7 ms·

I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented. That article doesn't explain it, it just says it's wrong. There applications of data make perfect

by ghthor 6y ago

I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented. That article doesn't explain it, it just says it's wrong. There applications of data make perfect sense to me, that's how I'd use the data they presented. That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it.

ceejayoz 6y ago
> I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented. They took stats from a massively self-selecting population - people seeking out COVID-19 testing at their facilities - and extrapolated to the general public. That's inexcusably dumb. As the bit I quoted states, that's like "estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court".
- kolanos 6y ago
  Did you watch the video? That is not what they did. What you're describing is a brief anecdote they shared about what they were seeing on the ground. Their statistics are based on state level aggregates for New York and California.
  - wesammikhail 6y ago
    People will always put their fingers in their ears and not read/watch the source because it is easier to bash someone than to actually do the work that may change your beliefs
    - Jd 6y ago
      The source is gone.
    - TechBro8615 6y ago
      Well, it’s also hard to watch the source video when YouTube goes out of their way to delete it. So here in this very thread, is a great example of the harms of taking down the content. It makes it hard to even have a discussion about its merits. I don’t understand why YouTube couldn’t leave the video up, and put some kind of warning or interstitial advising of problems with the content. I would have problems with that approach too, but certainly less so than I do with the wholesale deletion of the video. Anyway, you can find it hosted here: https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-with-dr-dan-erickson-and-dr-artin-massihi-taken-down-from-youtube https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...
  - shkkmo 6y ago
    It isn't exactly what they did but it is fairly close. They consistently incorrectly extrapolate the covid positive test rate from a biased sample (biased by both the testing guidelines and self-selection) to the general population, not just for their county, but also for California, New York, the United States, Italy, Sweden and Norway. They then use this to massively misrepresent the lethality of Covid 19.
  - Retric 6y ago
    State level data is collected using the exact same methods. In many places people with symptoms are told to self isolate until they have difficulty breathing etc. This makes state level data a highly biased sample. There are a few population studies for very specific areas, but no widespread statewide sampling anywhere. PS: The US has ~50,000 Coronavirus deaths. Assuming a very optimistic mortality rate of 0.5% suggests at most 10 million infections out of 330 million people or 3.3%. A higher mortality rate of say 5% would mean total infections are possibility as low as 0.3% of the US population.
    - kolanos 6y ago
      I'm not saying these doctors are correct in their statistical extrapolations. What I am saying is the Kern County anecdote being spread around to discredit them by people who haven't even seen the video are practicing in the disinformation that they accuse these doctors of perpetrating.
      - Retric 6y ago
        Using state level data is exactly like sampling MBA heights. A biased sample is a biased sample. So, no I don’t see how it’s misinformation.
    - btilly 6y ago
      Given the delay between catching it and dying, a lot of the people who have it and will die from it are not currently counted in your deaths. This could mean that substantially more Americans have it. (Though on current projections, less than a factor of 2.)
      - Retric 6y ago
        I was including that for my optimistic 0.5%. South Korea with a younger population, good healthcare system far from maximum capacity, and very good but not perfect testing has a CFR of 2.3% and rising. Diamond Princess has 14deaths out of 712cases, while not a representative sample it’s still conformation that a high percentage of even young healthy people need hospitalization. The biggest question IMO is how much we are undercounting fatalities. NYC lists Confirmed deaths at 11,820 plus Probable deaths at 5,395. They also add: Due to delays in reporting, recent data are incomplete. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
  - jerry1979 6y ago
    I watched the videos. Just like many others have said in this thread, the doctors took the percent of people who tested positive for covid and assumed that percent of people overall in the whole state had covid. Then they took the total number of deaths from covid, and divided that number by the population of the state.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  They compared them to several countries as well, so your statement is misleading.
- holler 6y ago
  > That's inexcusably dumb. Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision? Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain. By picking and choosing like they’re doing, it leads one to distrust the company which will ultimately hurt them.
  - programmarchy 6y ago
    Come on. Rap videos are often grotesque but it’s entertainment, like a horror film. This video was more like yelling fire in a theater. I’m willing believe the doctors were sincere, but they were gravely wrong, and their misinformation was endangering the public. YouTube was correct to turn off the alarm they erroneously turned on. Granted, YouTube’s method of throwing up a standard “violation of community guidelines” message is crude, and leads to suspicion. Then again, so was ABC’s editorial judgment. It’s a hard problem.
    - holler 6y ago
      can you or anyone factually prove that they’re wrong? 99% of the internet and “experts” said HCQ is dangerous and ineffective, then it just came out that a leading group of ER docs say it’s effective in ~90% of cases. The point is that even if they’re wrong, youtube and others are playing a dangerous Orwellian game and it’s going to harm their reputability in the end.
  - jdkee 6y ago
    "Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision?" Research done on fake news illustrates why ordinary consumers of news cannot be trusted to make informed judgements. "Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain." Exactly this. This is why it is irresponsible for a global platform to promote this tripe.
djsumdog 6y ago
People should be able to see all the opinions of various experts; doctors in NYC, doctors in Minnesota. Just them on their merits and examine the evidence. By pulling videos, YouTube/Google is saying they don't trust people to be able to discern anything or do research among several dissenting opinions. And yes, it's their platform and yada yada .. they still allow a lot of content to be uploaded and they have become the most typical/standard centralized source of videos. I will admit, they might be right to not trust people ... at which point why do we even care about humanity anymore? Are those with more power and influence always going to think the rest of the world are sheep who can't think for themselves and need to be led around? This time sets all kinds of dangerous prescients. I wish Orwell was still alive.
- jdkee 6y ago
  "People should be able to see all the opinions of various experts; doctors in NYC, doctors in Minnesota. Just them on their merits and examine the evidence." Most people are not qualified to "examine the evidence" and make public health policy decisions. This is why we rely upon the experts. Otherwise you have measles outbreaks in Beverly Hills.
  - wesammikhail 6y ago
    You mean the experts that said no human to human transmission? or the experts that called for maska being ineffective? or the experts that didnt know how to store and deploy resources as they needed? or the experts that miscalculated projected infection rates?
    - seppin 6y ago
      > You mean the experts that said no human to human transmission? Perfect example, no expert said there was no human to human nor is there any chance of it. The only language close to that was "there isn't any proof of it now" which might have been informed by CCP misinformation. Even though they were misinformed, any true expert should have known not to make any definitive statement either way. If you have such a quote, it was not made by an expert.
brlewis 6y ago
> That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it. I can vouch for their transparency. The speed with which I was able to see that their statistical methods were totally wrong was almost entirely due to their transparency. The only fact I had to find outside of what they said was the criteria for testing in the county for which they cited statistics, which I found at https://kernpublichealth.com/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-faqs-3/ https://kernpublichealth.com/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-... "Testing is NOT indicated for asymptomatic persons." The doctors' statistics in the quote below don't work because of sampling bias. “In Kern County, we’ve tested 5,213 people and we have 340 positive COVID cases. Well, that’s 6.5 percent of the population. Which would indicate a widespread viral infection similar to the flu,”
- kolanos 6y ago
  Did you watch the video or are you just basing this on out of context quotes? What you're quoting was a brief anecdote about what those doctors were seeing on the ground. Their extrapolations are based on state-level aggregates in New York and California. Sample sizes of 300-650K patients.
  - brlewis 6y ago
    I did not get the chance to see the video before it was taken down, but I got the content of their arguments here: http://www.tathasta.com/2020/04/watch-er-doctors-urge-reopening.html http://www.tathasta.com/2020/04/watch-er-doctors-urge-reopen... They use the same logic for Kern County, California, and New York. Their logic is, that if you test N people and find M positive cases, that in the population at large you'll have an infection rate of M/N. This would be true if the N tests were performed on random members of the population. But because the tests are only performed when there's reason to suspect infection, M/N is a higher infection rate than in the population at large. Their inflated number for total infected persons makes the death rate appear smaller.
    - 6y ago
reedlaw 6y ago
From the video around 4:40: > 33,865 COVID cases out of a total of 280,900 total tested--that's 12% of Californians were positive for COVID. This would only be true if those tested were randomly selected. Even in the most optimistic Santa Clara County study prevalence was estimated at under 5%. 1 1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...

by ghthor 6y ago

ceejayoz 6y ago

> I don't understand what's wrong with the data they presented. They took stats from a massively self-selecting population - people seeking out COVID-19 testing at their facilities - and extrapolated to the general public. That's inexcusably dumb. As the bit I quoted states, that's like "estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court".

kolanos 6y ago
Did you watch the video? That is not what they did. What you're describing is a brief anecdote they shared about what they were seeing on the ground. Their statistics are based on state level aggregates for New York and California.
- wesammikhail 6y ago
  People will always put their fingers in their ears and not read/watch the source because it is easier to bash someone than to actually do the work that may change your beliefs
  - Jd 6y ago
    The source is gone.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Well, it’s also hard to watch the source video when YouTube goes out of their way to delete it. So here in this very thread, is a great example of the harms of taking down the content. It makes it hard to even have a discussion about its merits. I don’t understand why YouTube couldn’t leave the video up, and put some kind of warning or interstitial advising of problems with the content. I would have problems with that approach too, but certainly less so than I do with the wholesale deletion of the video. Anyway, you can find it hosted here: https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-with-dr-dan-erickson-and-dr-artin-massihi-taken-down-from-youtube https://www.turnto23.com/news/coronavirus/video-interview-wi...
- shkkmo 6y ago
  It isn't exactly what they did but it is fairly close. They consistently incorrectly extrapolate the covid positive test rate from a biased sample (biased by both the testing guidelines and self-selection) to the general population, not just for their county, but also for California, New York, the United States, Italy, Sweden and Norway. They then use this to massively misrepresent the lethality of Covid 19.
- Retric 6y ago
  State level data is collected using the exact same methods. In many places people with symptoms are told to self isolate until they have difficulty breathing etc. This makes state level data a highly biased sample. There are a few population studies for very specific areas, but no widespread statewide sampling anywhere. PS: The US has ~50,000 Coronavirus deaths. Assuming a very optimistic mortality rate of 0.5% suggests at most 10 million infections out of 330 million people or 3.3%. A higher mortality rate of say 5% would mean total infections are possibility as low as 0.3% of the US population.
  - kolanos 6y ago
    I'm not saying these doctors are correct in their statistical extrapolations. What I am saying is the Kern County anecdote being spread around to discredit them by people who haven't even seen the video are practicing in the disinformation that they accuse these doctors of perpetrating.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Using state level data is exactly like sampling MBA heights. A biased sample is a biased sample. So, no I don’t see how it’s misinformation.
  - btilly 6y ago
    Given the delay between catching it and dying, a lot of the people who have it and will die from it are not currently counted in your deaths. This could mean that substantially more Americans have it. (Though on current projections, less than a factor of 2.)
    - Retric 6y ago
      I was including that for my optimistic 0.5%. South Korea with a younger population, good healthcare system far from maximum capacity, and very good but not perfect testing has a CFR of 2.3% and rising. Diamond Princess has 14deaths out of 712cases, while not a representative sample it’s still conformation that a high percentage of even young healthy people need hospitalization. The biggest question IMO is how much we are undercounting fatalities. NYC lists Confirmed deaths at 11,820 plus Probable deaths at 5,395. They also add: Due to delays in reporting, recent data are incomplete. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
- jerry1979 6y ago
  I watched the videos. Just like many others have said in this thread, the doctors took the percent of people who tested positive for covid and assumed that percent of people overall in the whole state had covid. Then they took the total number of deaths from covid, and divided that number by the population of the state.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
They compared them to several countries as well, so your statement is misleading.
holler 6y ago
> That's inexcusably dumb. Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision? Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain. By picking and choosing like they’re doing, it leads one to distrust the company which will ultimately hurt them.
- programmarchy 6y ago
  Come on. Rap videos are often grotesque but it’s entertainment, like a horror film. This video was more like yelling fire in a theater. I’m willing believe the doctors were sincere, but they were gravely wrong, and their misinformation was endangering the public. YouTube was correct to turn off the alarm they erroneously turned on. Granted, YouTube’s method of throwing up a standard “violation of community guidelines” message is crude, and leads to suspicion. Then again, so was ABC’s editorial judgment. It’s a hard problem.
  - holler 6y ago
    can you or anyone factually prove that they’re wrong? 99% of the internet and “experts” said HCQ is dangerous and ineffective, then it just came out that a leading group of ER docs say it’s effective in ~90% of cases. The point is that even if they’re wrong, youtube and others are playing a dangerous Orwellian game and it’s going to harm their reputability in the end.
- jdkee 6y ago
  "Even if that’s true, what does it have to do with banning the video and preventing the public from making their own decision?" Research done on fake news illustrates why ordinary consumers of news cannot be trusted to make informed judgements. "Right this moment I can go on youtube and look up a million rap videos that talk about guns, violence, murder, and more. I can look at videos that would lead me to harm myself in all sorts of ways if I didn’t have a brain." Exactly this. This is why it is irresponsible for a global platform to promote this tripe.

djsumdog 6y ago

People should be able to see all the opinions of various experts; doctors in NYC, doctors in Minnesota. Just them on their merits and examine the evidence. By pulling videos, YouTube/Google is saying they don't trust people to be able to discern anything or do research among several dissenting opinions. And yes, it's their platform and yada yada .. they still allow a lot of content to be uploaded and they have become the most typical/standard centralized source of videos. I will admit, they might be right to not trust people ... at which point why do we even care about humanity anymore? Are those with more power and influence always going to think the rest of the world are sheep who can't think for themselves and need to be led around? This time sets all kinds of dangerous prescients. I wish Orwell was still alive.

jdkee 6y ago
"People should be able to see all the opinions of various experts; doctors in NYC, doctors in Minnesota. Just them on their merits and examine the evidence." Most people are not qualified to "examine the evidence" and make public health policy decisions. This is why we rely upon the experts. Otherwise you have measles outbreaks in Beverly Hills.
- wesammikhail 6y ago
  You mean the experts that said no human to human transmission? or the experts that called for maska being ineffective? or the experts that didnt know how to store and deploy resources as they needed? or the experts that miscalculated projected infection rates?
  - seppin 6y ago
    > You mean the experts that said no human to human transmission? Perfect example, no expert said there was no human to human nor is there any chance of it. The only language close to that was "there isn't any proof of it now" which might have been informed by CCP misinformation. Even though they were misinformed, any true expert should have known not to make any definitive statement either way. If you have such a quote, it was not made by an expert.

brlewis 6y ago

> That article makes inaccurate statements like, "basically hyped a bunch of data and weren’t transparent about their methods" which is not true. There were 100% transparent about where there information was from and how they were presenting it. I can vouch for their transparency. The speed with which I was able to see that their statistical methods were totally wrong was almost entirely due to their transparency. The only fact I had to find outside of what they said was the criteria for testing in the county for which they cited statistics, which I found at https://kernpublichealth.com/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-faqs-3/ https://kernpublichealth.com/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-... "Testing is NOT indicated for asymptomatic persons." The doctors' statistics in the quote below don't work because of sampling bias. “In Kern County, we’ve tested 5,213 people and we have 340 positive COVID cases. Well, that’s 6.5 percent of the population. Which would indicate a widespread viral infection similar to the flu,”

kolanos 6y ago
Did you watch the video or are you just basing this on out of context quotes? What you're quoting was a brief anecdote about what those doctors were seeing on the ground. Their extrapolations are based on state-level aggregates in New York and California. Sample sizes of 300-650K patients.
- brlewis 6y ago
  I did not get the chance to see the video before it was taken down, but I got the content of their arguments here: http://www.tathasta.com/2020/04/watch-er-doctors-urge-reopening.html http://www.tathasta.com/2020/04/watch-er-doctors-urge-reopen... They use the same logic for Kern County, California, and New York. Their logic is, that if you test N people and find M positive cases, that in the population at large you'll have an infection rate of M/N. This would be true if the N tests were performed on random members of the population. But because the tests are only performed when there's reason to suspect infection, M/N is a higher infection rate than in the population at large. Their inflated number for total infected persons makes the death rate appear smaller.
  - 6y ago

reedlaw 6y ago

From the video around 4:40: > 33,865 COVID cases out of a total of 280,900 total tested--that's 12% of Californians were positive for COVID. This would only be true if those tested were randomly selected. Even in the most optimistic Santa Clara County study prevalence was estimated at under 5%. 1 1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...