still don't get why muffin is taking the reported number of covid deaths as gospel when he's admitted on several occasions that we have no way of knowing if these numbers are accurate, btw

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

still don't get why muffin is taking the reported number of covid deaths as gospel when he's admitted on several occasions that we have no way of knowing if these numbers are accurate, btw

Deaths are likely a lot closer to accurate than the cases because of well there is a dead body. Where as in cases, people may not go to the hospital or ever get symptoms enough to know they have it.

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You are surprised people are morons when you're in a country that willingly elected Donald Trump president.

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so like if it's all "about control" or "about causing panic"

what do you guys believe is the end game here

legitimately curious

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SmartMuffin posted...

I don't expect everyone to get the answer right. But if everyone is getting it wrong in the same direction, as well as getting it wrong by over 200x, then that does, in fact, say something about what the public has been led to believe, in comparison to reality.

If they take an arithmetic mean that's going to bias it heavily towards an overestimate. If 90% of people say that 0 people have died (the most wrong they can possibly be on the low end) and 10% say that 5 million have died, you still get an average guess of 500k deaths.

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It's not even really about being a moron. It's about percentages just being hard to conceptualize unless you constantly deal with huge numbers on a regular basis.

To the average person, 10% is really, really low, because 10% of 10 people is 1 person. 10% of 100 people is 10 people, and so on.

People aren't sitting there with scratch paper answering these things as if it's a test. They're just picking a percentage that, to them, is really low, because they often don't deal with percentages under 1%.

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To the average person, 10% is really, really low, because 10% of 10 people is 1 person. 10% of 100 people is 10 people, and so on.

I completely agree with everything except the bold.

People are, in fact, just picking a percentage. And I think on average, they do, in fact, appreciate that 10% = "1 out of every 10 people." And my point is that it's absolutely fucking insane to believe that one out of every 10 people in the US have died from COVID. If people just thought about their own circle of friends, it would basically mean that everyone should personally know 10 to 20 people who have died from it...

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

still don't get why muffin is taking the reported number of covid deaths as gospel when he's admitted on several occasions that we have no way of knowing if these numbers are accurate, btw

I don't think they are wrong by a factor of 200x.

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SmartMuffin posted...

I completely agree with everything except the bold.

People are, in fact, just picking a percentage. And I think on average, they do, in fact, appreciate that 10% = "1 out of every 10 people." And my point is that it's absolutely fucking insane to believe that one out of every 10 people in the US have died from COVID. If people just thought about their own circle of friends, it would basically mean that everyone should personally know 10 to 20 people who have died from it...

The average person is not going to put that much thought into it. Again, it's a poll question, not a math test.

They're going to pick a low number, such as 10%, and not give it any more thought. They're not going to reason out their answer and discover why it doesn't make sense.

Besides, like LotM said, it doesn't take many people to be wrong, the average is going to skew high, anyway.

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not that it makes the results way better, but id sooner buy that a bunch of people responding to that poll thought they were being asked what percentage of the people who got the virus in their country died rather than what percentage of their countrys whole population because thats a really weird thing to ask

off the top of my head I have no idea what percentage of the country has died from covid because thats not a number anyone ever talks about

if I thought about it Id come up with whatever 200,000 / 300 million is and then Id have to think about what that answer is a bit. did these people have calculators?

its just such a weird measurement to ask for
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Why would they pick a "low number such as 10%" and not a low number such as 5%? Or 1%?

If you asked them what percentage of people are billionaires, do you suppose the average answer would also be 10%?

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not that it makes the results way better, but id sooner buy that a bunch of people responding to that poll thought they were being asked what percentage of the people who got the virus in their country died rather than what percentage of their countrys whole population because thats a really weird thing to ask

OK but they'd still be wildly wrong.

if I thought about it Id come up with whatever 200,000 / 300 million is and then Id have to think about what that answer is a bit. did these people have calculators?

its just such a weird measurement to ask for

No, the most logical way to do it would be to think to yourself "How many out of 100 do I suppose have died from this?" To think in terms of percentages itself, not to try and estimate the numerator and denominator and calculate the fraction..

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SmartMuffin posted...

If you asked them what percentage of people are billionaires, do you suppose the average answer would also be 10%?

there's 630 billionaires in the US and about 151000 people who died from covid. this comparison is dumb.

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SmartMuffin posted...

Why would they pick a "low number such as 10%" and not a low number such as 5%? Or 1%?

If you asked them what percentage of people are billionaires, do you suppose the average answer would also be 10%?

Because those types of percentages aren't dealt with commonly. People are used to dealing with much smaller numbers. You never get 1% or 5% of 10 people, for instance. You wouldn't get 1% of anything less than 100. So while it may make sense if you take the time to think about it, most people don't think in those situations. People are used to dealing with 10%, 25%, 50%, and so on. Not 1%, 0.3%, etc.

Like said, people struggle to figure out sales tax. People just don't work with percentages often that's not something simple like 25% or 50%.

EDIT: That's why sales always use those nice, easy to comprehend amounts. You never see "17% off Pepsi products this week!"

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No, the most logical way to do it would be to think to yourself "How many out of 100 do I suppose have died from this?" To think in terms of percentages itself, not to try and estimate the numerator and denominator and calculate the fraction..

you may be right that thats the most logical way, but the thing I posted was my first instinct. Like I said, percentage of the country that has died isnt a number Ive ever heard discussed. Number of deaths and population of the U.S. are numbers I have at least some idea about, so my instinct is to use the information I sort of know rather than just pull a 1/100 guess out of my ass.
without checking, I dont think the actual answer is even a full percent, but I dont have any idea what decimal percentage it would be without doing a bit of math.

if even I, a know paragon of intelligence, cant be expected to answer the question in the most logical manner, what hope is there for these thousand randos?
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You all argue about the most hilarious shit

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MoogleKupo141 posted...

without checking, I dont think the actual answer is even a full percent, but I dont have any idea what decimal percentage it would be without doing a bit of math.

it's about 0.04%.

the fact that you think it could be 0.4% makes you a PANIC PORNER.

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Like said, people struggle to figure out sales tax

Do they get it wrong by a factor of 200x?

Like if someone is buying something that costs $10, and you ask them to guess what the sales tax will be, do they guess that it will be $500?

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This is a dumb argument.

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SmartMuffin posted...

Do they get it wrong by a factor of 200x?

Like if someone is buying something that costs $10, and you ask them to guess what the sales tax will be, do they guess that it will be $500?

...You do realize that you just proved my point that people suck at percentages, right?

Based on your example, for 200x the sales tax on $10 to be $500, it'd have to be $2.50.

That'd be 25%.

You just estimated sales tax at 25%.

Which is more than double what it is anywhere in the country, and almost 4x the average. And that's of combined state/local tax averages.

EDIT: And I know you're going to "But 4x isn't 200x!" to try to save face, but you were off by that much on ten dollars, compared to people taking two seconds to guess a percentage based on millions.

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aside from what SEP said, muffin, you realize that if you want to make this point, you have to come up with an example that slightly resembles the "what's the percentage of covid deaths" question, right? "sales tax on something that costs $10"? wut? this has literally nothing to do with what we're talking about.

you can keep coming up with "if people had to guess the percentage of trump family members in the US, would they guess 10%? huh? HUH?" examples until you're blue in the face, but that doesn't make you any more right.

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Corrik7 posted...

This is a dumb argument.

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SmartMuffin is an energy vampire and he fed well yesterday

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neonreaper posted...

SmartMuffin is an energy vampire and he fed well yesterday

Yeah i dont fault him at all. It would be like getting mad at my dog for eating his own puke. Its just what he does. Shame on the others though. Itd be like if my mom got down on the floor and started lapping it up too

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iiaattgg posted...

Yeah i dont fault him at all. It would be like getting mad at my dog for eating his own puke. Its just what he does. Shame on the others though. Itd be like if my mom got down on the floor and started lapping it up too

Ugh, thanks for that image...

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If you haven't watched What We Do In The Shadows, the movie and TV series are worth your time.

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Seanchan posted...

Ugh, thanks for that image...

It's from the bible. Sess is plagiarizing God.

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