Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy • Hacker News Board

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#241

Post by jonahhorowitz » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #175

robhunter wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What data is there to suggest that going to hockey games was "high risk behaviour"?

For individuals, it may not have been. Thousands of people going along to each game all with relatively low individual risk of contracting COVID. But if after every hockey game 20 hospital beds get used up, that's as risky for the health system as allowing a restaurant to serve uncooked chicken for an evening.

The confounder for this is that there was a 2 week lag between the hockey game and cases showing up in the emergency room and we basically (outside of China) gave up on doing contact tracing, so nobody knows how people were specifically infected.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#242

Post by scubbo » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:17 AM UTC

PheonixPharts wrote: post #226

scubbo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know anyone, or know anyone who knows anyone who has any serious "long-covid" symptoms. You are fortunate. I know several who have those symptoms (ranging in age from my own - mid-30's - to my parents' - early 60's), and have had several friends relate their own observations of loved-ones. If Long Covid isn't real, there's an astonishingly-coincidental prevalence of fatigue and impaired cognition from some…

> If Long Covid isn't real I'm not arguing that long covid isn't real (in fact I explicitly state "To be clear, I'm not doubting that long-covid exists"), just that I'm not convinced that we are "we are so, so fucked" (to quote parent). Your anecdata is appreciated since I share your lost faith in data about public health. > prevalence of fatigue and impaired cognition from some other source I personally think anxiet…

> I personally think anxiety and unspoken stress regarding climate collapse and other forms of society degradation we're experiencing and seeing accelerate are responsible for a good deal of this.

That's a fair point.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#243

Post by anyonecancode » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

I think for the pre-vaccine period, there's at least a couple issues that are still very unclear:

- how well did official policies map to actual behavior? I expect a lot of people still masked and distanced, regardless of what their particular state's policies were

- what specific behaviors actually made a difference? (Well, maybe it's really just a question of how much difference masking made -- I'd expect it's pretty clear that avoiding other people was pretty effective)

So for me, a more interesting and, I'd argue, practical question, is really about how effective _policy_ is. There were definitely a lot of costs, as it helped politicize things (who would have guess masks would become a partisan issue?).

I think of the case of Sweden, for example, where IIUC behavior was pretty cautious although policy was pretty loose.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#244

Post by gpt5 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:20 AM UTC

plaidfuji wrote: post #236

Although the body of this article is about Covid policies and vaccine usage, which seems to have set off a whole round of discussion here on that topic, my sense was that the point of this article was more general: > So my aim is generally to focus on stylized facts that are true and robust. And to keep repeating them. I like simple (or simple-seeming) claims that — and I can’t emphasize this last part enough — I exp…

To be fair, COVID's death rate has such a strong association with (very) old age, that not accounting for it is quite questionable. In the article, Nate mentioned himself that Mormon population is 100x higher in Utah and that's a significant effect. The COVID death rate of over 85 years old is more than 100x higher than the very young.

I'm not questioning the results, just that accounting for age when analyzing COVID is definitely a reasonable question to ask for any conclusion.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#245

Post by moorow » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:22 AM UTC

defrost wrote: post #213

logicchains wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are papers attempting that, such as this recent one, which looked at whether shelter in place policies reduced overall excess mortality: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.4737 . "Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) policies. We do not find that cou…

FWiW, because it's a very unique situation globally, W.Australia a state 3x the size of Texas with a population a bit over 2 million people effectively "sheltered in place" by airlocking its borders - international and inter state flights had to quarentine, road transport on the one major transport road to the eastern state was pick up | drop off with out of state drivers quarentined, shipping through the port was no…

As someone that lives in Perth, our experience as a while through COVID was actually a net positive. Not to take away from anyone who lost loved ones, but Perth basically gained the benefits of COVID (WFH shift, better health funding, better remote technologies) and very few of the negatives.

It is an extremely rare situation though, and would not have been possible if it were not the most isolated capital city in the world.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#246

Post by listenallyall » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:27 AM UTC

pwarner wrote: post #228

ezekiel68 wrote: post #222

I was a good US citizen and used what little influence I had among my social circle to encourage others to follow the COVID protection measures. And I adore Nate Silver. So, pardon me if I confess that all I read in this article was: Blah blah blah 'I mostly agree with ... an October 2020 anti-lockdown statement signed by a large number of scientists and medical professionals. “Those who are not vulnerable should imm…

Almost everyone was pretty wrong about COVID, at least at some points in time. But it's very rare for anyone to admit it. I'll admit I was wrong, between sanitizing my hands when it was really in the air, to assuming the vaccines would end it. Lots of mistakes on my end!

This "everybody was wrong" and "whoopsie!" self-absolution is some of the ugliest and most hypocritical parts of the entire Covid phenomenon. No -- plenty of people were ardently against lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school shutdowns, but all kinds of pundits and self-selected rule enforcers loudly lambasted and insulted them endlessly.

Many, many lives were permanently affected in multiple, very negative ways, with no chance of returning to pre-covid "normal." The resentment and frustration from individual lives being crushed while the entire ordeal seemingly aligned and advanced corporate interests, is only triggered further by the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ attitude.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#247

Post by ianai » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:28 AM UTC

slv77 wrote: post #221

loeg wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously rearward looking metrics were irrelevant and no one, including me, is suggesting otherwise. You can make policies with the goal of reducing deaths in advance of measurement, and policymakers did. The argument I am criticizing never mentions rearward metrics as a problem.

My impression was that a segment of the population felt that the lockdowns and other constraints imposed by policymaker were primarily fear based. This may have been due a perceived difference between religious versus secular acceptance of death (a continuation versus end). My point isn’t that policymakers can’t make nuanced decisions about the value of a human life (since it is done on a regular basis) but instead t…

Toure seriously doing yeoman's work with these comments.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#248

Post by actuallyalys » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:31 AM UTC

jonahhorowitz wrote: post #238

ezekiel68 wrote: post #222

I was a good US citizen and used what little influence I had among my social circle to encourage others to follow the COVID protection measures. And I adore Nate Silver. So, pardon me if I confess that all I read in this article was: Blah blah blah 'I mostly agree with ... an October 2020 anti-lockdown statement signed by a large number of scientists and medical professionals. “Those who are not vulnerable should imm…

The measures that seem like they should have worked, but people claim they didn't are: - masks: clearly they worked for the medical professionals that were treating patients during the first waves, as they were directly exposed and didn't get sick, why didn't they work for the population at large? Did we not wear them correctly, consistently? - schools: It seems obvious that schools could be a huge vector of transmis…

I am a little frustrated over an apparent lack of curiosity around mask effectiveness.

* If you think they're an effective measure for the public in general (which is probably closest to my position), then the variation in studies seems like it should still give you pause because it seems like the way mandates and messaging are implemented could undermine the usefulness. * If you think they're effective in individual cases when people do it diligently, it still seems like you should be worried about the possibility that a lot of people who think they're diligently and correctly masking aren't, including some medical professionals who are regularly exposed to the disease. * Honestly, even if you don't think they work at all, it still seems like learning why masks don't work would expand our knowledge of the disease.

Of course, we do know about plenty of factors that undermine mask effectiveness: people avoiding them altogether, people wearing ones that don't fit, people not covering their nose, etc. And of course researchers can skew the results with their methodological choices. But there seems to be enough variability in these studies that unknown or underappreciated factors could be significant.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#249

Post by nemo » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:32 AM UTC

fhcuvuvuc wrote: post #135

Waterluvian wrote: post #131

It was a hard thing to broach at the time without people frothing at the mouth about how I must be anti vaccine or something: Has there been any attempt to calculate the cost-benefit of all the various measures and how extreme we should go with them? I’m guessing it’s hard to quantify and compare. A lot of things like general depression, isolation, kids missing half a year of school, etc. can’t really be evaluated ag…

It doesn't matter. You can't have these conversations without being censored anymore. My works HR department got sick of having people use "logic" and "evidence" to argue against their policies. After kicking a few people out the door and generally saying you can't talk about this at work anymore, nobody talks about it.

>use "logic" and "evidence" to argue against their policies.

Many times when folks who tell me they're presenting "logic" and "evidence" in a debate they're personally invested in there's grave flaws in both their logic and evidence presented. The freedom to intellectually debate HR's policies in a company is rightly limited, you can call it "censorship" but endless uninvited earnest debate about policies isn't really wanted or needed in the workplace.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#250

Post by fwungy » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 3:37 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #142

fwungy wrote: post #25

I really don't trust any of the numbers on covid. A vaccine for a dangerous illness that can affect billions of people is a very big payday. There's lots of money to spread around to politicians, corrupt scientists, and corrupt media. I'd like to see a real scientific debate with adversarial inquiry so we could know if numbers are being fudged and which ones they are. I trust science, but not greed driven capitalists…

You're the unfortunate but inevitable result of our total failure to keep critical institutions honest and trustworthy. When scientists can accept money to produce fake results, or to bury any results unfavorable to corporations without consequences, and doctors can lie or take kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies without severe consequences for both the pharmaceutical company or the doctors, and politicians and n…

I'd just like to see them answer some hard questions, just like I have to answer on my job.

The point of vaccines is to extend human lifespan and reduce illness. It should be a relatively easy matter for them to show that taking more vaccines does those things, right? Assuming similar infrastructure and income (rough) between countries there should be some correlation between vaccine rates and healthcare outcome statistics.

We could even rate individual vaccines on how much illness and expense they alleviate. Perhaps some are more effective than others?

But to even questions anything about a vaccine somehow makes one an "antivaxxer" - someone who irrationally hates vaccines. There would probably be a lot fewer "antivaxxers" if the media and medical corporations did not respond like jerks when people had honest questions about vaccines, like they would when choosing any other product.