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[Reelya]

Look, 45% of people in the US admit they believe in ghosts, and they're all dumb as hell. 32% here is nothing.

Wait, where are you from?

That's pretty normal for America. Googling it: 54% of Republicans believe in demons.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2019/10/21/paranormal-beliefs-ghosts-demons-poll

EDIT: also note that 14% of Republicans believe in vampires, whereas only 8% of Democrats do. Some of those are probably joking, but why would Republicans of all people be more likely to joke about believing in vampires?

1/7 Republicans (and probably a higher % of Trump supporters) believe or suspect literal vampires are lurking amongst us. This is why they are so agitated all the time and willing to overthrow democracy to put their people in charge. They actually believe there's literal Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel stuff happening behind the scenes. When you actually believe the other side is just a front for the literal monsters from the Doom games, you're willing to cut some corners on fair debating.

[mko]

8% may be mostly Lizardman constant.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/

(...)

Public Policy Polling’s recent poll on conspiracy theories mostly showed up on my Facebook feed as “Four percent of Americans believe lizardmen are running the Earth”.

(of note, an additional 7% of Americans are “not sure” whether lizardmen are running the Earth or not.)

Imagine the situation. You’re at home, eating dinner. You get a call from someone who says “Hello, this is Public Policy Polling. Would you mind answering some questions for us?” You say “Sure”. An extremely dignified sounding voice says – and this is the exact wording of the question – “Do you believe that shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our society, or not?” Then it urges you to press 1 if yes, press 2 if no, press 3 if not sure.

So first we get the people who think “Wait, was 1 the one for if I did believe in lizardmen, or if I didn’t? I’ll just press 1 and move on to the next question.”

Then we get the people who are like “I never heard it before, but if this nice pollster thinks it’s true, I might as well go along with them.”

Then we get the people who are all “F#&k you, polling company, I don’t want people calling me when I’m at dinner. You screw with me, I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to tell you I believe lizard people are running the planet.”

And then we get the people who put “Martian” as their nationality in psychology experiments. Because some men just want to watch the world burn.

Do these three groups total 4% of the US population? Seems plausible.

I really wish polls like these would include a control question, something utterly implausible even by lizard-people standards, something like “Do you believe Barack Obama is a hippopotamus?” Whatever percent of people answer yes to the hippo question get subtracted out from the other questions.

(...)

[Dunamisdeos]

About the vampires. I know why.

https://youtu.be/KGAAhzreGWw?t=91

[Trekkin]

8% may be mostly Lizardman constant.

The rest could easily be the clickbait-y conflation of those who merely think something is probable and those who take it as definitely true, particularly when combined with the usual structure of these questions. Often they are presented with a spectrum in which the middle value is "don't know/no opinion", and people don't like to admit ignorance or apathy so they'll come up with an opinion on the spot just to have one, and they'll rationalize that it's more likely something real inspired the myths than that they were simply invented out of whole cloth. These people aren't walking around with stakes and holy water, but they're lumped in with the smaller fraction that are.

You can get a similar thing with aliens. If you ask people if aliens "probably or definitely" exist, a lot of them will express some opinion that, given life has evolved at one place in the universe, it is probable that it could elsewhere, and given the size of the universe it's more likely than not we haven't seen it yet, so sure, some form of alien life "probably" exists somewhere. That's not necessarily entirely scientific, but it is at least a reasonable argument. A few lunatics will enthusiastically relate how they were abducted and probed or whatever. What gets reported, though, is that X% of Americans think aliens are probably or definitely real and oh hey listen to these kooks with their abduction stories, with the clear implication that everyone in that X% is like that. Demons and angels are something of a special case, given Christianity, but a distinction needs to be drawn between the people who believe in them in a nonspecific, theoretical way and the ones who actively live their lives differently than they otherwise would in an attempt to avoid their influence.

When you add in performant responses and simple nihilism, it becomes very straightforward to draw out a top-line result that makes people sound stupid -- and stupid people often need to believe everyone else is dumb enough to make them look smart by comparison, so these stories get passed around widely because it lets people say that they may have no education or credentials or accomplishments but at least they don't believe in fairy tales and monsters.

[Iduno]

Look, 45% of people in the US admit they believe in ghosts, and they're all dumb as hell. 32% here is nothing.

Wait, where are you from?

When a mommy and a daddy are very drunk...

8% may be mostly Lizardman constant.

Upwards of 20% when the bars were still open.

[Max™]

Note: Trump is not a man, that is a huge bitchbaby, or pile of orange turds, goddammit.

Source: I'm sick of "man" being conflated with "rude arrogant self-serving asshole rapists" all the time.

In other news, we've been over 2k deaths per day in the US every time I've checked for the last couple of weeks... so, TIME TO OPEN BACK UP RIGHT?

[hector13]

Only if you’re a Republican.

I’m interested to see in a few weeks/months time how they blame the Dems for everyone suddenly being sick for some reason.

[Max™]

WHO COULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING?

[Bralbaard]

The virus has been found in animals at two mink farms in the Netherlands. This is likely the first time it had been found in livestock. The farms have only been quarantined, but I expect the animals may have to be destroyed

I, for one will not shed a tear if mink farming will not survive the crisis.

[McTraveller]

So... can anyone in medicine tell me at what point a swab test result switches from "you have this contagion on you" to "you are infected with the contagion?"

I mean, it's almost certain that virus particles for the cold, flu, whatever are quite very often present in, say, the nasal cavity of a given person.  So if a test is designed to detect viral DNA/RNA, what separates out "there was at least N virus particles there" to "definitely an infection"?

Is this a hard-and-fast rule, or is it a subjective threshold?

I know that if you have symptoms and detect presence, then it's likely to be a true infection.  But is just presence enough a valid criterion?

[Trekkin]

I mean, it's almost certain that virus particles for the cold, flu, whatever are quite very often present in, say, the nasal cavity of a given person.  So if a test is designed to detect viral DNA/RNA, what separates out "there was at least N virus particles there" to "definitely an infection"?

I'm in science rather than medicine, but here:

That depends on what is called the viral titer, which is more or less equivalent to the concentration of viral particles in a given sample. (There are some subtleties regarding VLPs, if you're wondering why I'm hedging.) The titer of a sample from an infected person will be many orders of magnitude higher than one that has simply come into contact with some viruses out in the world, and any test that incorporates a qrtPCR component (which is most of the expensive ones that are fast to create) works by copying any viral DNA that's there repeatedly and sticking a fluorescent probe to it. Since we know how many rounds of copying we put the sample through and the detection limit of the machine, we can watch to see when the signal picks up and work back to figure out the starting concentration of viral DNA. This is also part of how other tests like Western blot equivalents (the kind with colored stripes) are calibrated. We know the sensitivity of the probe in the stripe, so we can figure out how much to add to separate signal from noise where it won't change color from a few virions.

All that said, the titer of a given virus does vary with species and individual susceptibility, but as error rates go this is a relatively minor component.

[McTraveller]

Ah ok - so when they say the PCR tests are positive, it's not just that they detected the RNA signature but also that the titer was a certain concentration...  that makes more sense.

Thanks!

[ChairmanPoo]

In Spain the goverment loosened quarantine rules to allow children to go out for an hour every day, alone and supervised. All too predictably, children are gathering to play on groups and are being let out all the time. Parents are mingling too.

I expect another disaster in 5-10 days

[Iduno]

Spoiler: US-centric stuff (click to show/hide)

In other news, we've been over 2k deaths per day in the US every time I've checked for the last couple of weeks... so, TIME TO OPEN BACK UP RIGHT?

For context, the September 11 attacks killed just under 3,000 people total. Politicians on both sides of the aisle refusing to take the problem seriously inflicted the equivalent of 2/3 of a terrorist attack, per day, for over a month, and now they want to do more. And that's using the numbers that we know about, with almost no testing (it is assumed that many other deaths are a result, but can't be proven, and it's entirely possible we'll keep finding people who have been dead for a while).

Ah ok - so when they say the PCR tests are positive, it's not just that they detected the RNA signature but also that the titer was a certain concentration...  that makes more sense.

Thanks!

More specifically, do you have a small amount from an exposure, or an increased amount because the virus has been replicating inside you?

In Spain the goverment loosened quarantine rules to allow children to go out for an hour every day, alone and supervised. All too predictably, children are gathering to play on groups and are being let out all the time. Parents are mingling too.

I expect another disaster in 5-10 days

We weren't expecting a second peak until fall. I'm guessing we'll end up with many peaks, and many thousands of unnecessary deaths. Even the survivors aren't exactly happy about it (I had a coworker tell me he spent a lot of time wishing it would kill him just so it was over). It's not something you want to catch, so maybe try being careful?

[ChairmanPoo]

We weren't expecting a second peak until fall. I'm guessing we'll end up with many peaks, and many thousands of unnecessary deaths. Even the survivors aren't exactly happy about it (I had a coworker tell me he spent a lot of time wishing it would kill him just so it was over). It's not something you want to catch, so maybe try being careful?

Yeah you'd expect people to realize that but you see in Spain we have a lot of very smart people who realized that if they're the only ones to flaunt the rules, they'll be OK, because they can rely on us morons staying at home to flatten the curve.

(/s in case it wasn't obvious)