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

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321–330 of 462 posts

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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people haven't stopped dying. As a comparison, 700 people have been dying every day for covid-19 in Italy. Also deaths are not (yet) evenly distributed but greatly concentated in the north.

You are building the world around your arguments. You have no proof but still talk, talk, talk.

You didn’t refute him/her.

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

#322
post #22

Ioannidis continues to push this evidence-based approach, but I have not yet seen an adequate response to critics such as Nassim Taleb or Yaneer Bar-Yam. They argue that one doesn't need raw evidence to act if the statistical evidence shows that the risks are catastrophic. They published a paper on January 26th which lays out arguments for why conventional risk management approaches are inadequate in these situations…

I find Taleb's argument specious. The risk inherent in a reaction can be pretty catastrophic as well; for example we are now seeing some project 20%+ unemployment in the next quarter. In addition, we do have data on the possible harms from Coronovirus, since we have more CFR data at this point. This puts bounds on possible harms. For more detail see John's other article in statnews. The results of the Diamond Princes…

> It looks like Iceland has about 1% of its people infected.

Apologies if I've misunderstood something but your link says 473 cases, which is more like 0.1% of the population.

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

#323
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Diamond Princess is also likely not a random sample of the population - they are healthy enough to be fit for travel.

You don't need to be particularly fit or healthy to go on a cruise. Yes, sure, you can't be on life support, but generally 'healthy enough' to travel on a cruise is exactly what I'd expect from any random sample of the overall population.

The problem is the disease is mostly killing off the least heathy. Exclude only 5% of the population and deaths might easily drop by 1+%. Further the Dimond Princess was evacuated specifically because they could not contain the spread. Suggesting their rate of infection is indicative of anything would mean we had somewhere to be evacuated to.

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

#324
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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…

>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…

Deaths are not instantaneous, add exponential growth and it taking up to 9 weeks from infection to death and it’s really deceptive. All deaths tell you is how many people where infected weeks ago.

Just look at the lag in China’s rate of infections vs deaths. They had 22 deaths on March 8th and 40 new infections. Further, new cases drops off vastly faster than infections with the sickest talking longer to get better and staying at risk of death for weeks.

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

#325
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there a single event in history has been solved by panic? Surely there's a historical figure who at some point fled in panic. Having survived, they then changed the world. If you're having an asthma attack, running outside in a panic might get you away from the airborne allergen.

All the training I learned in boy scouts, heard from survivalist, people who have survived outrageous circumstances by their own choosing and actions did not attribute their success to panic, but the opposite, keeping a clear head. It's likely we can find stories of people panicing and surviving, sure. But can a paniced person (one overwhelmed with intoxicating fear) help others? No. A drowning person will also drown…

I absolutely agree that panic has only narrow uses.

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

#326
post #22

Ioannidis continues to push this evidence-based approach, but I have not yet seen an adequate response to critics such as Nassim Taleb or Yaneer Bar-Yam. They argue that one doesn't need raw evidence to act if the statistical evidence shows that the risks are catastrophic. They published a paper on January 26th which lays out arguments for why conventional risk management approaches are inadequate in these situations…

I find Taleb's argument specious. The risk inherent in a reaction can be pretty catastrophic as well; for example we are now seeing some project 20%+ unemployment in the next quarter. In addition, we do have data on the possible harms from Coronovirus, since we have more CFR data at this point. This puts bounds on possible harms. For more detail see John's other article in statnews. The results of the Diamond Princes…

By citing Ionnides you reveal yourself to be not worth taking seriously in this matter.

What he writes is not just eccentric, it makes literally no sense whatsoever (apart from the call for random sampling, I also don't get why that is not happening).

There are at least two things in there that would strike anyone with half a brain as grievous errors. Given Ionnides meta research pedigree Hanlon's razor does probably not apply.

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

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> An economy is not something that one should have to shovels lives into to keep going. I mean I want to agree in principle, but this is just an incorrect statement. It's a matter of what is a good-enough tradeoff of risk and reward. If you make people drive to work, some will die. If you want to mine lithium, some people will die in industrial accidents that wouldn't have died if you never built a lithium mine. If…

There is no trade-off. Exponential functions are pretty binary. We contain this (R0A core problem is that we're not looking at how to mitigate damage to the economy. We can handle a month or two of the economy shutting down, no problem. You'll get your new car 2 months later.

Most of the damage is auxiliary: businesses going bankrupt, people defaulting on mortgages, etc. All of that can be mitigated with the right measures.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YbtJGn7ida2IYNgwCFk3Sjhs...

The economic harm of losing 2 months of production -- or even a year of production -- is much smaller than the economic harm of supporting people disabled by coronavirus for the rest of their lives. That is assuming we mitigate the economic fall.

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

#328
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

But US still needs to develop that capacity as quickly as it can, because once quarantine brings the virus under approximate control, testing and contact-tracing are what can eliminate it.

Completely agreed!

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

#329
Imagine this. Your driving down the freeway at 60 mph, accelerating at 30%. The car in front of you puts on the breaks. Before you react, you first gather your speed gun, check the deceleration rate of the car in front, then calculate based on your speed when you should put your breaks on. I'm all for the scientific approach, but in this particular instance, our survival instincts need to take precedence. Please, we need to stop peddling evidence based approaches for an exponential situation.

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

#330

Imagine this. Your driving down the freeway at 60 mph, accelerating at 30%. The car in front of you puts on the breaks. Before you react, you first gather your speed gun, check the deceleration rate of the car in front, then calculate based on your speed when you should put your breaks on. I'm all for the scientific approach, but in this particular instance, our survival instincts need to take precedence. Please, we…

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