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Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

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Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#121

Post by joe_the_user »

usaar333 wrote: post #108
dannykwells wrote: post #20

Let's check back on this piece in...2 weeks, say, when there are 10,000+ Corona deaths in the US. Well see how it ages then. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/21/upshot/corona... 427× 16 =11102

That rate is highly unlikely to hold. There's enough stay in place restrictions in effect to drive it down after about a week or so. FWIW, at this point, it looks like NYC is going to take a huge hit and the other outbreaks (Seattle, California) will look mild comparitively.

Washington state doesn't have a statewide lockdown, I don't know if even Seattle has a lockdown. California is doing the best but there are still crowds defying the lockdown at beaches and parks. Just as much, grocery stores are open as usual and even with most people trying to do social distancing, I'm doubtful you're clamping that hard on the infection, unfortunately.

I think the best is that when fatalities spike here in California, we're in better shape to intensify the lockdown.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#122

Post by cma »

usaar333 wrote: post #108
dannykwells wrote: post #20

Let's check back on this piece in...2 weeks, say, when there are 10,000+ Corona deaths in the US. Well see how it ages then. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/21/upshot/corona... 427× 16 =11102

That rate is highly unlikely to hold. There's enough stay in place restrictions in effect to drive it down after about a week or so. FWIW, at this point, it looks like NYC is going to take a huge hit and the other outbreaks (Seattle, California) will look mild comparitively.

Deaths lag measures by more than that. We might see Washington’s measures kicking in strong by then but NY will probably be some time.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#123

Post by robocat »

defen wrote: post #93
robocat wrote: post #84

Firstly, there is 10 weeks of evidence on what other countries have done to avoid transmission. Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and Japan all show a variety of strategies and have some successes under their belts. Sure, it’s messy social data, and they have systematic differences from other countries, but it’s real data about what is working. Ioannidis says: “If we assume that case fatality rate among individual…

> “If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths.” Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? Where does the idea of 1% come fro…

> Furthermore, death isn't the only negative outcome - what do we know about permanent organ damage (lungs, heart, liver, kidneys) in survivors?

Exactly: why all this focus on deaths, when sickness rates are massive and are sure to have horrific long terms outcomes for more people than those that die. Intensive care strongly implies bad things are happening.

John Ioannidis has been a fabulous force for good fighting scientific fraud and misinformation. But clearly he doesn’t know what effective decision making looks like. It usually doesn’t look very academic in my experience! edit: I mean decision making in an emergency (we did have two months to be proactive, but now we have a reactive emergency).

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#124

Post by Buttons840 »

dannykwells wrote: post #20

Let's check back on this piece in...2 weeks, say, when there are 10,000+ Corona deaths in the US. Well see how it ages then. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/21/upshot/corona... 427× 16 =11102

I fear we will be well past 10,000 deaths in the US in 2 weeks.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#125

Post by guscost »

cameldrv wrote: post #99
guscost wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on the other other hand, they were all traveling, eating cruise ship food, and probably drinking, all of which could weaken their immune systems. We can add speculative adjustments all day long, but there's no way we're going to get a randomized double-blind study out of it. Also you can't conclude much of anything based on a linear extrapolation, even if you have good data.

What do you need a randomized double blind study for? You're not sure the people on the ship died of COVID? As for adjustment factors, if you just adjusted for age, you'd get about 50% less mortality if the ship had the same age distribution as the country. So that's 5 million dead. However there are over a million people in the U.S. that are medically compromised and would have a very high fatality rate with COVID.…

> What do you need a randomized double blind study for? You're not sure the people on the ship died of COVID?

Er, you're not trying to figure out how the ship victims already died, you're trying to predict how many other people might die of the same cause. To do that kind of thing well, you need a hypothesis, and then you need to test it properly.

> As for adjustment factors, if you just adjusted for age, you'd get about 50% less mortality if the ship had the same age distribution as the country.

You can't "just adjust for age" or "just adjust for" anything, you're going to miss something! That's why people do clinical trials.

> I also don't see what the problem with a linear extrapolation is.

Basically, an epidemic is not a linear system, so you can't model it with linear functions. Look into the "SIR model" for a standard way to do that kind of thing. I'm not trained in this field so I'd look for a medical/science forum if you have questions.

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SIRModel.html

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#126

Post by rbritton »

joe_the_user wrote: post #121
usaar333 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rate is highly unlikely to hold. There's enough stay in place restrictions in effect to drive it down after about a week or so. FWIW, at this point, it looks like NYC is going to take a huge hit and the other outbreaks (Seattle, California) will look mild comparitively.

Washington state doesn't have a statewide lockdown, I don't know if even Seattle has a lockdown. California is doing the best but there are still crowds defying the lockdown at beaches and parks. Just as much, grocery stores are open as usual and even with most people trying to do social distancing, I'm doubtful you're clamping that hard on the infection, unfortunately. I think the best is that when fatalities spike…

Washington does as of 5:00 pm PDT today.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#127

Post by usaar333 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #121
usaar333 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rate is highly unlikely to hold. There's enough stay in place restrictions in effect to drive it down after about a week or so. FWIW, at this point, it looks like NYC is going to take a huge hit and the other outbreaks (Seattle, California) will look mild comparitively.

Washington state doesn't have a statewide lockdown, I don't know if even Seattle has a lockdown. California is doing the best but there are still crowds defying the lockdown at beaches and parks. Just as much, grocery stores are open as usual and even with most people trying to do social distancing, I'm doubtful you're clamping that hard on the infection, unfortunately. I think the best is that when fatalities spike…

The measures that have in place in both states have drastically clamped down on infection rates - the growth in WA is barely above linear at this point (and remember you are always looking 10 days backward). CA is also sub-exponential. Look at the data (in the presence of high testing):

https://covid-19.direct/state/WA

If you look at thermometer data (less accurate, but a good predictor), there's little problem going forward in either state. (but serious problems in the NY metro area):

https://healthweather.us/

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#128

Post by ClumsyPilot »

rootusrootus wrote: post #71
ellyagg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird because I'm just as afraid of a black swan of unforeseen, runaway financial collapse due to pandemic countermeasures. People seem awfully glib about how many will die from the pursuant depression.

I'm becoming considerably more afraid of the social and economic consequences from the pandemic countermeasures than of the virus itself.

You do realise that, given no countermeasures, there will be deaths of millions of people, plus half the country I'll. It will collapse the economy.

Tou cant save money by ignoring the disease.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#129

Post by Barrin92 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #115
Barrin92 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? because everyone on the diamond princess was tested. So we know for sure how many cases we are dealing within the sample. ~0.3 and ~0.9% are also not optimistic guesses but the current numbers for Germany and SK. Italy sits at 9%. So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Kore…

The unanswered question of the GP is why you'd expect only 1% of the US population to be infect? I can't see the slightest basis for such an assumption. This an extremely infectious, quickly spreading disease. 30% of the US population seem like a more likely estimate. SK has a 1.3% fatality rate at the end but that was with a functioning health case system. If even 1% of the US population get infect, the health syste…

>The unanswered question of the GP is why you'd expect only 1% of the US population to be infect?

Ioannidis addresses this in the article. Extensive community spread is actually unlikely to be the case for this virus, epidemic development is hard to discern from simply increasing rates in testing and sensitive populations seeking testing, and maybe most importantly there is little evidence that lockdowns and other extreme measures have significant impact on reducing this sort of respiratory infection, he cites this paper. [1]

" The highest quality cluster-RCTs suggest respiratory virus spread can be prevented by hygienic measures, such as handwashing, especially around younger children.[...]Global measures, such as screening at entry ports, led to a non-significant marginal delay in spread. There was limited evidence that social distancing was effective, especially if related to the risk of exposure."

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21735402

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#130

Post by droithomme »

usaar333 wrote: post #108
dannykwells wrote: post #20

Let's check back on this piece in...2 weeks, say, when there are 10,000+ Corona deaths in the US. Well see how it ages then. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/21/upshot/corona... 427× 16 =11102

That rate is highly unlikely to hold. There's enough stay in place restrictions in effect to drive it down after about a week or so. FWIW, at this point, it looks like NYC is going to take a huge hit and the other outbreaks (Seattle, California) will look mild comparitively.

I wonder. Willing to admit incorrect if parent prediction proves true? Or pivot if not to a new supposition and declare victory? (I'd say 3.5 weeks myself.)
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