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Randomization will on average prevent confounding variables from being unbalanced. For known and suspected confounding variables you can use blocking on top of

Randomization will on average prevent confounding variables from being unbalanced. For known and suspected confounding variables you can use blocking on top of that. For example you can randomly split each age group in half in order to ensure the intervention and control arms have similar age distributions. Blinding and placebo control helps prevent behavior modification from the intervention itself, but it's possible that people who receive the saline placebos behave differently, since they don't get any side effects. I believe AstraZeneca's trial in the US uses a saline placebo, presumably because an active placebo might accidentally also work against the virus.

radycov 6y ago
Anecdotally, since March I have been travelling on public transport and going into crowded central city locations almost on a daily basis, yet appear to have (extremely fortunately) avoided infection. This includes over the past few weeks with new highly infections mutations. Equally anecdotally, I know of several friends who have caught it from young children in school settings or crowded groups.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kjakm 6y ago
  Given 1/3 people infected are asymptomatic there’s a decent chance you have had it and didn’t know.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    I wish they made antibody testing easier and more widespread. No reason taking a vaccine slot if we already have immunity.
    - tim333 6y ago
      Apparently a vaccine can still make your immunity better. That said, having antibodies, I'm not sure I'll bother unless there's some vaccination certificate type benefit. By the way in the UK at any rate if you donate blood they check it for covid antibodies for free.
- jpster 6y ago
  > I know of several friends who have caught it from young children in school settings I guess there’s no way for them to be certain. But I’ve been wondering if we’ve been too quick to believe that kids are less susceptible to Covid or the virus that causes it. Imagine that children do contract it as regularly as adults, but are usually asymptomatic. No symptoms = no suspicion = no reason for them to be tested. Kids not being tested regularly could be the reason why we believe “they don’t get it”. I fear we’ve come to an unsound and dangerous conclusion on this. And I think it’s partly due to the way we confounded the variables when we shut schools in spring. Closed schools probably helped keep kid cases down at first. And from there we leaped to “kids don’t get it”. Meanwhile, the CDC has published more data on that shows kids do transmit. But their updates seem to have a hard time breaking through the noise. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6939e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6939e2.htm Same with their update last week to acknowledge that Covid is mainly airborne. How many are now aware of this? Checking air ventilation? Or still focused on surface wipedowns? https://twitter.com/first10em/status/1341121947682418691?s=21 https://twitter.com/first10em/status/1341121947682418691?s=2...

radycov 6y ago

Anecdotally, since March I have been travelling on public transport and going into crowded central city locations almost on a daily basis, yet appear to have (extremely fortunately) avoided infection. This includes over the past few weeks with new highly infections mutations. Equally anecdotally, I know of several friends who have caught it from young children in school settings or crowded groups.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kjakm 6y ago
Given 1/3 people infected are asymptomatic there’s a decent chance you have had it and didn’t know.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  I wish they made antibody testing easier and more widespread. No reason taking a vaccine slot if we already have immunity.
  - tim333 6y ago
    Apparently a vaccine can still make your immunity better. That said, having antibodies, I'm not sure I'll bother unless there's some vaccination certificate type benefit. By the way in the UK at any rate if you donate blood they check it for covid antibodies for free.
jpster 6y ago
> I know of several friends who have caught it from young children in school settings I guess there’s no way for them to be certain. But I’ve been wondering if we’ve been too quick to believe that kids are less susceptible to Covid or the virus that causes it. Imagine that children do contract it as regularly as adults, but are usually asymptomatic. No symptoms = no suspicion = no reason for them to be tested. Kids not being tested regularly could be the reason why we believe “they don’t get it”. I fear we’ve come to an unsound and dangerous conclusion on this. And I think it’s partly due to the way we confounded the variables when we shut schools in spring. Closed schools probably helped keep kid cases down at first. And from there we leaped to “kids don’t get it”. Meanwhile, the CDC has published more data on that shows kids do transmit. But their updates seem to have a hard time breaking through the noise. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6939e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6939e2.htm Same with their update last week to acknowledge that Covid is mainly airborne. How many are now aware of this? Checking air ventilation? Or still focused on surface wipedowns? https://twitter.com/first10em/status/1341121947682418691?s=21 https://twitter.com/first10em/status/1341121947682418691?s=2...