6 ms·

100% agree. I’m trained as an epidemiologist, and this coronavirus talk gets so frustrating. The problem doesn’t just boil down to R0 and CFR, but also consid

by reureu 7y ago

100% agree. I’m trained as an epidemiologist, and this coronavirus talk gets so frustrating. The problem doesn’t just boil down to R0 and CFR, but also considerations like how reliable is the data you’re receiving. In grad school, our professors often commented that the unfortunate aspect of public health is that everyone views themselves as an expert (since we are all alive and have been sick at some point). This leads to a lot of overconfidence and incorrect statements/beliefs propagating. I’m glad folks are interested in this - I just wish that interest would translate to academic pursuit and not armchair experts that have read a few blog posts.

DrNuke 7y ago
You know, I am from Italy, people here wonder why the gov is quarantining the entire North of the country, in that almost killing an already weak economy... so two of the most respected Italian epidemiologists needed to come up with something fast, clear and effective to explain ordinary people why many thousand of them are losing income and jobs and why quarantine is needed for another week at least... it is not armchair expertise at play here, but the transition from academic conferences to the public discourse without losing the scientific anchor that is justifying semi-draconian mesaures.
- Reelin 7y ago
  I think you've described the primary issue right here. There frequently seems to be a lack of effective, timely, and unambiguous communication on such topics. It seems like much of what's out there is either overly dense and confusing (to the layperson), or overly simplified to the point of not addressing the psychology of what people are worrying about. There's often no attempt to explain the _why_, and sometimes the tone even comes across as a bit condescending. Such an environment seems like the perfect recipe to encourage rampant speculation and the subsequent spread of misinformation. Simply telling people "you're not an expert", no matter how well founded, doesn't really help anything here. There's a snippet of a few minutes from the Washington State press release last night (starting @ 10:25) that I thought was an example of reasonably good communication on the topic. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILL-maWoJw&t=625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILL-maWoJw&t=625)
  - ethbro 7y ago
    In a lot of ways, public health communication has the same problem as Federal Reserve communication -- any communication is itself likely to influence the situation. Consequently, the standard playbook seems to be "Say as little as possible, to avoid doing harm." It feels like part of the problem is public communication not having adapted to the internet age. And we'll probably have to wait another ~10-20 years for that generational + academic shift. Historically, you could get away with restricting communication on the limited number of mass market broadcast mediums. Now, restricted information just creates a vacuum filled by random other internet voices.
  - 8bitsrule 7y ago
    That (video) was a very effective presentation ... telling the public the knowns, decreasing the natural fears of the unknowns that have been amped-up by weeks of (relatively uninformed) news. This sort of communication should have begun weeks ago. People need assurance that this is a nasty flu, not the plague.
    - ljw1001 7y ago
      > People need assurance that this is a nasty flu, not the plague. The deadliest epidemic in history was a nasty flu (the 1918 Spanish flu). That killed around 50 million people. This virus appears to be at least 100X deadlier than the endemic seasonal flu.
ptx 7y ago
Part of it might be that when the experts try to lay it out for us laypeople, their explanations are sometimes simplified to a point where they clearly make no sense, which creates concern. When an expert says that "it is the case that A because of B" but we already know that B is false or impossible, what are we supposed to believe? For example, when China changed the definition of a confirmed case, the new definition caused a big spike in the numbers. Later they changed back to the old definition (lower numbers) and the new number of old-definition cases was still higher than the new-definition peak, but with a lower rate of growth. The WHO called this an "encouraging trend", which was very confusing. The trend would look encouraging if you didn't know about the change in definition, but with the change in definition in mind it didn't look encouraging at all. Were they operating on a level beyond that where it does look encouraging again? It would put many people's minds at rest, I think, if the experts would explain their reasoning better. "It looks encouraging. Now, I'm not talking about the superficial encouraging look of this graph here, which is just an illusion because ..., but if you look deeper still it surprisingly turns out to be encouraging nevertheless because ...".
- FooHentai 7y ago
  That's predicated on things actually looking encouraging if you scratch the layers deeper than what the graph is indicating. There are few actually-qualified folks talking openly about this kind of stuff (See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg) which is as close as I've been able to find to an unbiased, qualified interpreter for the information coming out. The overall impression I get is 'this thing is pretty bad, there are prudent measures that can and should be taken to limit spread and slow rates of infection to prevent services becoming overwhelmed. So far measures have been inadequate leaving us facing into a worse situation than could have been'.

by reureu 7y ago

DrNuke 7y ago

You know, I am from Italy, people here wonder why the gov is quarantining the entire North of the country, in that almost killing an already weak economy... so two of the most respected Italian epidemiologists needed to come up with something fast, clear and effective to explain ordinary people why many thousand of them are losing income and jobs and why quarantine is needed for another week at least... it is not armchair expertise at play here, but the transition from academic conferences to the public discourse without losing the scientific anchor that is justifying semi-draconian mesaures.

Reelin 7y ago
I think you've described the primary issue right here. There frequently seems to be a lack of effective, timely, and unambiguous communication on such topics. It seems like much of what's out there is either overly dense and confusing (to the layperson), or overly simplified to the point of not addressing the psychology of what people are worrying about. There's often no attempt to explain the _why_, and sometimes the tone even comes across as a bit condescending. Such an environment seems like the perfect recipe to encourage rampant speculation and the subsequent spread of misinformation. Simply telling people "you're not an expert", no matter how well founded, doesn't really help anything here. There's a snippet of a few minutes from the Washington State press release last night (starting @ 10:25) that I thought was an example of reasonably good communication on the topic. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILL-maWoJw&t=625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILL-maWoJw&t=625)
- ethbro 7y ago
  In a lot of ways, public health communication has the same problem as Federal Reserve communication -- any communication is itself likely to influence the situation. Consequently, the standard playbook seems to be "Say as little as possible, to avoid doing harm." It feels like part of the problem is public communication not having adapted to the internet age. And we'll probably have to wait another ~10-20 years for that generational + academic shift. Historically, you could get away with restricting communication on the limited number of mass market broadcast mediums. Now, restricted information just creates a vacuum filled by random other internet voices.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  That (video) was a very effective presentation ... telling the public the knowns, decreasing the natural fears of the unknowns that have been amped-up by weeks of (relatively uninformed) news. This sort of communication should have begun weeks ago. People need assurance that this is a nasty flu, not the plague.
  - ljw1001 7y ago
    > People need assurance that this is a nasty flu, not the plague. The deadliest epidemic in history was a nasty flu (the 1918 Spanish flu). That killed around 50 million people. This virus appears to be at least 100X deadlier than the endemic seasonal flu.

ptx 7y ago

Part of it might be that when the experts try to lay it out for us laypeople, their explanations are sometimes simplified to a point where they clearly make no sense, which creates concern. When an expert says that "it is the case that A because of B" but we already know that B is false or impossible, what are we supposed to believe? For example, when China changed the definition of a confirmed case, the new definition caused a big spike in the numbers. Later they changed back to the old definition (lower numbers) and the new number of old-definition cases was still higher than the new-definition peak, but with a lower rate of growth. The WHO called this an "encouraging trend", which was very confusing. The trend would look encouraging if you didn't know about the change in definition, but with the change in definition in mind it didn't look encouraging at all. Were they operating on a level beyond that where it does look encouraging again? It would put many people's minds at rest, I think, if the experts would explain their reasoning better. "It looks encouraging. Now, I'm not talking about the superficial encouraging look of this graph here, which is just an illusion because ..., but if you look deeper still it surprisingly turns out to be encouraging nevertheless because ...".

FooHentai 7y ago
That's predicated on things actually looking encouraging if you scratch the layers deeper than what the graph is indicating. There are few actually-qualified folks talking openly about this kind of stuff (See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg) which is as close as I've been able to find to an unbiased, qualified interpreter for the information coming out. The overall impression I get is 'this thing is pretty bad, there are prudent measures that can and should be taken to limit spread and slow rates of infection to prevent services becoming overwhelmed. So far measures have been inadequate leaving us facing into a worse situation than could have been'.