No, I'm NOT a #COVIDIDOT
At first I wasn't sure how I would address this topic in my specialty formats: journal, rant or commentary. I decided on the former.I don't go about in life worried about what other people think of me; I have a lot of confidence in what I say and do, even if they are unpopular. For example, my last vote for President was for a candidate who only got about 3% of the national vote. And even in that community, I hold some unpopular views, like my pro-life position. I maintained high standards in teaching, unpopular with students, colleagues, and administrators (oh, people will pay lip service to the concept, just not its implementation). I've dealt with adversity (and paid a political price) throughout my work history, e.g., escalating tech issues with Oracle Support, telling supervisors things they didn't want to hear, pushing standards unpopular with users or colleagues, etc.
I wouldn't say I'm indifferent to how I'm perceived by others. I've enjoyed academic awards throughout my scholastic career, including high school valedictorian, innumerable Dean's Lists, honors societies, scholarships, a university-wide competitive fellowship, a dissertation grant, selection to 2 competitive doctoral consortia in my field (I even had my own dissertation topic singled out by the keynote speaker at one of them). I've presented papers at national conferences and symposiums and published peer-reviewed articles. I won an internal company award on my last project as a senior principal consultant with Oracle Consulting. I won an unprecedented 3 CEO awards during my 13 months with a computer chip testing company based in Santa Clara.
But the point is that I didn't do what I've done for external validation. To give an example, I was friends with KO, the younger sister of PO, during my freshman year in high school. She would later write one of her proudest academic accomplishments was getting the second-highest grade to mine on math tests. She compared me to her big brother, who was the reigning UIL science contest champ, and encouraged me to join the team. (I did join my last 2 years of high school and won district.) PO, who I probably met in passing once or twice, was a prodigy, good enough to win admission to MIT out of his junior year. I think he ran into financial issues and never finished his degree but got into some MIT startup and reportedly cashed out as a millionaire by the time I earned my PhD. The point of the story was that fairly early in life he had set his goal as winning a Nobel Prize, which I don't think he's accomplished to date. Perhaps that was an unrealistic expectation. Did that make him a failure in life? No. And there's nothing wrong with having some high goal to aspire to.
To give another example, one of the faculty members on my dissertation committee was JR, a junior MIS professor at UH. He and his mentor, Milt Jenkins of Indiana University, had designed a computer user satisfaction measure, related to my methodological interest. JR had tried to hit a home run for tenure research considerations by getting a prestigious Management Science journal hit, which didn't work out. He must have seen the writing on the wall and resigned some point after I graduated. I don't know the specifics despite a few letter exchanges, but he ended up at IBM as a research fellow and retired a short while back. To a certain extent, his experience influenced my strategy when I started as a professor; I targeted credible journals like the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies and one of the IEEE journals, for example. When I interviewed after my 3 years at UWM, no one questioned my research bona fides.
I know, especially given my prolific presence on Twitter these past few years, that my contrarian views will draw some hostile reactions, especially when I poke sticks at progressives or Trumpkins who go over the top. Now I'm not like Trump playing Whac-a-Mole with his critics; of course, he is drawing nuclear heat on Twitter. It seems everyday hundreds, if not thousands of Twitter users pay tribute to the memory of former President Obama. Both progressives and Trumpkins beat my pinata. They term me a Trumpkin or (social/modern) liberal respectively. Neither is correct, but I seriously doubt most have read my profile or thousands of other tweets. There's part of me that wants to set the record straight, but I really have no control over what other people do or say. And a lot of people, even when they are confronted with the truth, won't concede they were wrong. I'm not willing to let those people have power over me by their consent. Sometimes you just have to let it go, and trust other people will be fair-minded and look at both sides.
I only see a fraction of purported replies/mentions of me of Twitter. I'm not sure of who they are or why Twitter filters the ones they do; it could be in the process the trolls block me. I do occasionally see replies. My analytics home page will mention a current top mention: the current one supposedly got 1192 or so impressions, along with 34 engagements (likes and/or retweets). When I try to view the tweet for context, I get a "tweet unavailable" message, so I don't know the original. The reason I am addressing it is because that's a fairly big response for a reply; I informally consider a 1000-impression tweet a viral tweet (I've only a handful over the past month), and for me, 20-odd engagements is the exception not the rule. The troll then rubs salt in the wound by attaching a photo to Trump to his tweet, implying I'm a Trumpkin, and I'm an unambiguous NeverTrumper
elnachodugan@keith82384620 Mar 24@raguillem So only 3,936,000 die. A lot of people might get really mad at a #COVIDIDIOTS such as yourself. pic.twitter.com/HTqXYey5BY
I was aware of a #COVIDIDIOTS hashtag, but never really clicked on the trend. COVID-19 response has now become a politically correct subject, like climate change. If you aren't in sync with the self-anointed "stay-at-home" police enforcers or question authoritarian impulses in this crisis, they will attack you publicly.
I'm not sure what the troll is responding to, because I've not been discussing coronavirus infection models in my tweets. In fact, I've mostly reported CDC's own statistics. It could be that he's responding to a rolling fatality rate I've reported, in the range of 1.2-1.4% and applying it to some extrapolated, unspecified, absurd case projection vs. earlier inflated coronavirus casualty rates.
Look, I'll point out Fauci himself has suggested the fatality rate may end up considerably under 1%:
In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%.
I myself have never suggested that isn't a serious issue, and I have pointed out some worrisome contrasts to the seasonal flu (include airborne transmission) and a fatality rate (to date) multiples to the flu--and, unlike the flu, there isn't a vaccine. I haven't argued against mitigation strategies, just the nature and extent. I was harshly critical of Trump's targeting only foreign (vs. domestic) travelers from China on 1/31 and dismissive comparisons to the flu, the fact that CDC and the FDA has been fatally slow in responding to a need for diagnostic testing and engaging the private sector.
I have also been a critic of anti-vaxxers, particularly in response to the immunity herd construct, as a violation of the non-aggression principle. I have also pointed out that the social conservative base of the GOP, e.g., on evolution and climate change, really doesn't help establish moral leadership during the process.
Panic makes for bad pubic policy, and I oppose it, no apologies.
As to the personal attack, I am hardly a scientific illiterate. As I discussed above, I represented my Texas high school UIL team in math and science, and I aced my high school and college courses in science (in fact, my biology teacher held me after class one day and told me I didn't have to go to class anymore, that I had my A; he said if he taught to my level, he would lose the rest of the class, and his lectures otherwise would be a waste of my time). I subscribe to various science daily news emails, and I don't know many other non-medical people who have quoted the NEJM and/or have published empirical research articles requiring extensive knowledge of research design and statistics. I probably know more about COVID-19 than over 90% of the people tweeting on it.
