This article fails to make a single mention of Italy's case-load and its effect on Italy's healthcare system.
That was exactly my thoughts. The article makes valid points but this does not fit.
Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#12I’m sure it wasn’t the author’s intention, but the article has a lot of the patterns and phrasing I see in denialist literature (global warming, for example).
I agree with the author that we need more data. But he nerfed the urgency of his plea by using wording that downplays the problem, and seems to only be talking about the situation in the U.S. and U.K. No mention of the data points collected at great cost by China and Italy, not to mention Iran (which seems to be digging mass graves).
I’m confused. What does the author expect from publishing this piece?
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#13Acting without reliable data reminds me of war. And that got me thinking: is this the closest exposure to "Total War" that any living generation (except the greatest generation) has experienced? It's not like recent wars that can be ignored by shutting off the TV. This captivates all of us and is becoming impossible to ignore.
No, as I wrote another day, polio, the Cold War, the meth/crack epidemic in the USA and the vodka epidemic in Russia were/are pretty scary.
(A lot of apartment blocks in Russia became 100% female after all the men either died in the Afghanistan war or destroyed their livers with vodka/wood alcohol.)
SARS (Corona-1) in 2002/2003 was bad too, but mostly affected Asia, with isolated incidents in North America.
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#14Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…
I think the economic damage will be so remarkable that nobody will go hungry. We are seeing unprecedented pro-social behavior and legislation. Social safety nets are born out of crises.
I see panic hoarding and empty grocery stores and laid off people worried about rent. And it’s been two weeks.
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#15Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…
It does seem that we have blindly followed the Chinese's government's response to the outbreak without any real data. I'm guessing there may be large numbers of people who are affected who aren't really showing any symptoms other than typical cold/flu symptoms.
“It won’t happen here.”
“It could happen here, but it’s not a big concern.”
“It’s happening here, and it’s a big concern, but we don’t have reliable data so let’s do nothing.”
“We have reliable data now, but it’s too late to do anything.”
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#16I think that Ioannidis makes a valid point about the need for accurate data. But isn't the (pretty decent) italian healthcare system getting completely overwhelmed a strong argument against the possibility that the corona outbreak could get "buried within the noise" of seasonal influenza? I also don't understand how shutting down non-essential businesses for a few weeks is supposed to cause large damage.
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#17Are we sure that the economic damage of the shutdown of the world economy out weighs the heath risks of the virus. Are we in group think here? A major recession/depression means a lot of people go hungry, lose access to medical care etc. Does anyone know of studies or research that looks at the health impacts of a shutdown vs. the health risk of the virus ? Just asking questions. I keep asking this question and I get…
It does seem that we have blindly followed the Chinese's government's response to the outbreak without any real data. I'm guessing there may be large numbers of people who are affected who aren't really showing any symptoms other than typical cold/flu symptoms.
That is incorrect. The US, UK, and others were taking a mitigation strategy until the last couple of days; the change wasn't driven by delayed blind copying of China, but by this analysis, which was shared with governments as a WIP before being published:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
There may be legitimate criticism of the broad policy approach, but “blindly following China” isn't one of them.
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#18[flagged]
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#19I’m sure it wasn’t the author’s intention, but the article has a lot of the patterns and phrasing I see in denialist literature (global warming, for example). I agree with the author that we need more data. But he nerfed the urgency of his plea by using wording that downplays the problem, and seems to only be talking about the situation in the U.S. and U.K. No mention of the data points collected at great cost by Chi…
about your last point : it mentions doing random sampling periodically to get a better assessment of the spread, in order to be able to cut lockdowns when the epidemic is already touching 99% of the population ( and not wait weeks until we see the numbers drop in hospitals).
also, that we take south korea as an example for future policies and not china.
Re: Coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does seem that we have blindly followed the Chinese's government's response to the outbreak without any real data. I'm guessing there may be large numbers of people who are affected who aren't really showing any symptoms other than typical cold/flu symptoms.
> without any real data The trouble is we can only get "real data" by testing more people. If we test more people we will almost certainly discover the numbers are worse than they appear now. All that is to say that the situation can only be worse than we already know. I'm not sure more data would lead us to isolate less at all. You might be right that there could be large numbers of people with the virus who are doi…
>You might be right that there could be large numbers of people with the virus who are doing just fine right now, but we know from nearly 200,000 cases (that's plenty) that a non-trivial portion of cases require hospitalization. That's the whole problem, right there.
You're not applying the logic all the way through.
If a great number of people are already infected and do not require hospitalization it grossly affects the math on the potential for overwhelming our medical system.
Those infected people unnoticeable to minor symptoms have the potential to be the herd immunity we'd want from a vaccine.
> All that is to say that the situation can only be worse than we already know. I'm not sure more data would lead us to isolate less at all.
More infected people who are unnoticed because they don't show severe symptoms and require hospitalization actually makes the situation better. It would lower the hospitalization rate and alter the projections drastically in the direction of less epidemic.
We are being cautious right now. That, by definition, means we're likely overreacting.