NYRA: Saratoga Race Course’s Summer Season Will Likely Occur Without Fans

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I actually think Nate Silver is exactly the problem.

We should be listening to epidemiologists. Academics who study these things. Not Nate Silver.

Nate Silver thinks his expertise in statistics, which is real, makes him an expert in everything, including politics. sports, and now epidemiology. It doesn't. He's gotten a ton of stuff wrong and jumped to a lot of conclusions since the start of the pandemic. He can't stand the idea that there's another group of people (epidemiologists) who understand the subject better than he does. It's the same way he has contempt for all these people who worked in politics before he did.

Nate Silver is not making any policy recommendations on the virus.

He's looking at data and explaining it to people like us.

For example, we have politically motivated blue checkmark idiots in the mainstream media screaming every time there's an uptick in cases, but they are not taking testing into account. If you tested 200k a day last week and 300k a day this week, you are going to get extra positive tests this week simply because of more tests and not necessarily because the number of actual positives is growing.

For example, hospitals etc... do less reporting on weekends. So the weekend numbers tend to decline and then they spike back up during the week. So if you want to understand what happening it's useful to compare the numbers to the same day last week instead of just the previous day or 3 day moving average.

For example, the trend is NY is very different than the national trend excluding NY. So just looking at the national trend including NY is misleading. So he shows both from time to time.

That's the kind of stuff the media doesn't understand that he's explaining.

[Poindexter]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I actually think Nate Silver is exactly the problem.

We should be listening to epidemiologists. Academics who study these things. Not Nate Silver.

Nate Silver thinks his expertise in statistics, which is real, makes him an expert in everything, including politics. sports, and now epidemiology. It doesn't. He's gotten a ton of stuff wrong and jumped to a lot of conclusions since the start of the pandemic. He can't stand the idea that there's another group of people (epidemiologists) who understand the subject better than he does. It's the same way he has contempt for all these people who worked in politics before he did.

You put a lot of faith in "experts". More importantly why do you and unfortunately the decision makers put such a emphasis the death count of covid-19 and have so little concern about all the negative consequences shutting down the economy has (just one is a jump of like 200 million people dying of world hunger). Is there a point that these experts and you admit that hey if we open up more people will die, but for the greater good of our economy and the world economy and the survival of our nation that is the sacrifice we have to make. Or is this simply a never ending marathon to zero covid-19 deaths(because that is supposedly the right thing to do). Because in California, I do feel like it is a never ending marathon.

[Magician]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

And if you aren't an epidemiologist, please don't go off on "herd immunity". We literally have no idea how well "herd immunity" is going to work here, or how much damage is going to be done to people's lungs achieving it.

half of your posts are on things you are not qualified to be posting about. you don't need to be an epidemiologist to understand herd immunity anyway. do you work for the government, live off the government, or are you making more money on unemployment than you make working? which is it? you clearly are not a small business owner.


those of us that own small businesses understand that trainers are small businesses. many owners own small businesses. if a horse has to go to the track in the morning (they do) there is no increase in risk to anyone if they are allowed to run in the afternoon. either you shut down the track altogether and send the horses to the farm, or you allow racing. there is no other way to do this unless you are an irrational government idiot making policy without using reason.

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by Magician

half of your posts are on things you are not qualified to be posting about. you don't need to be an epidemiologist to understand herd immunity anyway. do you work for the government, live off the government, or are you making more money on unemployment than you make working? which is it? you clearly are not a small business owner.


those of us that own small businesses understand that trainers are small businesses. many owners own small businesses. if a horse has to go to the track in the morning (they do) there is no increase in risk to anyone if they are allowed to run in the afternoon. either you shut down the track altogether and send the horses to the farm, or you allow racing. there is no other way to do this unless you are an irrational government idiot making policy without using reason.

I trust small business owners to know small business, but they have no idea if they are risking spreading the virus.

This idea that you shouldn't trust experts is bats. It would be like saying that some random person on the rail at the track has as much knowledge as Andy Beyer.

Only in America does everyone think they know as much as experts.

[Magician]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I actually think Nate Silver is exactly the problem.

We should be listening to epidemiologists. Academics who study these things. Not Nate Silver.

listen to epidemiologists and academics? isn't the world health organization just a bunch of epidemiologists and academics. they are the problem. and as for all the united states academics and epidemiologists, why weren't they prepared? they have been warned for decades about a pandemic like this. they did nothing but take money from china for their academic departments and stay quiet about all the disgusting wet markets in china and the lack of safety protocols at wuhan. our academics and scientists were asleep at the wheel. they receive enormous amounts of government funding every year and they obviously did not spend it wisely. total failure by these people. they obviously have no accountability, unlike the rest of us who pay their salaries.

[PaceAdvantage]

The experts offered us nothing except "go hide in your basement."

That's it.

2020

Centuries of technological advancements...greatest tech boom in history...and all science can do is tell us to run and hide.

Sure, take 18 months to come up with a vaccine that may or may not work (to date, there has NEVER been a vaccine EVER CREATED for ANY coronavirus...which is interesting in and of itself)

We'll wait...no problem....

[Jeff P]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

I actually think Nate Silver is exactly the problem.

We should be listening to epidemiologists. Academics who study these things. Not Nate Silver.

Nate Silver thinks his expertise in statistics, which is real, makes him an expert in everything, including politics. sports, and now epidemiology. It doesn't. He's gotten a ton of stuff wrong and jumped to a lot of conclusions since the start of the pandemic. He can't stand the idea that there's another group of people (epidemiologists) who understand the subject better than he does. It's the same way he has contempt for all these people who worked in politics before he did.

No. This is where you are wrong.

Science extends across many fields.

Being an epidemiologist (one field of science) doesn't give one a license to practice bad data science (a different field of science.)

Conversely, one doesn't have to be an epidemiologist to practice good data science.


-jp

.

[taxicab]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

Only in America does everyone think they know as much as experts.

You just broke the creep-odometer.

[rastajenk]

Some random guy at the rail might have as much racing knowledge as Andy Beyer; you can't assume automatically that he doesn't. What he probably doesn't have is a platform for sharing and disseminating that knowledge, or the urge to do so.

[ubercapper]

If the topic of percentages of people likely to become infected, hospitalized, die was a discussion on EV, it would end pretty quickly because, perhaps at this point in time (not in March), the percentages are so small to make most of the severe mitigation strategies a joke.

"One size fits all" policy (stay-at-home) may have been fine for a few weeks, but we're well past that.

We're also well past the "Worst Case Scenario" based policy coming from many federal, state and local leaders and the public health experts giving them guidance.

One example is the edict you can go to the beach but unless in the water or engaged in sports you have to wear a mask. Evidenced based policy, NOT.



My back of the napkin match may not be great, but I still know in Kentucky (for example) 93%+ are not infected and 98.5% (excluding nursing homes) are not dead. Over 100K people have been tested, and as it's always the case percentages of infections and deaths are highest at the start of an epidemic, those numbers are not going up using any kind of average (three day, seven day) you choose.

I have to say this every time for want of someone reading what's not there. I am NOT against mitigation. I was for it when returning from a trip out of the country near the end of March, and for the next 14 days. I spent that time Since then, day by day, studying as much as I did when I had a health crisis four year ago. I read all sides of the arguments and I read all the models.


Without data about THIS pandemic available at this time, I could understand the mentality and differing opinions. But that's not the case.

The utter lack of consensus from one state's supposed public health "expert" to another is a travesty. Because those people guide policy, and because the media does no one any benefit reporting only some facts while not reporting others, we are left to our own devices to make choices and stop JUST relying on experts who can't agree or the officials who make policy in some cases based on evidence which makes no sense (as the mask at the beach when not in the water policy).

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by ubercapper

The utter lack of consensus from one state's supposed public health "expert" to another is a travesty

One counter to this.

Certain states I never would have predicted to have a growing case load now actually do. A couple of them may be related to having a lot of meat processing and packing plants. Those meat plants seem to be super spreaders because people work very closely together and do a lot of yelling to each other over loud machines. Then of course if they catch it they take it home to their families.

I see some upside to having each state look at its own unique circumstances and act accordingly depending on what the data shows. The downside of course is that some bad decisions may be made at the state level if we don't have some good uniform standards.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

s.

https://covid19-projections.com/

This is the MIT guy that put together the the model above. He's probably a good person to follow also for an analysis of the data.

Youyang Gu
@youyanggu

[dilanesp]

Originally Posted by Jeff P

No. This is where you are wrong.

Science extends across many fields.

Being an epidemiologist (one field of science) doesn't give one a license to practice bad data science (a different field of science.)

Conversely, one doesn't have to be an epidemiologist to practice good data science.


-jp

.

To the contrary, "data science" is Silver's (dishonest) branding. We used to call it "statistics", and when it was called "statistics", we didn't think it overrode the actual expertise in every other field. Silver wanted to branch out and opine on everything- as every pundit does- so he rebranded.

But no, Nate Silver knows nothing about epidemiology. He knows nothing about the characteristics of viruses that make them more or less virulent. He knows nothing about the extensive studies of previous viruses and how they influence the modeling. He knows nothing about academic studies of the spread of previous coronaviruses.

He knows about statistics. That's it. So he can say "this is a poorly modeled study" or "this has an insufficent sample size" or "this studied the wrong hypothesis".

But statistics is probably 2 percent of epidemiology. And he is taking bandwitdth away from the other 98 percent, just as he has taken bandwidth away from the people who have actually done political strategy and who know all the stuff that doesn't show up in statistics, and he has taken bandwidth away from the people who have actually worked in baseball clubhouses and know all the things about baseball that don't show up in the statistics.

[dilanesp]

Back on topic, Santa Anita coming back leaves NYRA out there as the one big race meeting that is still in limbo. (Which makes sense given there have been so many coronavirus cases in NYC, but still.)

[wisconsin]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

Only in America does everyone think they know as much as experts.

Except when it comes to you, with your know-it-all commenting here.