3 ms·

Students are generally pretty young, but staff and faculty are not.

thu2111 6y ago
But something like 90% of the deaths are over 65s, so the vulnerable population is retired anyway. And that's ignoring the whole of/with confusion, so the numbers are certainly much lower than that. E.g. I was told my former nanny died of COVID during this crisis. But she was 95 and had previously had a stroke, so, it's kind of arguable what the final cause really was. It had to be something, at that age. And anyway, are the staff also going to stop researching completely until 2021? Somehow I am skeptical of this!
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > But something like 90% of the deaths are over 65s Eyeballing the CDC numbers, it looks closer to 80% of deaths; also, deaths aren't the only serious adverse impact. > And that's ignoring the whole of/with confusion The of/with confusion you describe, to the extent it might really be an issue of significance, would further reduce the share of COVID-19 deaths that come from the over-65 group, since the of/with confusion would be higher in that group than younger groups, as your own description (“it had to be something at that age”) implies, further undercutting the point you try to make with your exaggerated description of the concentration of deaths in the over-65 age group. Also, in any case, its not at all uncommon for people to work past 65, especially in fields that aren't particularly physically arduous; over-65 does not imply retired, even approximately.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    As nearly all deaths are in the over-65 age bracket, reducing them significantly (to account for of/with confusion) just means it isn't especially dangerous to anyone regardless of age, relative to other risks. It thus doesn't undercut my point - that students may well be rather upset about this given that there are many risks involved for lecturers in just driving to the lecture theatre in the first place, for instance. It's all about relative risks. Hence the pertinence of the question: do Cambridge academics plan to also stop going into labs and doing research? Or just (in effect) stop teaching.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > As nearly all deaths are in the over-65 age bracket They aren't. ~80% isn't “nearly all”. > reducing them significantly (to account for of/with confusion) just means it isn't especially dangerous to anyone regardless of age No, it doesn't. If the deaths in that group were 50% overcounted due to if/with (ignoring that all the serious analysis suggest official death counts are under, not over, counts), and 25% in all other groups, it'd still be dangerous (with 55% of the death count) and much less focussed on the over-65 category (8:3 over/under-65 instead of 4:1)
      - thu2111 6y ago
        The numbers I've seen are different: more like 90% over and more importantly, something like 80%-90% of cases with confounding co-morbidities (the original Italian figure was something like 12% of people with no co-morbidities). I mean I think you need to review the data because your argument is just strange. Look at the EuroMOMO data for instance: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ In the 16-64 age group excess death per week went up by a total of about 1000 more excess deaths for multiple European countries aggregated than e.g. the flu season of 2017 or 2018. The total population in these graphs is over 100 million so this is practically meaningless, it's not a sign of any kind of danger. The numbers don't start getting (relatively) big until the 65+ age group, and even then, they're still not big relative to the actual population sizes in question. Only prior flu seasons. That's excess death. W.R.T. deaths coded as COVID there's also the somewhat newer problem of nonsensical COVID death reports, caused by repeatedly relaxed standards for reporting. At first you needed to have clearly died of the disease. Then anyone who tested positive and died was reported as a COVID death, leading to stories of "COVID deaths" of people with terminal leukemia, alcohol poisoning, etc. That's the of/with issue we're discussing. Then the standards were relaxed again to allow mere suspicion of COVID to be reported as a COVID death. This has been happening around the world, e.g. in France: https://covidinfos.net/covid19/deces-dus-au-covid-19-le-nombre-officiel-de-morts-en-france-est-il-surestime/502/ https://covidinfos.net/covid19/deces-dus-au-covid-19-le-nomb... "a positive case in a residence immediately transforms all of the people in the residence into "confirmed cases", which will therefore be counted in COVID-19 statistics .... if a resident (or an employee) coughs, all the occupants of the residence become “possible cases”, and are counted in COVID-19 statistics." In the USA it's even worse - hospitals started being paid more money if deaths were coded that way; at a time when they badly need the money. So the numbers here are really quite meaningless but what we can say, is that neither Cambridge staff nor students are in any great danger from this, unless they are really quite old but by then of course, many different diseases and problems are a danger to them and simply tripping on the steps of the lecture hall could also create a dangerous situation. So they would need to be quite careful even in normal times.
- joe5150 6y ago
  the average age of retirement at US universities is between 65 and 70
DanBC 6y ago
Yes, and students are generally pretty young, but their families are not.
- thu2111 6y ago
  So what? Over the course of the next year the students will be in many situations where they sit next to other students. There's nothing special about a lecture theatre, it's just a room. The reaction by Cambridge here is bizarre and seems ungrounded in any kind of logic or common sense. 2021 is far longer than any other kind of lockdown measure is proposed for, far longer than epidemics usually last, students are at no risk and the older people around students can't simply avoid all contact with young people indefinitely. Cambridge students should just ask for their money back and/or not sign up to begin with.

But something like 90% of the deaths are over 65s, so the vulnerable population is retired anyway. And that's ignoring the whole of/with confusion, so the numbers are certainly much lower than that. E.g. I was told my former nanny died of COVID during this crisis. But she was 95 and had previously had a stroke, so, it's kind of arguable what the final cause really was. It had to be something, at that age. And anyway, are the staff also going to stop researching completely until 2021? Somehow I am skeptical of this!

dragonwriter 6y ago
> But something like 90% of the deaths are over 65s Eyeballing the CDC numbers, it looks closer to 80% of deaths; also, deaths aren't the only serious adverse impact. > And that's ignoring the whole of/with confusion The of/with confusion you describe, to the extent it might really be an issue of significance, would further reduce the share of COVID-19 deaths that come from the over-65 group, since the of/with confusion would be higher in that group than younger groups, as your own description (“it had to be something at that age”) implies, further undercutting the point you try to make with your exaggerated description of the concentration of deaths in the over-65 age group. Also, in any case, its not at all uncommon for people to work past 65, especially in fields that aren't particularly physically arduous; over-65 does not imply retired, even approximately.
- thu2111 6y ago
  As nearly all deaths are in the over-65 age bracket, reducing them significantly (to account for of/with confusion) just means it isn't especially dangerous to anyone regardless of age, relative to other risks. It thus doesn't undercut my point - that students may well be rather upset about this given that there are many risks involved for lecturers in just driving to the lecture theatre in the first place, for instance. It's all about relative risks. Hence the pertinence of the question: do Cambridge academics plan to also stop going into labs and doing research? Or just (in effect) stop teaching.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > As nearly all deaths are in the over-65 age bracket They aren't. ~80% isn't “nearly all”. > reducing them significantly (to account for of/with confusion) just means it isn't especially dangerous to anyone regardless of age No, it doesn't. If the deaths in that group were 50% overcounted due to if/with (ignoring that all the serious analysis suggest official death counts are under, not over, counts), and 25% in all other groups, it'd still be dangerous (with 55% of the death count) and much less focussed on the over-65 category (8:3 over/under-65 instead of 4:1)
    - thu2111 6y ago
      The numbers I've seen are different: more like 90% over and more importantly, something like 80%-90% of cases with confounding co-morbidities (the original Italian figure was something like 12% of people with no co-morbidities). I mean I think you need to review the data because your argument is just strange. Look at the EuroMOMO data for instance: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ In the 16-64 age group excess death per week went up by a total of about 1000 more excess deaths for multiple European countries aggregated than e.g. the flu season of 2017 or 2018. The total population in these graphs is over 100 million so this is practically meaningless, it's not a sign of any kind of danger. The numbers don't start getting (relatively) big until the 65+ age group, and even then, they're still not big relative to the actual population sizes in question. Only prior flu seasons. That's excess death. W.R.T. deaths coded as COVID there's also the somewhat newer problem of nonsensical COVID death reports, caused by repeatedly relaxed standards for reporting. At first you needed to have clearly died of the disease. Then anyone who tested positive and died was reported as a COVID death, leading to stories of "COVID deaths" of people with terminal leukemia, alcohol poisoning, etc. That's the of/with issue we're discussing. Then the standards were relaxed again to allow mere suspicion of COVID to be reported as a COVID death. This has been happening around the world, e.g. in France: https://covidinfos.net/covid19/deces-dus-au-covid-19-le-nombre-officiel-de-morts-en-france-est-il-surestime/502/ https://covidinfos.net/covid19/deces-dus-au-covid-19-le-nomb... "a positive case in a residence immediately transforms all of the people in the residence into "confirmed cases", which will therefore be counted in COVID-19 statistics .... if a resident (or an employee) coughs, all the occupants of the residence become “possible cases”, and are counted in COVID-19 statistics." In the USA it's even worse - hospitals started being paid more money if deaths were coded that way; at a time when they badly need the money. So the numbers here are really quite meaningless but what we can say, is that neither Cambridge staff nor students are in any great danger from this, unless they are really quite old but by then of course, many different diseases and problems are a danger to them and simply tripping on the steps of the lecture hall could also create a dangerous situation. So they would need to be quite careful even in normal times.
joe5150 6y ago
the average age of retirement at US universities is between 65 and 70

DanBC 6y ago

Yes, and students are generally pretty young, but their families are not.

thu2111 6y ago
So what? Over the course of the next year the students will be in many situations where they sit next to other students. There's nothing special about a lecture theatre, it's just a room. The reaction by Cambridge here is bizarre and seems ungrounded in any kind of logic or common sense. 2021 is far longer than any other kind of lockdown measure is proposed for, far longer than epidemics usually last, students are at no risk and the older people around students can't simply avoid all contact with young people indefinitely. Cambridge students should just ask for their money back and/or not sign up to begin with.