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Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

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Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#21
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sample size of 1000 is huge. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-of-...

It could be huge or tiny depending on the size of the mean and standard deviation of the effect you're looking for in comparison to the mean and sdev of unrelated variations.

Given that the QOI is a single multinomial proportion, an unweighted[1] random sample of the population has a maximum[2] ~3.1% margin of error on either side.

You could argue the QOI is something else (the sum or difference, or even the ratio estimator reported in the title). Margins of error on ratio estimators are quite a bit larger because of numerical properties of ratios.

Since there is interest, I ran a quick simulation[3] to derive the CI of the ratio estimate above ("5x"). By Monte Carlo and using standard assumptions, the confidence interval on the "5X" quantity of interest is 4.51 - 6.82x calculated via the quantile method.[4]

The confidence interval is not appreciably smaller in magnitude if you double the sample size, we're well past the point of diminishing returns.

[1] Weighting would induce a design effect, but here I would suggest that the real problem is a poorly defined population and sample frame, not sample error. This is the real issue here: we have zero reason to believe these 1,000 people are a random sample of any interesting population.

[2] For a parameter \theta = 0.5 -- uncertainly decreases as the statistic becomes further from 0.5. But classical MOEs overreport like this.

[3] R Code on Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/raw/UjHg7qnR

[4] Similar results come from taking the numerical sd of the sampling distribution and calculating a NACI about the mean, I just did the quantile trick because it's less code.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#22
post #12

Worrying about a potentially deadly illness that you can do little about, vs worrying about losing your source of income and having to.. look for another job. I'm definitely more worried about infection, too.

My thought is the fear of additional medical costs due to infection on top of the bills I am expected to pay.

Yep. If you have to spend a week in hospital in the US it can break you even if you have "decent" insurance. Three words that strike terror into the hearts of Americans: "Out of network"

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#25
post #3
post #2

The article didn’t share the survey method and the sample size is 1000. I couldn’t take it seriously

A sample size of 1000 is huge. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/howcan-a-poll-of-...

If random

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#26
The study doesn't say how many of the respondents still have jobs.

If I have a steady job, then of course I will worry more about my kids -- because I don't don't have to worry about the bills!

If you have kids you will worry about their safety.

If you lost your job, you may still worry about their safety more than your bills, since you know that the bills can always be dealt with later.

This survey seems quite flawed.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#27

Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide). I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different speci…

> Yes they have less effects than adults but some children do go to the hospital and ICU

You see this kind of vague claim online all the time when it comes to COVID but with no actual data.

What are the actual risks of a child going to the hospital as a result of COVID infection? How does that compare to other risks that you regularly expose your kids to?

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#28
post #23

Yeah the health ramifications are massive. you may go under debt and probably accrue more of you default on a few payments but if you are sick and can’t get back up fast potentially your entirely family will suffer a lot

The bigger worry here is that the kids pass it to a parent since most cases in children are mild. A bad case of covid (not even talking about a fatal case) could have you out of commission unable to work for months. And then medical bills on top of that.

Re: Parents are 5X as Worried about Infection and School than Work and Paying Bills

#30

Yeah this is definitely not surprising to the least! Even if I was laid off I am more worried about my children having long term health effects (or worse) than missing a few bills, and that is before considering how flexible lenders are claiming to be (I've gotten emails from all my major bills about covid related help they can provide). I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different speci…

> I am just so confused why some people are acting like kids are a different species when it comes to covid.

Well, it's not that surprising when you have a disease whose harm factor is a function of your age. The vast majority of covid deaths are the elderly. The tiniest minority of covid deaths are young children. Their ability to spread to adults is their biggest risk factor, not the disease itself.

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