Rebane's Ruminations

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Category: Critical Thinking & Numeracy

  • Unsettling ‘Settled Science’

    [This commentary was also published here in the 3jun20 edition of The Union.] George Rebane None are so certain about science as those outside looking in. Today, the SARS-CoV-2 (or Covid-19 or simply C19) pandemic ‘science’ in the public square rapidly became a mish-mash of unreliable reports, contending medical views, and ideologically tailored fake news. …

  • Image of ignorance and/or incompetence (updated 14may20)

    George Rebane To again illustrate what we have been talking about the government’s basis for C19 policy decisions, the above graph and its annotation (from the 13may20 SacBee here) show raw test positive (TP) ratios over time, giving no hint of either the test’s reliability parameters, the tested sample (size and provenance), or knowledge that…

  • Testing – One mo’ tahme (updated 11may20)

    George Rebane The discussions about the procedures, reliability, timeliness, types, … of testing in the media, and even in these pages, can bring a smile to the lips of those with a modicum facility with numbers.  People still believe that testing for active infections at current levels (about 5%) of C19 prevalence is the secret…

  • Scattershots – 10may20 (updated 14may20)

    George Rebane Medicos’ use of ventilators for C19 patients is changing.  It seems that the virus has exposed another major area of ignorance for us about the workings of the human body.  Some patients exhibit blood oxygen levels that were previously symptomatic of imminent organ failure and death, and their standard of care would call…

  • Hunker Down Diary – 9may20

    George Rebane Today is HD63 in the Rebane household, and we are beginning to see little stirrings of sanity across California with even timid Nevada County showing signs of developing a C19 resistant backbone.  Now we are starting to see appeals from various late comers for letter writing campaigns to our electeds to exhort them…

  • Local liberals lambast loosening lockdowns (updated)

    George Rebane As we and others across the country have pointed out, phasing out the C19 lockdowns has become the latest political chasm in the Great Divide.  You know that our country is now fundamentally transformed when it can no longer come together for a unified response to a national emergency.  It’s not a reach…

  • Where is the Covid Deaths Bump?

    George Rebane For the past week I’ve been poring over various data from different sources on Covid-19 deaths and death rates.  It’s been a frustrating enterprise due to definitions ranging from vague to insane, and numbers that just don’t tie.  The quest is important though, because we have been deluged for the past couple of…

  • The Real Value of Unreliable Tests and Testing

    George Rebane Every social issue draws relevance ONLY through its numbers, which if you don’t understand, then you cannot participate in a reasoned discussion about the issue. Today we are concerned with two types of C19 tests and testing policies.  Tests fall into the ‘detect presence of infection’ variety, and the ‘detect presence of immunity’…

  • Ruminations – 3may20 (updated 5may20)

    George Rebane You can indeed have your own opinions AND your own facts – America proves it daily. Know the denominator!!  The innumerates of the land are constantly bombarded with naked numerators about this stat and that stat.  And none of them make a peep that they know about what they are being told.  That…

  • Scattershots – 25apr20 (updated 27apr20)

    George Rebane The C19 timeline again shows that the WSJ does not walk on journalistic water.  In its 29jan20 edition the newspaper published a whopping load of bullcrap, reporting that “Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told President Trump the coronavirus epidemic was under control.” Turns out he said no such thing, nor did…

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