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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

#331

Post by patrec »

I will go out on a limb here (I'm hardly a domain expert) and make the following prediction: In retrospect this will be seen as the moment when peer perception of Ioannidis fell from major scientific figure to reckless (or worse!) fraud.

The problems with what he writes seem to me to be so severe, I cannot fathom how it ever made peer-review.

His original article assumed, with no measures taken, a peak infection rate in the US of 1% of the population. For that to be true, R0 would need to be around 1.01 (herd immunity to restrict further spread is achieved at around 1-1/R0). This is totally insane, there is literally no way covid-19 could have spread internationally as fast as it does with this R0 (you can work out R0 quite well from the growth rates, the main problem is reporting quality, but death figures are presumably fairly accurate).

He also gave a plausible lower bound of CFR of around half of seasonal influenza, 0.05%. For comparison the Italian CFR currently skews closer to 9%! Even accounting for immense underreporting, there is no way to reconcile these discrepancies (a factor of 200x). He upwards adjusts a tiny bit in this article, but it is still extremely hard to reconcile the situation on the ground in Italy with what he is writing.

All the countless additional severe problems with his argument (cost asymmetries, health care capacity, ...) pale in comparison to these two.

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

#332

Post by mschuster91 »

jwhite wrote: post #207
cycrutchfield wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many cases in SK and Germany have not resolved yet. I don’t think you can use those numbers so definitively.

I think SK's numbers are becoming more reliable by the day though. The new case rate has stabilised to a small number in the range of 50 to 150 per day and the active case count is dropping at a rate of over 200 per day. The daily death rate has been below 10 the whole time I believe. If that trend continues then SK's CFR will be well known soon and I would guess not dissimilar to current estimates. Though it's alway…

> Their pipeline is very full, agreed I wouldn't want to make a prediction there.

German here. I assume the recent hard lockdowns will work out pretty much for us... I'm more worried about the US, this is gonna be a mass die-off, and the Trump government's handling of the issue is... let's say abysmal.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] »

dnautics wrote: post #227
divbzero wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By John’s numbers (0.3% die and 1% of population) Italy should get a total of 1800 deaths. Yet Italy is at 6000 and rapidly rising - using real numbers his assumptions are already wrong for a first world country that is a few weeks ahead of the rest of the world. Just highlighting this bit of the parent’s post. If you want hard evidence that COVID-19 is quantitatively and qualitatively different from other coronavi…

It's also possible that Italy is vastly unlucky for some generic reason, considering most of the deaths are in a particular region of the country and among an age bracket that is less cosmopolitan and more likely to reflect limited geographic genetic dispersion.

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by panta »

pjc50 wrote: post #310
panta wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Italian here. The most probable cause for that is that these areas started being affected earlier, so the virus had more time to spread before the lockdown.

I've seen the claim that northern Italy's manufacturing industry is more integrated with China, so there was more cross traffic. I don't know how true this is.

For sure it’s more integrated than southern Italy, but I don’t know and can’t speak about other EU countries. It’s entirely possible the higher traffic brought in the first asymptomatic cases earlier than in other regions.

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

#335

Post by kgwgk »

robocat wrote: post #192
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…

> Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. Actually I am judging countries by their ability to face facts, act proactively Over the last few months, act responsibly by making sensible decisions that are effective in controlling their outbreaks, while keeping their economy functioning. A++ for Taiwan (they started acting on Dec 3…

If South Korea deserves two A+ maybe you could award them an A++ :-)

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

#336

Post by cycomanic »

jwhite wrote: post #207
cycrutchfield wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many cases in SK and Germany have not resolved yet. I don’t think you can use those numbers so definitively.

I think SK's numbers are becoming more reliable by the day though. The new case rate has stabilised to a small number in the range of 50 to 150 per day and the active case count is dropping at a rate of over 200 per day. The daily death rate has been below 10 the whole time I believe. If that trend continues then SK's CFR will be well known soon and I would guess not dissimilar to current estimates. Though it's alway…

I find it interesting that SK is always brought up in these discussion about CFR and how now action is required. Actually SK is the prime example of a country acting quickly and early (also showing that general lockdown is not necessary in that case). They would have been even better off had it not been for patient 31.

One of the main effect of that action (apart from slowing down spread) was that they managed to keep the virus away from the most vulnerable parts of the population. Look at the age distribution in SK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102730/south-korea-coro... and compare that to Italy: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103023/coronavirus-case...

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

#337

Post by CydeWeys »

hyperbovine wrote: post #185
jsnell wrote: post #35

The title is funny, since Ioannidis is actually the one proposing measures ("do nothing") based on no evidence and exaggeration. Basically every number in the paper is tainted by him cherry-picking the most optimistic number possible, and then trying to twist it further into something even better. Like his argument for the R0 being near 1.3 is just that it's "probably" the case. At some point we need to be able to ca…

Weirdly enough, just yesterday I took all available sequence data currently on GISAID, used it to estimate R0, and got ... 1.3.

If that were true then how can you possibly explain how rapidly the pandemic is spreading?

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

#339

Post by guscost »

fcurts wrote: post #271
guscost wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not be naive here, the worst possible consequence of overreaction is a war .

In that case, why wouldn't the same hold for underreaction?

It would. But the correct choice is not obvious anymore, don't you see? Both worst-case outcomes lead to millions of deaths, and you're not able to prove which is more likely.

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

#340

Post by kgwgk »

antpls wrote: post #210
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even in Italy, the National Health Institute said that 88% of the declared "dead by covid19" had in fact at least 1 or 2 other pre-morbidities. If a 80 years old dies from heart attack and is tested positive by covid19, it will count as "dead by covid19". The numbers we see in the news of "CFR" for the covid19 are, in my opinion, inaccurate. The number only shows the spread of the infection, not its actual fatality r…

In anything Italy is undercounting covid-19 deaths:

The mayor of Bergamo, a city in northern Italy devastated by coronavirus, said on Monday that the actual death toll from the pandemic is likely several times higher than official count.

Giorgio Gori told NBC News on Monday that the total deaths in Bergamo are three to four times higher than during an average year, signaling that the virus is killing many more people than medical authorities have reported.

"We [have] evidence now in our territories that many people are unfortunately dying in their homes or in the residence for [seniors]," Gori said via Skype. "They are not officially tested because the test is only for people that go to the hospital with serious symptoms."

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