Re: US Presidential Election 2016
Reply #643 –
It's hard to trust the public Zika debate now, media are distorting figures because it rates. In reality there have been wildly varying reports from authorities.
While I generally trust scientists, I do not trust lawyers or administrators, and those less ethical types now know funding is associated with the Zika threat, it's in their interests to paint global doom as they get financially rewarded for it. The more money that pours into Zika the more alleged "connections" will surface, soon it will be the cause of Hitler, ADHD and Terrorism. I had a big debate/argument at CSIRO recently about this, as I felt scientists were sitting on their hands allowing hysterical debate as it brought them funding. They were not pushing the policy line, but they were not vocal in debunking the fear mongers either!
In regards to the wildly varying reports, the CDC itself recently tested about 5000 suspected Zika related health cases, about 70% of those were dismissed immediately as mis-diagnosis leaving 1500 suspects for more detailed investigation. The second round of more in depth testing eliminated another 1200 as markers initially accepted as a health issue were shown to be statistically indeterminate, they couldn't tell if someone was health affected or not so subjective is the assessment. That left about 300 to be explained that had clear signs of a health issue, of the 300 only 6 had been exposed to a Zika infection! That turns out to be equal or less than the normal rate of birth defects for such diseases which in the USA runs between 8 to 15 in every 10000, if ZIka's effects were clear and real that numbers should have risen by some statistically significant amount. Looking at 5000 cases is a very significant study.
The situation is even worse now, in the USA IT companies are getting on board to use "Big Data" in a cure for Zika and are being funded heavily. It's all become a money issue, which is sad because the real labs researching Zika have been around for over a decade and now instead of being financially boosted they have to compete with people for the same money, many of those competitors are selling snake oil!
For example last month there was a global story circulating claiming epidemiological modeling showed up to 90 Million people would be infected by Zika within about 5 years. But those numbers are based on a study that had deliberately selected the worst case scenario for every variable, weather, mosquitos, travel, etc., etc., and then the report deliberately avoided discussing the potential health effects of that many Zika cases. Using the same protocols as this Zika estimate a worst case scenario for climate change apparently suggests that 1.2 Billion will die by 2030.
I understand why people are scared, but it's become almost as bad as the Anti-Vaccination debate.
An estimate mid-last month calculated that there was US$4.5M being spent for every confirmed Zika case, a significant order of magnitude more than diseases like Dengue or Chikungunya which have equal or even worse effects!
Humans are awful at estimating risks, it's an inherited trait that is hypothesized as the Keep Alive mistaken belief. In a nutshell, if you hear the grass rustling and think it's a Lion you'll run away and survive even if it's the wind, but if you hear the grass rustling and thinks it's the wind you're a dead person if it's a lion. The same mechanism is used to explain why so many people are so gullible, apparently we want to believe because on evolutionary time scales it has kept us alive.