These two claims cannot both be true.
Guy
Sure they can. If you don’t know what A and B are, then you cannot state “A is higher than B”.
If you know that A represents a noisy measurement of the true value a, B represents a noisy measurement of the true value b, and A and B are in the same ballpark, then you can state with a reasonable degree of confidence that “A is not greater than B” if the measurements A and B have similar noise characteristics.
But there is a clear difference between claiming “you cannot state ‘A is higher than B’” (which is your recent position) and “Taiwan’s COVID death rate isn’t higher than anywhere else” (your first claim).
Your radical skepticism about government numbers in Taiwan make the latter position (which is what you wrote) impossible for you to adequately support.
Put otherwise: make up your mind, finley!
Guy
@finley and @BigDave have already explained this, but your point here makes little sense. Deaths are quite difficult to hide, especially when the CDC is apparently trying its hardest to find them and attribute them to COVID. The two numbers are fundamentally different – the reported daily cases are a (much) lower bound for the number of people infected, whereas the reported deaths are an upper bound for the number of people who died because of COVID (because they usually had a lot of other serious things going on).
You’d have to ask the government as to their motivations. I thought that all the bullshit was attributable to the upcoming elections and not wanting to be blamed by the public for “failing with COVID”, but I have little knowledge of or interest in Taiwanese politics. I’ve only commented on the undeniable presence of the bullshit; you’d need to get the cause from someone else.
I’m not sure what kind of elaboration you’re looking for? I’ve tried quite carefully to explain what I mean and highlight the problems with the data, as have others. It’s your turn now to explain why we’re wrong – specifically. Sticking your fingers in your ears while repeating “lalalalalala government data is good we should trust the government” then moving on to the next topic isn’t good enough.
Fortunately you and Guy appear to be among the last holdouts for this team on here. I seldom see either of you provide a reasoned response to any of these issues with the data we bring up. It’s usually just crickets then whistling, or at best an ill-thought-through reply and a condescending roffle. Perhaps you could start addressing these things, or at least thinking about them, rather than continuing to stick your heads in the sand.
Yeah, I live in Taiwan. If I didn’t, I doubt I’d give much of a toss about this topic and would have moved on 12–18 months ago like everyone else. It’s unlikely I’d be on here complaining about things with foreigners in the second-to-last country in the world pretending to manage COVID.
Yes, I know. That’s why I gave two separate explanations.
Someone (Icon?) said that Taiwan’s death rate is higher than [anywhere else]. There is simply not enough information to make that claim because the data are so polluted.
However, if you look at the numbers as recorded, then Taiwan’s supposed “death rate” is about the same as the US and European “death rate”. You can therefore make the other statement “Taiwan’s death rate is not higher than [anywhere else]” with a reasonable degree of confidence, given that all countries are using the same messed-up method of measuring “COVID deaths”.
This has nothing to do with “trusting the government”. If those figures came from any other agency, official or otherwise, I’d still point out that they’re bullshit, because they so transparently are bullshit. If you think that people dying of cancer at the age of 85 and testing positive for COVID in the morgue represents a sensible way of measuring the true death rate attributable to COVID, feel free to explain why.
If I were to guess, it would be that for every 1 reported case of infection, there is at least 1 or more unreported cases. I personally know several people who haven’t reported a positive test result to any agency.
Of the people I know who did report, they reported because they have COVID insurance and plan on collecting on it.
And that is the people who know. I teach kids and half my class is sick. Only one is covid. How do the others know they are negative? Doctor said so without a test because no fever. Ha ha. People don’t want to know.
I wanted to start with “Sure they can” as well, but I would have gone a different way than Finley. You appeared to be asserting that it’s logically impossible for two claims of the form “A isn’t higher than B” and “We don’t even know what A is” to be simultaneously true. This is incorrect (“The number of fish in Sun Moon Lake isn’t higher than the number of fish in the Atlantic Ocean. We don’t even know how many fish are in Sun Moon Lake.”). Depending on the situation, it can be possible to deduce something about the relative scales of things despite not knowing exact values.
In any case, as Finley replied, it was a response to Icon’s assertion that the death rate in Taiwan is higher than elsewhere, where the “isn’t” means “there’s no evidence to support that this is true”.
Radical skepticism? It’s just skepticism at this point, and it’s abundantly supported by what the government is releasing. It would be more accurate to describe your stance as “radical belief in government numbers”.
Yes. This is it isn’t it. Country needs to wake the fuck up. Exactly how many masks are we wasting every single day? Millions and millions. And they’re not helping. At all. They’re just comfort blankets.
You’re missing a digit. I’d say 10 unreported for every 1 reported.
I doubt it’s so high tbh. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the real numbers are two- or threefold higher than the reported numbers (including asymptomatic cases, and the total of people not knowing, not testing, and not reporting), but 11-fold higher seems excessive. That would correspond to on the order of 400k new cases per day, which I don’t think would be sustainable for very long.
I feel like a slight majority of those who know they have it (so not including asymptomatic cases) are likely still reporting, either out of good behavior, because of 2.5 years of government-generated fear and paranoia, or because they need the diagnosis for work or their COVID insurance, but enough aren’t to make a big difference. I know a few people (including Taiwanese) who haven’t bothered reporting.
I think the random positivity rate (which is a different parameter to daily reported cases) is around 1.5–2% in the UK at the moment. I’m not saying I think it’s that high here, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to assume that it’s hugely lower either.
But who knows. They would need to test it.
Exactly. This is a seriously unscientific and misplaced faith. Such thinking has been exposed on FM for years now, fortunately.
Those that blindly and fully accept such polluted and, for all intents and purposes, utterly useless (if not deliberately and purposefully misleading) data, and repeat such mis/disinformation to further their own (IMO) extremist agenda, are really the ones being ‘radical.’ They aren’t helping anyone, not in Taiwan or elsewhere.
The only result of listening to such unscientific cheerleading is to increase everyone’s fear and suffering.
But then again, maybe that’s their goal.
Or maybe it’s not. 
But thank you for sharing.
Guy
Perhaps you should think about what it would take for you to start questioning the validity of the measures being taken and the data being reported.
I take it that the mysterious excess deaths this year currently being widely reported after 2.5 years of pandemic-related restrictions and vaccine coercion aren’t much of a concern, as long as we continue pretending we’re trying to do something to ensure that as few >70 year olds as possible simultaneously have the virus when they die of their cancers or cardiovascular issues?
Wait what? I thought we were talking about the alleged “cheerleading to increase everyone’s fear.”
I simply pointed out that has not been, or ever been, my way of doing things. Sorry!
Guy
Guys be specific, like this:
In my country, the glorious leaders got a nice kickback from a certain vaccine company, plus a nice profit from the mask monopoly - paper masks BTW, that we know so far. They were rewarded for their efforts with prominent positions in US universities and European financial institutions.
In Taiwan we already have fear of China. Fear of losing jobs. Fear of failing tests at school. All these supersede fear of COVID. So keep it coming. It is evening in Taiwan but you’re just starting your day abroad.
Why do you assume most people are not in country? I think the majority of people posting here are living in Taiwan (I certainly wouldn’t continue posting here if I left).
Looks like 3+4 will be over soon.
No doubt to be replaced by 0+7 with the same restrictions on how many in the house, I guess.