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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

#161

Post by jamilbk »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #145
jamilbk wrote: post #142

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how m…

If 10% of the population needs ICU and dies because they cant get it, then there is no business as usual.

You make a valid point.

At the same time, economic problems affect everyone while it seems that covid-19 harm scales with age.

No easy solutions to be sure, but I have hope more data becomes available soon so we can implement more nuanced policies to achieve similar containment while preventing massive unemployment. Testing random samples of the general population would be a good first step.

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

#162

Post by Dylan16807 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #148
hartator wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well deaths in the US only for flu were 50,000 last year. Still 5x less.

Corvid 19 deaths are doubling every 3 days in US and a few other countries. Do the extrapolation.

Trillions will die.

You can only extrapolate so far.

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

#163

Post by joe_the_user »

jamilbk wrote: post #142

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how m…

An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. And in any case, if we sacrifice all the lives this virus could take to the economy, it won't help the economy at all - the massive dislocation involved in the deaths will certainly be far worse than the shutdown, if you really want to think that way.

All that said, part of the collapse of things like the stock market comes through the financial system having been built up into finely tuned but extremely fragile edifice - end QE created an environment of limitless leverage and short-term thinking. This environment created the situation of not having future resources, of jury rigging everything to work in a super-efficient but fragile fashion (the 737Max being a perfect product of this paradigm).

Covid shock is logical result - in another, a more far seeing society might have made preparations beforehand, had an epidemic team in place, etc.

So a lot of things are collapsing because they weren't built to last to begin with, not because of the virus.

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

#164

Post by guscost »

cameldrv wrote: post #155
guscost wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

> 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. What would be the randomized double blind trial that you would run, and what information would it give us? > Basically, an epidemic is not a linear system, so you can't model it…

> What would be the randomized double blind trial that you would run, and what information would it give us?

I have absolutely no idea how to design or run a clinical study.

> 60% of people will get the virus.

All at the same time?? Your extrapolation comparing total critical cases with the number of ICU beds seemed to assume that. Try this interactive model, which plots infections over time and takes into account how long each patient will occupy a bed: https://neherlab.org/covid19/

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

#165

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

Barrin92 wrote: post #158
joe_the_user wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a meta-study looking at over 67 papers that address the question of the spread of respiratory viruses. Obviously, every virus is a new virus, that is always a problem. Yeah, and if any of those other viruses caused a world wide pandemic, I missed it. The article is a specious disaster. Why do we treat the virus like a black swan event, but not the unprecedented response of shutting economic and civil liberty dow…

>Yeah, and if any of those other viruses caused a world wide pandemic, I missed it. They do actually. Several of the outbreaks studied among the papers were influenza pandemics, coronavirus pandemics, and SARS. (page ~110-120) This rhetoric you're starting here about bringing out the war drums to fight invisible enemies is exactly what Ioannidis is afraid of. It is not scientific, it is not based on evidence, and it…

Doesn’t influenzas cause a pandemic every year?

I’ve read from various sources influenza cause multiple hundred-thousand deaths every year.

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

#166

Post by jamilbk »

joe_the_user wrote: post #163
jamilbk wrote: post #142

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how m…

An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. And in any case, if we sacrifice all the lives this virus could take to the economy, it won't help the economy at all - the massive dislocation involved in the deaths will certainly be far worse than the shutdown, if you really want to think that way. All that said, part of the collapse of things like the stock market comes through…

I definitely agree with you, but I want to see more data. Without broad testing it’s difficult to ascertain the true death rate of the virus (many infected are asymptomatic).

But my hope is we can come up with similarly effective measures (e.g. require n95 masks in public, keeping the elderly at home, offer voluntary isolated infection to low-risk individuals to increase herd immunity, etc) that can achieve both.

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

#167

Post by rsfern »

Barrin92 wrote: post #90
jsnell wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure he recommends researching vaccines faster, giving people flu vaccines since the flu is more serious than Covid, admitting fewer Covid patients into hospital care, and doing more research so that we're better prepared next time when something actually serious happens. Or if this is serious, doing more research so that the data is the most accurate possible. I think calling that doing nothing is pretty generous. S…

he seems to advocate individual hygiene and avoiding the public when sick, which also btw seems to be the response that countries like Japan, Taiwan and Singapore have taken, where complete lockdowns or closures have largely been avoided. Together with tracing they seem to have handled the situation just fine.

> together with tracing

This is key — these countries were able to avoid lockdown by testing and tracing early, before the case load became unmanageable. In the US, we’ve missed that opportunity

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

#168

Post by tflinton »

joe_the_user wrote: post #163
jamilbk wrote: post #142

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how m…

An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. And in any case, if we sacrifice all the lives this virus could take to the economy, it won't help the economy at all - the massive dislocation involved in the deaths will certainly be far worse than the shutdown, if you really want to think that way. All that said, part of the collapse of things like the stock market comes through…

The economy is someways equivalent to poverty which is highly correlated with mortality rates. Some caution with your reasoning should be warranted.

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

#169

Post by partiallypro »

joe_the_user wrote: post #96
partiallypro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The craziest stat I heard today was on my local news, and it was about COVID19 in the county, Davidson County (Nashville, TN,) they said of all the active cases in the county only 2 had been hospitalized. That's out of 163. The others were sent home to be quarantined and medicated. I was floored. Why are stats like that not shared? That seems like very valuable information. Hospitalization rates should be one of the…

Sure but most of those are new cases. Do you have any idea what happened with those cases two weeks later or even if it's been two or three weeks for the cases? You'd only expect that 16-32 would require hospitalization in any case. But on the other hand, you can expect 326 visible or invisible cases the next week and gradually things get difficult, if the trend that's been documented continues.

I can see that, but I also can see that this could give us insight into the virus as it spreads throughout the population. Like, what if it is mutating, becoming weaker/stronger, hospitalization rates would give us insight into that.

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

#170

Post by tflinton »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #145
jamilbk wrote: post #142

It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how m…

If 10% of the population needs ICU and dies because they cant get it, then there is no business as usual.

That's an "if" though.
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