5 ms·

their study is flawed, the scientists involved went almost exclusively onto right-wing programs to hype their biased results, and they didn't disclose important

their study is flawed, the scientists involved went almost exclusively onto right-wing programs to hype their biased results, and they didn't disclose important financial ties - particularly the jetblue guy that wrote an op-ed for the ben shapiro website (damning imo). you can whine about this article being clickbait but it's incredibly well-written and sourced. >The whistleblower complaint made note of the authors’ media appearances, observing that they “coordinated the online publication of a non-peer-reviewed pre-print with multiple press appearances” and “continued to promote the results of this and subsequent studies despite severe criticisms of their pre-print from multiple statisticians.” Indeed, scientists immediately attacked the high-profile study’s recruitment of participants and data analysis, with one calling it a textbook example of “how NOT to do statistics” and another saying he was “alarmed at their sloppy behavior.” One major cause for alarm was that the authors were overly confident in their test’s false-positive rate.

DeonPenny 6y ago
They explained that by saying they went to those sources because left wing news outlets and left win financial source black balled them. But that's not even the issue. How do you explain the fact that their numbers fall right in line with the study from Bonn Germany, or New york, or all the other random sampling studies. Are they all lying?
- mennis16 6y ago
  New York has far more deaths per capita, it makes no sense for their % positive numbers to fall in line with New York. It is similarly inconsistent with recent numbers out of Spain/Madrid, which was hit quite hard and is still floating around only 10% positive.
- wahern 6y ago
  There have been, conservatively, at least 20,000 COVID-19 deaths in NYC alone. NYC has a population of 8,300,000. 20,000 / 8,300,000 puts a hard lower bound on IFR of ~0.24%. That is, if we assume that the entire population of NYC has already had SARS-CoV-2, then the lowest mathematically possible IFR for NYC would be ~0.24%. Ioannidis' paper says 2.49%-4.16% of Santa Clara County has already been infected. Santa Clara County has a population of 1.9 million. That means we should expect (1900000 * 0.0249) * 0.0024 == 113 deaths at the lower bound, and (1900000 * 0.0416) * 0.0024 == 189 deaths at the upper bound. Santa Clara County has already recorded 134 deaths, so that number seem to fit. But it fits with the hard, categorical data from NYC only if we assume 100% of NYC to have already been infected. TL;DR: Unless you're prepared to believe that 1) most of NYC residents have already been infected, or 2) that IFR is significantly greater than 0.24% and the actual number of COVID-19 deaths in Santa Clara County is multiples of what's reported then it's clear that Ioannidis' paper is wrong. #2 seems far more plausible and may even be true, but the controversy is the implication of his paper on derived IFR. And if #2 is what's happening, the IFR is definitely greater than what people applying the paper (including, AFAIU, Ioannidis' himself) predict.
  - taeric 6y ago
    I will not defend his study. Pretty sure there are enough holes in it. I am not sure why we think the IFR would be constant by region, though. Just doing an age banded calculation is enough to show that it is variable for populations. Such that it seems safe to assume other things could cause variation, as well. An early thought I had was age being a proxy to lung damage from long term exposure to air pollution. This still holds for the population in NYC, as many of them are from there. Same for Italy. Many elderly are retired locals. Notable that both places have some of the worst air in the world. Contrast with California, which has been very progressive with emissions. I don't have data on age ranges in California. And I confess I have stopped following the news on this. (Peek in the occasional story that makes it here. Starting to pay more attention again.)
  - sundbry 6y ago
    The NYC data is the outlier. There may be contributing factors which are causing that 20,000 number to be inflated, not the least of which are the financial incentives for emergency funding for COVID diagnoses.
- cozzyd 6y ago
  Which numbers? The inferred IFR?

DeonPenny 6y ago

They explained that by saying they went to those sources because left wing news outlets and left win financial source black balled them. But that's not even the issue. How do you explain the fact that their numbers fall right in line with the study from Bonn Germany, or New york, or all the other random sampling studies. Are they all lying?

mennis16 6y ago
New York has far more deaths per capita, it makes no sense for their % positive numbers to fall in line with New York. It is similarly inconsistent with recent numbers out of Spain/Madrid, which was hit quite hard and is still floating around only 10% positive.
wahern 6y ago
There have been, conservatively, at least 20,000 COVID-19 deaths in NYC alone. NYC has a population of 8,300,000. 20,000 / 8,300,000 puts a hard lower bound on IFR of ~0.24%. That is, if we assume that the entire population of NYC has already had SARS-CoV-2, then the lowest mathematically possible IFR for NYC would be ~0.24%. Ioannidis' paper says 2.49%-4.16% of Santa Clara County has already been infected. Santa Clara County has a population of 1.9 million. That means we should expect (1900000 * 0.0249) * 0.0024 == 113 deaths at the lower bound, and (1900000 * 0.0416) * 0.0024 == 189 deaths at the upper bound. Santa Clara County has already recorded 134 deaths, so that number seem to fit. But it fits with the hard, categorical data from NYC only if we assume 100% of NYC to have already been infected. TL;DR: Unless you're prepared to believe that 1) most of NYC residents have already been infected, or 2) that IFR is significantly greater than 0.24% and the actual number of COVID-19 deaths in Santa Clara County is multiples of what's reported then it's clear that Ioannidis' paper is wrong. #2 seems far more plausible and may even be true, but the controversy is the implication of his paper on derived IFR. And if #2 is what's happening, the IFR is definitely greater than what people applying the paper (including, AFAIU, Ioannidis' himself) predict.
- taeric 6y ago
  I will not defend his study. Pretty sure there are enough holes in it. I am not sure why we think the IFR would be constant by region, though. Just doing an age banded calculation is enough to show that it is variable for populations. Such that it seems safe to assume other things could cause variation, as well. An early thought I had was age being a proxy to lung damage from long term exposure to air pollution. This still holds for the population in NYC, as many of them are from there. Same for Italy. Many elderly are retired locals. Notable that both places have some of the worst air in the world. Contrast with California, which has been very progressive with emissions. I don't have data on age ranges in California. And I confess I have stopped following the news on this. (Peek in the occasional story that makes it here. Starting to pay more attention again.)
- sundbry 6y ago
  The NYC data is the outlier. There may be contributing factors which are causing that 20,000 number to be inflated, not the least of which are the financial incentives for emergency funding for COVID diagnoses.
cozzyd 6y ago
Which numbers? The inferred IFR?