8 ms·

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're

It's disappointing that the WHO and national agencies seem not able to adequately inform the public about their assessment of the situations, the models they're using and the conclusions they're drawing. Right now, the most shared article on Corona is written by a growth hacker from SF who cobbled together an Excel sheet and recommends it to people to decide whether they should close their companies or stay at home. I'm not saying this is bad, I just think such recommendations and articles should come from people that have more experience with modeling such epidemics. Fitting a dataset with an exponential function is easy, it just doesn't tell us much beyond the current growth rate. It's also a bit ridiculous to judge how bad the situation is in a given country without accounting for differences like the number of tests that are done and the overall population of these countries.

whydoineedone 7y ago
mind sharing the 'growth hacker from SF's article?
Dumblydorr 7y ago
This is because quality science is not correlated with good marketing, virality of media (bad word choice), or how people feel about scientific content. Most people are woefully uneducated in science and it's showing on the internet especially.
hef19898 7y ago
Exactly this! I kind of understand the WHO, the broad public, including media, doesn't care about models and such things. Providing to much details can have the opposite effect, instead of calming things down it could spark more fear. On the other hand, online stuff like said growth hacker can draw a lot of attention. This will end up in the mainstream. That diseases aren't exponential, who cares when exponential curves fit so nicely early on. What could, and should, be done by large tech companies is preventing this. Google could make sure that every Corona related search ends up showing the WHO on top, followed by local sources like the CDC, Robert Koch, John Hopkins and so on. They could support these parties in getting them up in the search results. Facebook could do the same, as does Twitter. In Germany, you have to explicitly include Robert Koch or RKI in your search for the link to show. Even by doing so, earlier today it still wasn't the tip link. The rest is reporting crap written every time a new case was found somewhere. And yet, nothing like that happens.
- Certhas 7y ago
  But the early stages of disease spread _are_ exponential. And I find that people really fail to understand the meaning of that, and how scary numbers like "new confirmed cases doubling every two days, 500 new cases in France yesterday" truly are.
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Yes, but extrapolating the early exponential phase is, plain and simple, mathematically wrong. No idea why data scientists aren't going the first mile and look up the relevant functions before spitting data out. Total fail on their part, IMHO.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      It's not wrong: it has produced extremely good predictive results day after day for total cases outside of China for months now. Using a simpler approximate function in place of a more complicated exact function is far from wrong, it is bread and butter for getting practical results in all areas of science.
      - zaroth 7y ago
        It’s right until it’s totally wrong, e.g. for any country which has already peaked, of which there are several.
        goatlover 7y ago
        Countries that implemented extreme measures to slow the spread of the virus. It will be different for countries which haven't. The WHO and other health officials around the world are saying the same thing. This will spread to a large number of people. It's too late for containment, you can only hope to flatten the curve. That's why it's now a pandemic.
        zaroth 7y ago
Certhas 7y ago
I think that this spreadsheet is communicating several things well but I share it as a "reasonable bad case back of the envelope calculation". And if we mean the same article, it actually does a reasonable job at outlining the uncertainties around testing and national differences, and focuses on what is probably the most robustly comparable data point we have: Number of confirmed deaths. The problem with models used by experts is that they are diverse hard to parameterize and that the scientific conclusions drawn are based on many different models not on one. It's a very fluid situation.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Exactly why replacing by something simplistic doesn't fly. I'll go on a limb and say if I tried something similar in this guy's field, I would be destroyed for publishing it. And rightly so.
  - Certhas 7y ago
    The post in question mostly presents observations about the base line models and data taken from reputable and cited sources. It didn't make up simplistic models on the fly. I would say it is breathless journalism. I also would wish for better explanations from the scientists actively working on it. My first go to is RKI.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
It is surprising to me to. If this was Star Trek world, you'd have computational models built by experts shared and discussed the very first day, forming the very foundation of the discussion and policy around the virus. I know of a certain company whose entire purpose is building and selling a product that lets you plug in equations of complex, dynamic systems and play with the models to understand and predict things. Like serious, industrial-grade stuff that's used to design chemical plants. They could easily get a virologist on call and model the spread more sensibly, or even individual countries in detail, and release that - which would give a basis for people to discuss what to do and when in a much better way that's happening now. They'd probably also save themselves a year's worth of marketing expenses. But I don't see them, or any of their competitors doing anything like this. I'm thoroughly disappointed. Is the ArcGIS dashboard from John Hopkins University really the best our civilization has to offer in terms of informing people and evidence-based discussions? Because while I want to believe that our politicians have more sophisticated tools available, I'm pretty sure they're just looking at the same dashboards and same news stories as we do.
- jvvw 7y ago
  I have heard through word-of-mouth (third hand) that there are models made by experts not being shared publicly (but presumably with governments etc).
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    This is definitely the case. I don't know if the lack of sharing is purely reflexive or because they want to avoid societal breakdown.
    - Bartweiss 7y ago
      The third option is "because they don't want to be blamed for model error". Governments aren't necessarily competent, but you can try to get them to understand 5%/95% confidence intervals, at least in hindsight. If you publicly release a prediction, and then the real outcome is the 10% confidence line, you're probably going to be yelled at for being wrong regardless of the error bars. Of course, if the center of the prediction is horrifying, "people don't understand confidence intervals" then becomes a case of avoiding societal breakdown.
shadowprofile77 7y ago
Do you have a link for this article BTW? the one that's so widely shared.
- maest 7y ago
  https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... Not sure how "widely" shared it is, but it's a good, informative piece.
  - raphlinus 7y ago
    In my circles, it's one of the most discussed on the Recurse Zulip, it was shared by one of the Quakers on our Ministry committee (a college prof), and it was posted by one of the game developers I admire and follow on Twitter. It does a good job of visual storytelling, the author obviously is good at being a "growth hacker," but it points to something deeply wrong when people are basing their decision-making on a document like this rather than communications from actual public health professionals.
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    Thanks!.
ausjke 7y ago
Call for the resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General http://chng.it/vj6Kwnsz8R http://chng.it/vj6Kwnsz8R
- whatshisface 7y ago
  I really don't think that changing one leader will change anything about the organization. In order to fix the situation you would have to understand their culture from the bottom up, see why they don't care about making models public (as far as I know this is the media's fault for not publicizing models they have already published, maybe the WHO is innocent), figure out what they needed to change, and then replace several leaders, being careful to only replace the ones that are part of the problem.
andrei_says_ 7y ago
I wish this was the most shared resource as it is the most practical, educational and positive one I’ve seen so far. https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ https://www.flattenthecurve.com/

whydoineedone 7y ago

mind sharing the 'growth hacker from SF's article?

Dumblydorr 7y ago

This is because quality science is not correlated with good marketing, virality of media (bad word choice), or how people feel about scientific content. Most people are woefully uneducated in science and it's showing on the internet especially.

hef19898 7y ago

Exactly this! I kind of understand the WHO, the broad public, including media, doesn't care about models and such things. Providing to much details can have the opposite effect, instead of calming things down it could spark more fear. On the other hand, online stuff like said growth hacker can draw a lot of attention. This will end up in the mainstream. That diseases aren't exponential, who cares when exponential curves fit so nicely early on. What could, and should, be done by large tech companies is preventing this. Google could make sure that every Corona related search ends up showing the WHO on top, followed by local sources like the CDC, Robert Koch, John Hopkins and so on. They could support these parties in getting them up in the search results. Facebook could do the same, as does Twitter. In Germany, you have to explicitly include Robert Koch or RKI in your search for the link to show. Even by doing so, earlier today it still wasn't the tip link. The rest is reporting crap written every time a new case was found somewhere. And yet, nothing like that happens.

Certhas 7y ago
But the early stages of disease spread _are_ exponential. And I find that people really fail to understand the meaning of that, and how scary numbers like "new confirmed cases doubling every two days, 500 new cases in France yesterday" truly are.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Yes, but extrapolating the early exponential phase is, plain and simple, mathematically wrong. No idea why data scientists aren't going the first mile and look up the relevant functions before spitting data out. Total fail on their part, IMHO.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    It's not wrong: it has produced extremely good predictive results day after day for total cases outside of China for months now. Using a simpler approximate function in place of a more complicated exact function is far from wrong, it is bread and butter for getting practical results in all areas of science.
    - zaroth 7y ago
      It’s right until it’s totally wrong, e.g. for any country which has already peaked, of which there are several.
      - goatlover 7y ago
        Countries that implemented extreme measures to slow the spread of the virus. It will be different for countries which haven't. The WHO and other health officials around the world are saying the same thing. This will spread to a large number of people. It's too late for containment, you can only hope to flatten the curve. That's why it's now a pandemic.
        zaroth 7y ago

Certhas 7y ago

I think that this spreadsheet is communicating several things well but I share it as a "reasonable bad case back of the envelope calculation". And if we mean the same article, it actually does a reasonable job at outlining the uncertainties around testing and national differences, and focuses on what is probably the most robustly comparable data point we have: Number of confirmed deaths. The problem with models used by experts is that they are diverse hard to parameterize and that the scientific conclusions drawn are based on many different models not on one. It's a very fluid situation.

hef19898 7y ago
Exactly why replacing by something simplistic doesn't fly. I'll go on a limb and say if I tried something similar in this guy's field, I would be destroyed for publishing it. And rightly so.
- Certhas 7y ago
  The post in question mostly presents observations about the base line models and data taken from reputable and cited sources. It didn't make up simplistic models on the fly. I would say it is breathless journalism. I also would wish for better explanations from the scientists actively working on it. My first go to is RKI.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

It is surprising to me to. If this was Star Trek world, you'd have computational models built by experts shared and discussed the very first day, forming the very foundation of the discussion and policy around the virus. I know of a certain company whose entire purpose is building and selling a product that lets you plug in equations of complex, dynamic systems and play with the models to understand and predict things. Like serious, industrial-grade stuff that's used to design chemical plants. They could easily get a virologist on call and model the spread more sensibly, or even individual countries in detail, and release that - which would give a basis for people to discuss what to do and when in a much better way that's happening now. They'd probably also save themselves a year's worth of marketing expenses. But I don't see them, or any of their competitors doing anything like this. I'm thoroughly disappointed. Is the ArcGIS dashboard from John Hopkins University really the best our civilization has to offer in terms of informing people and evidence-based discussions? Because while I want to believe that our politicians have more sophisticated tools available, I'm pretty sure they're just looking at the same dashboards and same news stories as we do.

jvvw 7y ago
I have heard through word-of-mouth (third hand) that there are models made by experts not being shared publicly (but presumably with governments etc).
- angry_octet 7y ago
  This is definitely the case. I don't know if the lack of sharing is purely reflexive or because they want to avoid societal breakdown.
  - Bartweiss 7y ago
    The third option is "because they don't want to be blamed for model error". Governments aren't necessarily competent, but you can try to get them to understand 5%/95% confidence intervals, at least in hindsight. If you publicly release a prediction, and then the real outcome is the 10% confidence line, you're probably going to be yelled at for being wrong regardless of the error bars. Of course, if the center of the prediction is horrifying, "people don't understand confidence intervals" then becomes a case of avoiding societal breakdown.

shadowprofile77 7y ago

Do you have a link for this article BTW? the one that's so widely shared.

maest 7y ago
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop... Not sure how "widely" shared it is, but it's a good, informative piece.
- raphlinus 7y ago
  In my circles, it's one of the most discussed on the Recurse Zulip, it was shared by one of the Quakers on our Ministry committee (a college prof), and it was posted by one of the game developers I admire and follow on Twitter. It does a good job of visual storytelling, the author obviously is good at being a "growth hacker," but it points to something deeply wrong when people are basing their decision-making on a document like this rather than communications from actual public health professionals.
- shadowprofile77 7y ago
  Thanks!.

ausjke 7y ago

Call for the resignation of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General http://chng.it/vj6Kwnsz8R http://chng.it/vj6Kwnsz8R

whatshisface 7y ago
I really don't think that changing one leader will change anything about the organization. In order to fix the situation you would have to understand their culture from the bottom up, see why they don't care about making models public (as far as I know this is the media's fault for not publicizing models they have already published, maybe the WHO is innocent), figure out what they needed to change, and then replace several leaders, being careful to only replace the ones that are part of the problem.

andrei_says_ 7y ago

I wish this was the most shared resource as it is the most practical, educational and positive one I’ve seen so far. https://www.flattenthecurve.com/ https://www.flattenthecurve.com/