Everything Coronavirus

[golden]

Susan's book store was burned down last week, please try to keep up

Just as Karen the accountant was getting ready to go back to work.

[golden]

Yeah, Trump's bullshit turned out to be true. I'm sure he's just as shocked as everyone else.

The opposite, no? Isn't this saying that the miracle cure Trump was promoting doesn't work? I've lost track, tbh. Corona fatigue.

edit: Ok, I see. They are retracting a previous editorial saying that the miracle cure doesn't work. Does the retraction mean that it is proven to work, or that they shouldn't have come out strong that it didn't work, but we still don't know?

[chris]

The opposite, no? Isn't this saying that the miracle cure Trump was promoting doesn't work? I've lost track, tbh. Corona fatigue.

edit: Ok, I see. They are retracting a previous editorial saying that the miracle cure doesn't work. Does the retraction mean that it is proven to work, or that they shouldn't have come out strong that it didn't work, but we still don't know?

i believe the retraction implies that it wasn't proven not to work, and that research should continue to evaluate whether it does

[Apollo]

The opposite, no? Isn't this saying that the miracle cure Trump was promoting doesn't work? I've lost track, tbh. Corona fatigue.

edit: Ok, I see. They are retracting a previous editorial saying that the miracle cure doesn't work. Does the retraction mean that it is proven to work, or that they shouldn't have come out strong that it didn't work, but we still don't know?

I could be wrong but I thought the science was showing the drug to be potentially lethal in doses needed to fight COVID19. There was a whole news cycle just now on how the science showed the dangers and all the experts were calling Trump an idiot and a liar for claiming he was taking it. This was a retraction of that study and its statements. Maybe I'm confused, like you said, some of these stories are confusing because there's so much back and forth.

[KeonClark]

I could be wrong but I thought the science was showing the drug to be potentially lethal in doses needed to fight COVID19. There was a whole news cycle just now on how the science showed the dangers and all the experts were calling Trump an idiot and a liar for claiming he was taking it. This was a retraction of that study and its statements. Maybe I'm confused, like you said, some of these stories are confusing because there's so much back and forth.

Who can forget the one episode of "2020" in April when The Donald wanted to look into disinfectant injections.

It's been a year. I thought we'd still be talking about Kobe around now, NBA finals time.

[chris]

here is more info on the issue:

On 22 May the Lancet published a blockbuster peer-reviewed study which found the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which has been promoted by Donald Trump, was associated with a higher mortality rate in Covid-19 patients and increased heart problems.

The negative findings made global news and prompted the WHO to halt the hydroxychloroquine arm of its global trials.

But only days later Guardian Australia revealed glaring errors in the Australian data included in the study...

On Wednesday, the NEJM and the Lancet published an expression of concern about the hydroxychloroquine study...

Lancet editor Richard Horton told the Guardian: “Given the questions raised about the reliability of the data gathered by Surgisphere, we have today issued an Expression of Concern, pending further investigation.

“An independent data audit is currently underway and we trust that this review, which should be completed within the next week, will tell us more about the status of the findings reported in the paper by Mandeep Mehra and colleagues.”

[Apollo]

Who can forget the one episode of "2020" in April when The Donald wanted to look into disinfectant injections.

It's been a year. I thought we'd still be talking about Kobe around now, NBA finals time.

I was on a cruise ship when Kobe died. I remember feeling saddened and shocked and thinking what a shitty way to start the year. Damn, I didn't know what we were in for. Who knows if the cruiselines will even survive.

[inthepaint]

Here's the thing, no government is going to crack down on a protest like this. It is too dangerous for their own power and control. So we can laugh and point out the hypocrisy of it all but if an "anti-COVID19 lock down" movement were this organized and supported you'd be back to work next week and in a month or two hospitals would be completely overrun... Assuming that the science is correct and I have no reason to not believe the science. Re-opening is a long term commitment, letting protesters protest is a very short term commitment.

There's no overruning. The very science you refer to has no data correlating gatherings with spike in hospitalizations. Lockdown measures were largely based on "what if" worst case scenarios rather than past observations. The virus has been in Canada for at least 4 and a half months (very likely for 5 or 6, considering the close ties that many of our communities have to where the pandemic started, and the wide open travel before and during the holiday season in December).

Throughout all this time the virus has been active here, we had everything from no countermeasures, to severe countermeasures , to softer countermeasures (as things have been re-opening gradually for some time now). Through it all, hospitals have been the same: complete ghost towns. Even less occupancy than before, as people now only go to the hospital if they really need it, as opposed to crowding the ER room with minor ailments.

Hospitals are not all of sudden gonna go from that to overrun because people are back to work behind plexi-glasses. If they do, then we'll certainly see localized over-running of hospitals in all the cities that saw large protest gatherings. Matter of fact, this is a great opportunity for the science on this to move from "what ifs", to real observational data. If we see an accurate correlation between the specific large gatherings that have been happening in the US frequently now, and a specific "overrunning" of local hospitals near where the gatherings happened, then that's real epidemiology we can act on. If not, then is further confirmation the whole thing has been exaggerated, and came out of a place of fear rather than science.

[KHD]

Potentially flawed logic. Are condoms useless as well? I mean I don't see a baby surge, so how do we really know that unprotected sex causes pregnancies? We need to trust the research that's been completed or not. But if 'not' it has to be for a reason stronger than your argument.

Speaking as someone who has been an academic scientist for a while now, science and modeling are not infallible and are supposed to be questioned. Epidemiology as a field has been flat out wrong on most of its predictions to date in this pandemic. They are going to have their own "replication crisis" after everyone calms down.

I mean, as an academic, it is flat out insulting to see a fucking U of T professor post something as preposterously ill-fitted as this model and claim anything based on it.

[suspenders]

Speaking as someone who has been an academic scientist for a while now, science and modeling are not infallible and are supposed to be questioned. Epidemiology as a field has been flat out wrong on most of its predictions to date in this pandemic. They are going to have their own "replication crisis" after everyone calms down.

I mean, as an academic, it is flat out insulting to see a fucking U of T professor post something as preposterously ill-fitted as this model and claim anything based on it.

That thread was cringe worthy.

[chris]

I mean, as an academic, it is flat out insulting to see a fucking U of T professor post something as preposterously ill-fitted as this model and claim anything based on it.

what is that? from his caption it just appears to be new cases per day by nation of which he's selected a few to highlight, rather than any sort of model. unless you're contending you think it's ridiculous to make any sort of inference wrt to canada's performance based on such a wide spread of results and curves that appear to be all over the place?

[KHD]

what is that? from his caption it just appears to be new cases per day by nation of which he's selected a few to highlight, rather than any sort of model. unless you're contending you think it's ridiculous to make any sort of inference wrt to canada's performance based on such a wide spread of results and curves that appear to be all over the place?

i'm talking about the tweet I linked (David Fisman - U of T's "finest", evidently)

[chris]

i'm talking about the tweet I linked (David Fisman - U of T's "finest", evidently)

oh i thought it was any frasers tweet above that was the one that got linked, who's another U of T professor.

yeah agreed those are pretty poor fits

[Puffer]

...Epidemiology as a field has been flat out wrong on most of its predictions to date in this pandemic. They are going to have their own "replication crisis" after everyone calms down...

Epidemiology has been getting a pass for far too long. An bright undergraduate can do an epidemiological study on almost anything and find something to be alarmed about.

[KHD]

Epidemiology has been getting a pass for far too long. An bright undergraduate can do an epidemiological study on almost anything and find something to be alarmed about.

it's about time we stopped believing that medical doctors with a 1 to 2 year master's degree in public health suddenly become experts on the graph theory and other mathematics required to simulate a complex network of interacting nodes (required to properly study epidemic patterns). These are extremely complex systems.

It's no longer acceptable to present modeling results that are based on every single person having the same parameters in terms of number of contacts, etc.