On “Armchair Epidemiology” • Hacker News Board

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#61

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #15

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 Sorry, but look at how China, South Korea, Taiwan etc. are doing right now - this doesn't jive at all with "social distancing is a drop in the bucket". Even Western countries/places which started social distancing early in their local outbreaks look like they'll be a lot better off than places which didn't. > The vast majority of young people will be totally fine This is al…

[deleted]

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#62

Post by fragmede » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

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.

The mush is because we don't actually know, and we're all afraid to admit it. Like, does this thing confer a lasting immunity upon those who survive? We have educated guesses, and can draw some inferences, and cite statistics and cases from countries at each other, but until it's 6-months later and we have incontrovertible proof, it's mush dancing around the honest answer to many of the questions floating around is: We don't know.

The second problem is that we're clearly terrible at collectively digesting new information uniformly. New information is evolving our understanding and things said a week or months ago no longer reflect our current understanding. But not everyone's subscribed to the same newsletter, so we're not on the same page. Back in January, based on SARS and MERS, and how much that affected the western world, the comparison to the flu was apt. Was. It's not longer January and that comparison is bad and is liable to get you branded a right-wing capitalism-death-cultist.

There's no way to read only what's changed, so either to get into the muck and drink from the firehose, or defer to experts, some of whom are actually paid to deal with this.

Go read a book, the muck'll be here waiting for you when you get back.

When you do, ask the experts, when you get back and update your knowledge correspondingly.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#63

Post by defen » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

AlexMennen wrote: post #55

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.

Here's a blog post from February 6 by Greg Cochran, one of the people mentioned. Looks pretty good in retrospect https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/strategy-not-the-f...

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#64

Post by mdp553 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

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…

Speaking as an infectious disease epidemiologist - epidemiology is a broad field and includes people from many different backgrounds. The type of epidemiology I do (dynamic modeling of epidemics) leans more towards people with backgrounds in statistics, physics, math, and engineering when compared to the more "traditional" types epidemiology (if there even is such a thing anymore).

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#65

Post by Engineering-MD » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 8:30 AM UTC

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…

There is benefit to a team with diverse backgrounds. Mathematical and statistical knowledge is vital, but so is understanding how hospitals and humans react to disease and interventions. As for looking back at medicine in 200 years as blood letting and humours, I think that is to misunderstand medicine in its entirety. Modern medicine is evidence based where it can be, mixed with a high level of uncertainty and best application of basic science. This has predictive power, but is obviously limited due to the complexity of the system. A better analogy would be industrial era engineering vs modern day engineering: the same aim with similar attempts but much better understanding of the system at a higher level of resolution achieved by improvements in technology and base understanding.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#66

Post by Engineering-MD » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

Engineering-MD wrote: post #65

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…

There is benefit to a team with diverse backgrounds. Mathematical and statistical knowledge is vital, but so is understanding how hospitals and humans react to disease and interventions. As for looking back at medicine in 200 years as blood letting and humours, I think that is to misunderstand medicine in its entirety. Modern medicine is evidence based where it can be, mixed with a high level of uncertainty and best…

As an addition, I was browsing the r/physics subreddit and came across a very relevant post from a physicist’s point of view.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/frsd16/the_best_th...

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#67

Post by bmn__ » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

dariusj18 wrote: post #56

zozbot234 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Sounds like a hypothesis that affords to be tested.

Oh look, the results are already in! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727761

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#68

Post by downshun » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 11:22 AM UTC

Engineering-MD wrote: post #66

Engineering-MD wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is benefit to a team with diverse backgrounds. Mathematical and statistical knowledge is vital, but so is understanding how hospitals and humans react to disease and interventions. As for looking back at medicine in 200 years as blood letting and humours, I think that is to misunderstand medicine in its entirety. Modern medicine is evidence based where it can be, mixed with a high level of uncertainty and best…

As an addition, I was browsing the r/physics subreddit and came across a very relevant post from a physicist’s point of view. https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/frsd16/the_best_th...

Thanks for sharing.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#69

Post by notacoward » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 12:14 PM UTC

There are two things seriously wrong with this article.

(1) It treats authorities and non-authorities as monolithic. Far from it. There were plenty of serious, well qualified epidemiologists who were warning of the danger, and they were right. There were even more non-serious people using their popularity in completely unrelated fields to minimize the danger, and they were wrong. Sadly there still are, most definitely including here. Yes, the people in the actual seats of US federal power got it wrong, and plenty of amateurs got it right, but it's more complicated than the "don't trust experts" narrative.

(2) Sample of one. Even if it weren't for the above, and the two groups were monolithic, this is just one case where the authorities were wrong and others were right. Yes, it's a very prominent case because of the consequences, but prominence is not the same as statistical significance. Treating it so is a form of cognitive bias/error.

The real lesson here is not to distrust experts or authorities. It's not to trust conspiracy theorists or people with whom we empathize more because they're in our own industry. It's to trust science itself - empirical facts and analysis applied to facts. Both experts and others can help us to interpret those facts, put them in perspective, correct common errors in analysis, but ultimately it should be the facts that rule. The reason so many authorities and non-authorities were wrong is because they rejected the scientific approach, not because of who they are.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#70

Post by dariusj18 » Tue, Mar 31, 2020, 1:21 PM UTC

bmn__ wrote: post #67

dariusj18 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sounds like a hypothesis that affords to be tested. Oh look, the results are already in! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727761

So I think I inferred that PC was referring to wearing a mask to prevent getting infected, which may have not been the case, but in a way needs to have clarification. 100% mask usage would be great, then the particles never get into the air from the infected. I think it's important to not let people think that wearing a simple cloth mask will prevent you from being infected.