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On “Armchair Epidemiology”

scottaaronson.com

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Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#51

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

knzhou wrote: post #34
adnzzzzZ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally just posted this a few days ago https://twitter.com/WHOWPRO/status/1243171683067777024 when we know it's false and that masks do offer some level of personal protection on top of making everyone around you safer, given that you can infect others while asymptomatic.

Okay, yeah, the mask thing absolutely blows my mind. I have absolutely no idea what their motivation for saying this is, when just about every expert in every east Asian country disagrees.

That tweet and the attached video are entirely true. It's just that individual people may wish to not chance it, and wear a mask nonetheless, and masks will end up allocated by luck and purchasing power instead of need and risk profile.

There's also some evidence that widespread usage of masks may be effective in lowering the risk for such a disease, but deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now, so it's counterproductive to focus on it. Distancing is achievable instead, and leads to a similar result.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#52

Post by [deleted] »

gentleman11 wrote: post #43
tjr225 wrote: post #2

If this current situation has taught me anything it is that the internet is a mush of armchair garbage and it’s overwhelming to decipher- yes even what I’m typing now. The whole thing has me desperate to ignore everyone and read a book. What a joke; to think we are all somehow experts.

I worry about this in software development. There are so many “experts” posting blogs about whatever is on their mind, and the tide of common wisdom gets caught up in it. Eg, everybody, everywhere said that NodeJS has amazing performance for high io workloads. If you look at benchmarks however, the nodejs systems cannot keep up with older tech, so now the argument is “we use it because it’s a nice environment, not fo…

[deleted]

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#53

Post by zozbot234 »

temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #51
knzhou wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, yeah, the mask thing absolutely blows my mind. I have absolutely no idea what their motivation for saying this is, when just about every expert in every east Asian country disagrees.

That tweet and the attached video are entirely true. It's just that individual people may wish to not chance it, and wear a mask nonetheless, and masks will end up allocated by luck and purchasing power instead of need and risk profile. There's also some evidence that widespread usage of masks may be effective in lowering the risk for such a disease, but deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale…

> deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now

You don't need high grade medical masks to significantly reduce the amount of transmission. Any sort of fabric-based covering on your face can help, just make sure you can comfortably breathe through it. Fabric is cheap and ubiquitous, it's literally everywhere.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#54

Post by wwweston »

Relate to a lot of this (and it's especially worth noting there is something about identity contempt especially on social media but also IRL that hobbles our ability to coordinate understanding and action) but... let's also not forget it wasn't only contrarians and autodidacts who were making concerned noises -- there are plenty of professional epidemiologists and other specialists who were beating the warning drums.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#55

Post by AlexMennen »

bJGVygG7MQVF8c wrote: post #49

> I sent a quick reply two minutes later: > For now, I think the risk from the ordinary flu is much much greater! But worth watching to see if it becomes a real pandemic. Nope. Lost all credibility right there. Do not pass GO, do not collect 2 minutes of attention. Sorry. Oh, you've learned something from the error and you've updated your priors? Great, good for you. You're still unreliable.

This seems overly harsh. Few people took COVID-19 seriously on Feb 4, so this standard makes almost everyone have no credibility, including people who don't admit to the error. All humans are unreliable.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#56

Post by dariusj18 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #53
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tweet and the attached video are entirely true. It's just that individual people may wish to not chance it, and wear a mask nonetheless, and masks will end up allocated by luck and purchasing power instead of need and risk profile. There's also some evidence that widespread usage of masks may be effective in lowering the risk for such a disease, but deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale…

> deploying widespread usage of masks equitably on a global scale is nigh-impossible right now You don't need high grade medical masks to significantly reduce the amount of transmission. Any sort of fabric-based covering on your face can help, just make sure you can comfortably breathe through it. Fabric is cheap and ubiquitous, it's literally everywhere.

That doesn't seem right. If the mask doesn't prevent droplets from penetrating doesn't it actually act as more of a trap for potentially viral-laced droplets to gather and get inhaled?

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#57

Post by [deleted] »

screye wrote: post #32

What has struck me most about Epidemiology, are the qualifications needed to be someone pursuing a career in it. It seems like an Epidemiologist is most likely to be a doctor with some knowledge of statistics. On the contrary, I would have thought that a statistician/operations research person with domain knowledge of medicine would be a lot better suited to study epidemiology. A lot of the existing models also seem…

[deleted]

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#58

Post by elchief »

empath75 wrote: post #20
elchief wrote: post #5

Who should we believe, then, the WHO? They told us China had it under control, and not to wear masks

The math. We had the fatality rate and r0. As soon as it was obvious that it spread out of control on China, it was just a matter of time. You didn’t need to be an epidemiologist, you just needed a high school maths education.

Which math to believe, the 4.8% CFR, or the 19% deaths/completed?

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#59

Post by knzhou »

wwweston wrote: post #54

Relate to a lot of this (and it's especially worth noting there is something about identity contempt especially on social media but also IRL that hobbles our ability to coordinate understanding and action) but... let's also not forget it wasn't only contrarians and autodidacts who were making concerned noises -- there are plenty of professional epidemiologists and other specialists who were beating the warning drums.

Exactly. For example, back on February 3 we had this from Harvard epidemiologists:

> “Many epidemiologists and people who are following this outbreak closely are assuming that it’s probably quite a bit more widespread than the case counts suggest,” said Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “Many people also think that there’s probably over 100,000 in reality out in mainland China, for example. We just don’t capture all of those through the case reporting we have. … We can assume that this is growing at somewhat of an exponential rate, and it will continue increasing in scale.”

This story wasn't broken by bloggers!

Source: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/as-confirmed-...

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#60

Post by [deleted] »

kennywinker wrote: post #23
alexandercrohde wrote: post #12

This is a topic that seems to be in a perverse conflict of interests. A. Politicians have interests representing themselves as well as their country, and thus have given dishonest advice (masks don't help) with an ulterior motive (save them for hospital), downplayed the problem, and covered up the number of cases. B. I think a lot of actually qualified experts (doctors, scientists) to think the public can't handle th…

> Social distancing is a drop in the bucket This is a frustrating and sad thing to read here. Social distancing WILL save lives. Even if it is a "drop in the bucket", and I don't believe that to be true, once hospitals are at capacity every SINGLE severe case that social distancing prevents or delays is potentially a life saved. > ventilators make a tiny difference Would you say that to the families who have a loved…

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