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

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

#321

Post by Yoric »

nradov wrote: post #16
KerrAvon wrote: post #2

This is all fine, but the focus on deaths is sort of missing the larger societal problem. The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even people who had COVID but either recovered “fully” or never displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked. edit: Which is to say: The Great Barrington Declaration was wrong directionally as well. We really needed to optimize to eliminate COVID as much a…

That is misinformation. The risk of "long COVID" has been widely overstated. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjebm-2023-112338 Most any serious viral infection can potentially cause post-viral syndrome, but there is nothing particularly dangerous about SARS-CoV-2. And there is no realistic possibility of eliminating that virus. There is no sterilizing vaccine. It is now endemic worldwide through humans and multiple animal…

Interesting read, but as far as I can tell, this has not been peer-reviewed. At a casual glance, it didn't seem to be a survey or a summary of peer-reviewed research, either.

In other words, if I'm right, this is an opinion piece.

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

#322

Post by Yoric »

VancouverMan wrote: post #145
rcbdev wrote: post #126

I don't know about other countries but in Austria nurses were highly incentivized to report deaths immediately following a vaccination or weeks after an infection has passed as a covid death in the sense of national statistics. I would not be surprised if this "nudging" of on the ground reports over the course of the pandemic has rendered the data around covid deaths unreliable.

The death counts from Canada from that era are very questionable. As early as June of 2020, the "public health" authority in Canada's most-populous city (4th highest population in North America) revealed that the counting of deaths was being done using a methodology that sounds quite dubious: "Individuals who have died with COVID-19, but not as a result of COVID-19 are included in the case counts for COVID-19 deaths…

I don't have reference from the top of my head, but I seem to remember that the UK also started with the same counting methodology, then fixed it a few months into COVID. If my memory serves, the difference between the curves was pretty negligible.

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

#323

Post by Yoric »

fwungy wrote: post #224
sarchertech wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how many people were involved in the approvals across the entire globe? Most of the approvals processes were conducted in public by career scientists and doctors. There were tens of thousands of people involved that would have to look the other way. Any company that’s capable of pulling off a global operation like that with absolutely zero exposure, is already running the world and doesn’t need to bother…

You don't become a career scientist or doctor by rocking the boat. A medical degree is a huge investment. Doctors have student loans and families. Anyone who sticks their neck out is at risk of losing their license or research grants.

For context, in many countries outside of the US, you don't risk your student loan or your licence by rocking the boat, whether you're a physician or a researcher. In fact, if you're a researcher, chances are that rocking the boat is how you get exposure, which will improve your chances of a research grant.

Bad science, on the other hand, is how you lose your reputation and your research grants.

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

#324

Post by Yoric »

fwungy wrote: post #274
educaysean wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who sticks their neck out is at risk of losing their license or research grants. Sticks their neck out against whom? Against the Afro-Chinese/Euroamerican consortium that took kickbacks from the "medical companies" in order to keep the COVID theatre going? Those poor honest doctors around the world - if only they could speak up! If only one doctor would tell the truth!

Doctors depend on the free exchange of information to help their patients. It is one of the pathways that medicine advances. Covid was managed in a top down, hierarchical mode. Doctors who questioned it were threatened and punished by medical boards, some lost their licenses. Had a non-vaccine treatment for covid been discovered via clinical practice it would have destroyed the EUA for the covid vaccine, i.e. that's…

I'm not sure how you come to this conclusion. When a French doctor claimed that he had discovered a non-vaccine treatment, several hospitals around the world immediately attempted to replicate his claims.

As it turns out, they all failed, plus his own papers proved bogus.

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

#325

Post by tempestn »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #276
defrost wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From TFA: *The differences in state death rates are very likely because of differences in vaccine uptake* Just to be clear, I don’t mean to imply that COVID is intrinsically more likely to target Republicans or anything like that. Rather, my claim is that COVID is considerably more deadly in people who haven’t been vaccinated, and since Republicans are less likely to be vaccinated than Democrats, state partisanship s…

He actually spent a lot of time working around the obvious: that COVID absolutely is intrinsically more likely to target Republicans. Not because of any merits or demerits associated with being a Republican, but because "Republican" is strongly correlated with "old as hell" in many if not most US states, as well as "more likely to reject vaccines." Right-wing media figures consistently fed their audience a diet of va…

The whole point of the article is to address that criticism. Thats why he controlled for age. Also, red and blue states had similar death rates before vaccines, despite the virus still being more deadly to older people then.

The point of that statement is, the virus doesn't target someone because they're a Republican, but Republicans have been more likely to die from it because they're more likely to be unvaccinated.

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

#326

Post by tempestn »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #219
robhunter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Canadian here - I think the suggestion that restrictions were tied to hospital capacity is a bit off. Restrictions were largely political - driven extensively by polling - and changed frequently with minimal or nonexistent reasoning. Here in Ontario, the McKinsey-driven "Science Table" frequently referenced hospital capacity in their reports, but their modelling often ended up being off by orders of magnitude.…

How odd. You must live in a different Canada than I do.

Each province set health guidelines and restrictions mostly independently, so it's very possible they do.

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

#327

Post by tempestn »

alan-crowe wrote: post #292
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…

People grow old and die. It takes about seventy years. Thoroughly wasting a year of everybody's lives is equivalent to 1.4% mortality.

Living under some restrictions for a year is not equivalent to having a year deleted from your life.

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

#328

Post by slv77 »

firesteelrain wrote: post #283
slv77 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discrete event simulations is used to get better utilization of a constrained resource. The fact that hospitals were using it just reinforces that ICU capacity was considered a serious constraint by policymakers. Discrete event simulation will give policy makers more confidence in capacity models but doesn’t improve patient outcomes or reduce treatment time. Hospital protocols also improved over time to reduce the ne…

It is not for constrained resources. You might be thinking of linear programming. It deals in constraints to achieve an objective. Discrete event simulation deals in queues.

In this case the queue was wait time for an ICU bed and the simulation allowed them to better model how events (infection, admission, resolution) would impact ICU wait times. This allowed policymakers to better understand the tipping point where ICU wait times went non-linear.

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

#329

Post by MyelinatedT »

nradov wrote: post #299
nextaccountic wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which way vaccine mandates were the wrong tool to fight Covid? We should have higher rates of vaccination worldwide, not lower.

I support vaccination and recommend that people follow medical guidelines. But imposing medical procedures on anyone without their informed consent is absolutely immoral. Especially since the COVID-19 vaccines do little or nothing to prevent transmission.

It wasn’t just about preventing transmission - the vaccines dramatically reduced the rate of hospital admissions, which in theory should have allowed the health systems of the world to keep up with fewer infection control restrictions (like lockdowns, masking and social distancing).

I agree that forcing vaccines on people was, at the very least, ethically questionable. OTOH, there was a tremendous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering that would have had an outsized negative effect on the public health response, were vaccines not mandated.

There’s plenty of blame to go around.

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

#330

Post by listenallyall »

orblivion wrote: post #319
listenallyall wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wi…

Simultaneously I wish some of the people on your side (or the side you're advocating for here, anyway) didn't spend so much energy insulting those of us who wanted to put in a good faith effort not to exacerbate a community-level problem, and actively tried to provoke our anxiety and anger. Granted, that's probably difficult when you feel you're on the defensive. But I think that defensiveness goes both ways, which m…

Isn't this more of the same? Now, after the fact, claiming you wish all voices had gotten equal attention? It seems quite apparent that the government + media + corporations collaborated for 2+ years to push one singular narrative and to do as much as possible to reduce or silence anyone who questioned it or attempted to demonstrate that it wasn't entirely true.
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