"All of the COVID-19 cases might be false positives!" Well, unlikely, but perhaps. It was just as reasonable to say that NONE of the cases were false positives, or that there were many more cases than we could observe
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"There are fewer COVID-19 deaths than we've recorded" Again, possible. Unlikely, but possible. But people who say this rarely acknowledge that it is just as - if not more - likely that there have been MORE deaths than recorded
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"Lockdowns may be worse than the disease!" Possibly true. Equally, it's entirely possible that lockdowns save lives, and yet it's rarely framed that way in the discussions about uncertainty I wonder why
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There are many uncertainties. But if someone only ever expresses uncertainty in a single direction, it's hard to believe that they are simply concerned about what we don't know
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This type of argument is common in Climate change discussion, where uncertainty is only ever invoked to claim the risks from climate change are over estimated, not underestimated. There are huge parallels between the types of arguments used by covid and climate contrarians ...
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... who are often the same people. Well, at least, they are the same twitter accounts
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What I've also noticed is that everyone likes to point out the existence of uncertainty but never the chances. Things like, "scientists aren't completely sure of X" missing the fact that scientists are rarely sure about anything. (Because certainty is rare)
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Amen to that
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And people seem quite relaxed about unquantifiable risks. Prolonged lockdowns have effects you can plan for and mitigate. But if you let an unknown, serious infection run through a population the range of possible outcomes is huge, w/ potential for disastrous decades-long issues.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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“We could be like Sweden!” sure, and we could also be like Brazil.
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