8 ms·

> But sometimes misinformation can develop even around ideas that have some truth to them So many words and FUD in continued denial that there is more to scien

by tomp 6y ago

> But sometimes misinformation can develop even around ideas that have some truth to them So many words and FUD in continued denial that there is more to science than “gold standard” double-blind randomised controlled trials. Bayesian statistics can inform hypotheses at any level of evidence, and zero-cost interventions like “wear a mask” and “take Vitamin D” require just a tiny bit of evidence. And even without any evidence they’re still better than the reverse (“don’t wear a mask”, “don’t take Vitamin D”) which are also without evidence. In a novel crisis, you have to act without firm evidence (I cal this “executive ability”). Most Western governments and medical organisations failed to do that, so now they’re continuing to gaslight the public to conceal their failure.

HoverSausage 6y ago
I thought the early reluctance to recommend masks was because there was a shortage and medical staff needed them more, and there was the fear that constantly touching your face to adjust a mask and incorrectly wearing or removing masks might increase exposure.
- the8472 6y ago
  That was part of the message, but another part was that it was "not airborne" (and that messages to the contrary are misinformation) and that healthy people wearing masks has "no medical benefit". All while they were walking around in bunny suits and full face masks in china. https://a.pomf.cat/efwzku.png https://a.pomf.cat/efwzku.png https://a.pomf.cat/kgzdak.png https://a.pomf.cat/kgzdak.png
scoopertrooper 6y ago
The article does a good job of refuting your points, I'm surprised you made them having read it. You don't want to give people a sense of false hope because it discourages compliance with interventions with known effectiveness, like social distancing.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  >...because it discourages compliance with interventions with known effectiveness It's been very disheartening watching so many of our essential institutions toss aside their credibility this last year. I wish I had to words to express how dangerous this is moving forward.
  - ThalesX 6y ago
    I'm not from the US, but I feel the same way. The all powerful European Union just gives me a sense of despair after how they handled this crysis; I feel like I should start building my life with the assumption that I am alone in time of crysis.
    - llampx 6y ago
      It showed me that failed German politicians go to the EU and become High-Ranking officials there, possibly because Germany is the most powerful country in the EU.
      - dmichulke 6y ago
        It showed me there are people in power that - together with an army of legal advisers - haven't ever read or written a single private economy delivery contract in their life. I don't know who else was involved but it certainly wasn't just von der Leyen, this was complete institutional failure. Probably as well the most effective Brexit propaganda you can imagine.
        TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        Hardly. Vaccine procurement was never supposed to be a core EU competency. But the EU still managed to negotiate good faith contracts with a number of suppliers. Of those suppliers, only AstraZeneca acted with bad faith to excuse non-delivery. The other suppliers - having the sense to understand Covid is a global problem, not a national one - didn't. The UK then used its gamble on an untested schedule - the gap was originally supposed to be weeks, not months - to turn vaccination into a propaganda exercise. Meanwhile the British variant, which appeared because the UK failed to lock down properly in the first place, is still causing tens of thousands of deaths across the EU. Institutional failure you say? Indeed it is - on the British side. If the UK had acted rationally and responsibly a year ago, there would have been no need for vaccine nationalism.
CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
The official communication here was that it was unclear whether masks increased or decreased spread. The fear was two fold. That people would be sloppier with social distancing when wearing masks. That handling masks wrongly would increase the mask wearers risk of getting infected. So it was not perceived as a zero-cost intervention here at least.
- the8472 6y ago
  Are those actual, real concerns or just post-rationalizations and coverups for depleted stockpiles which would lead to panic buying? There are many years of prior practice to mask-wearing in many asian countries. And is there any evidence that masks made the Spanish Flu worse in 1913? Also this seems like worrying about second-order negative effects to the extent that one neglects the first-order positive effect.
  - azeirah 6y ago
    I remember the discourse at the time of the discussions in the Netherlands including discussions about that wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk. Not after, but during the discussions.
    - londons_explore 6y ago
      > wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk Within 24 hours that question could have been answered. It would have gone something like this: * Hour 1:. Health minister directs ministry to urgently answer this question, since it will impact policy. * Hour 2: health ministry contacts 5 university professors to conduct study. * Hour 3: university professor decides to invite 50 students in (paying them $50 each) to do a study. Email 1000 people, first 50 to reply get invited in. * Hour 4, professor and assistants go to shop to buy cameras and sticky blue ink. * Hour 5, study begins. Participants have ink spread over faces and cameras sit recording around the room. Participants are allowed to do whatever they like (study, call friends, watch TV, etc). Half are instructed to wear masks except when eating and drinking. * Hour 7, study ends. Turns out the ink dried out and didn't work, but footage from cameras is reviewed. * Hour 9. Exact counts of face touches for each group are produced. * Hour 10. Preliminary results forwarded to the health ministry and other universities. * Hour 11. Other university professors review data and method and say "our best guess is the initial theory of 12 hours ago is likely wrong". * Hour 12: Health ministry gives advice to wear masks. Afterwards each person in this chain is paid generously for dropping all work to handle this urgent matter.
bildung 6y ago
> Bayesian statistics can inform hypotheses at any level of evidence This is wrong. You probably can employ bayesian causal inference if you know that two observed variables have a causal relationship and want to know about the direction. But if you already know that, most of the riddle has been solved a priori. Double-blind RCTs are the gold standard.
- jcims 6y ago
  > Double-blind RCTs are the gold standard. They are also extremely slow. Appropriate for efficacy testing of new treatments, not as much for public health messaging at the onset of a crisis. It’s important to have a methodological basis for decision making in those early hours where information is sparse and of dubious quality. Without that, people panic and make short-sighted decisions that may undermine the legitimacy of their organization for years to come.
  - bildung 6y ago
    Yes absolutely. If things have to move fast, people/institutions have to refer to heuristics. But in my understanding this also is pretty much what the article described.
rscho 6y ago
Are you really sure you are not missing some pieces of the puzzle, here? Well, I'm an epidemiologist and I'm quite sure you are missing some pieces. The systematic failure of this crisis is nothing compared to the societal failure caused by overly assertive people like you.
- cinntaile 6y ago
  This is both an ad hominem and an appeal to authority, while you could have provided actual arguments that refute his point. Now it just lowered your credibility.
  - rscho 6y ago
    I don't care. Especially when simplistic individual-level observations are stated as population-wide truths.
_pmf_ 6y ago
> zero-cost interventions like “wear a mask” People who told me banning plastic straws was helpful are now calling billions of disposable masks per week a "zero-cost intervention"?
- KptMarchewa 6y ago
  Comparable to benefits, yes.
danpalmer 6y ago
> zero-cost interventions like “wear a mask” At the beginning of the pandemic (and even now), many countries were PPE-constrained, particularly on masks. The messaging was "no need to wear a mask", but the reasoning was that the supply we did have should go to front-line healthcare workers. In other words, the Opportunity Cost was high.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  An adjacent example is the continued use of cloth masks long after the supply of high quality disposable masks increased.
  - danpalmer 6y ago
    That's true. I remember to begin with the messaging was not to use cloth masks as they were essentially useless, so it really was N95 or nothing, and the N95 supply was needed in hospitals. Now we know that a cloth mask is actually better than nothing, and we also have a lot of supply of not-great-not-bad disposable or tightly woven cloth masks.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Korean and Chinese filtering masks are readily available and much better than cloth or surgical masks. N95s are also somewhat available.

by tomp 6y ago

HoverSausage 6y ago

I thought the early reluctance to recommend masks was because there was a shortage and medical staff needed them more, and there was the fear that constantly touching your face to adjust a mask and incorrectly wearing or removing masks might increase exposure.

the8472 6y ago
That was part of the message, but another part was that it was "not airborne" (and that messages to the contrary are misinformation) and that healthy people wearing masks has "no medical benefit". All while they were walking around in bunny suits and full face masks in china. https://a.pomf.cat/efwzku.png https://a.pomf.cat/efwzku.png https://a.pomf.cat/kgzdak.png https://a.pomf.cat/kgzdak.png

scoopertrooper 6y ago

The article does a good job of refuting your points, I'm surprised you made them having read it. You don't want to give people a sense of false hope because it discourages compliance with interventions with known effectiveness, like social distancing.

Consultant32452 6y ago
>...because it discourages compliance with interventions with known effectiveness It's been very disheartening watching so many of our essential institutions toss aside their credibility this last year. I wish I had to words to express how dangerous this is moving forward.
- ThalesX 6y ago
  I'm not from the US, but I feel the same way. The all powerful European Union just gives me a sense of despair after how they handled this crysis; I feel like I should start building my life with the assumption that I am alone in time of crysis.
  - llampx 6y ago
    It showed me that failed German politicians go to the EU and become High-Ranking officials there, possibly because Germany is the most powerful country in the EU.
    - dmichulke 6y ago
      It showed me there are people in power that - together with an army of legal advisers - haven't ever read or written a single private economy delivery contract in their life. I don't know who else was involved but it certainly wasn't just von der Leyen, this was complete institutional failure. Probably as well the most effective Brexit propaganda you can imagine.
      - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        Hardly. Vaccine procurement was never supposed to be a core EU competency. But the EU still managed to negotiate good faith contracts with a number of suppliers. Of those suppliers, only AstraZeneca acted with bad faith to excuse non-delivery. The other suppliers - having the sense to understand Covid is a global problem, not a national one - didn't. The UK then used its gamble on an untested schedule - the gap was originally supposed to be weeks, not months - to turn vaccination into a propaganda exercise. Meanwhile the British variant, which appeared because the UK failed to lock down properly in the first place, is still causing tens of thousands of deaths across the EU. Institutional failure you say? Indeed it is - on the British side. If the UK had acted rationally and responsibly a year ago, there would have been no need for vaccine nationalism.

CuriousSkeptic 6y ago

The official communication here was that it was unclear whether masks increased or decreased spread. The fear was two fold. That people would be sloppier with social distancing when wearing masks. That handling masks wrongly would increase the mask wearers risk of getting infected. So it was not perceived as a zero-cost intervention here at least.

the8472 6y ago
Are those actual, real concerns or just post-rationalizations and coverups for depleted stockpiles which would lead to panic buying? There are many years of prior practice to mask-wearing in many asian countries. And is there any evidence that masks made the Spanish Flu worse in 1913? Also this seems like worrying about second-order negative effects to the extent that one neglects the first-order positive effect.
- azeirah 6y ago
  I remember the discourse at the time of the discussions in the Netherlands including discussions about that wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk. Not after, but during the discussions.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    > wearing mask = touching face more = increased risk Within 24 hours that question could have been answered. It would have gone something like this: * Hour 1:. Health minister directs ministry to urgently answer this question, since it will impact policy. * Hour 2: health ministry contacts 5 university professors to conduct study. * Hour 3: university professor decides to invite 50 students in (paying them $50 each) to do a study. Email 1000 people, first 50 to reply get invited in. * Hour 4, professor and assistants go to shop to buy cameras and sticky blue ink. * Hour 5, study begins. Participants have ink spread over faces and cameras sit recording around the room. Participants are allowed to do whatever they like (study, call friends, watch TV, etc). Half are instructed to wear masks except when eating and drinking. * Hour 7, study ends. Turns out the ink dried out and didn't work, but footage from cameras is reviewed. * Hour 9. Exact counts of face touches for each group are produced. * Hour 10. Preliminary results forwarded to the health ministry and other universities. * Hour 11. Other university professors review data and method and say "our best guess is the initial theory of 12 hours ago is likely wrong". * Hour 12: Health ministry gives advice to wear masks. Afterwards each person in this chain is paid generously for dropping all work to handle this urgent matter.

bildung 6y ago

> Bayesian statistics can inform hypotheses at any level of evidence This is wrong. You probably can employ bayesian causal inference if you know that two observed variables have a causal relationship and want to know about the direction. But if you already know that, most of the riddle has been solved a priori. Double-blind RCTs are the gold standard.

jcims 6y ago
> Double-blind RCTs are the gold standard. They are also extremely slow. Appropriate for efficacy testing of new treatments, not as much for public health messaging at the onset of a crisis. It’s important to have a methodological basis for decision making in those early hours where information is sparse and of dubious quality. Without that, people panic and make short-sighted decisions that may undermine the legitimacy of their organization for years to come.
- bildung 6y ago
  Yes absolutely. If things have to move fast, people/institutions have to refer to heuristics. But in my understanding this also is pretty much what the article described.

rscho 6y ago

Are you really sure you are not missing some pieces of the puzzle, here? Well, I'm an epidemiologist and I'm quite sure you are missing some pieces. The systematic failure of this crisis is nothing compared to the societal failure caused by overly assertive people like you.

cinntaile 6y ago
This is both an ad hominem and an appeal to authority, while you could have provided actual arguments that refute his point. Now it just lowered your credibility.
- rscho 6y ago
  I don't care. Especially when simplistic individual-level observations are stated as population-wide truths.

_pmf_ 6y ago

> zero-cost interventions like “wear a mask” People who told me banning plastic straws was helpful are now calling billions of disposable masks per week a "zero-cost intervention"?

KptMarchewa 6y ago
Comparable to benefits, yes.

danpalmer 6y ago

> zero-cost interventions like “wear a mask” At the beginning of the pandemic (and even now), many countries were PPE-constrained, particularly on masks. The messaging was "no need to wear a mask", but the reasoning was that the supply we did have should go to front-line healthcare workers. In other words, the Opportunity Cost was high.

maxerickson 6y ago
An adjacent example is the continued use of cloth masks long after the supply of high quality disposable masks increased.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  That's true. I remember to begin with the messaging was not to use cloth masks as they were essentially useless, so it really was N95 or nothing, and the N95 supply was needed in hospitals. Now we know that a cloth mask is actually better than nothing, and we also have a lot of supply of not-great-not-bad disposable or tightly woven cloth masks.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Korean and Chinese filtering masks are readily available and much better than cloth or surgical masks. N95s are also somewhat available.