7 ms·

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like you are trying to say more with "but then 'cases' became some kind of top-line media metric". Should cases not

by ssully 5y ago

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like you are trying to say more with "but then 'cases' became some kind of top-line media metric". Should cases not be an important metric for people to know?

analyte123 5y ago
I think his point is that having a minute amount (possibly non-viable) of viral DNA in your respiratory tract does not necessarily make you a true "case" in terms of being actively infected with the virus.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
He's saying the definition of cases in 'actual science' vs 'the media' is different. Not a shocker that the media would sensationalize things. Science and PCR amplification... has a much looser definition with the possibility for much more false positives with such small number of cycles of amplification. It was done ostensibly for cautionary purposes but the media seized on it and painted red death map visualizations for people to see with inflated death counts.
- ssully 5y ago
  I understand that. But I would hardly call it sensationalizing. It's a mixture of the best of what we had at the time (others have posted talking about how the tests have changed/improved), and the fact that reporting on things in a simple and straight forward manner is hard because people simply don't have the time, or don't give a shit about nuance.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    I suspect that a pattern of not disclosing that statistics that are implied to be factual are actually to some degree ~estimates contributed to the extreme level of polarization over "facts" and "the science", as well as the increasing distrust of the media. Sure, most people don't consider these things too logically, but then if those distributing the facts can't be bothered either, how shall we accurately assign blame for the final outcome?
    - kook_throwaway 5y ago
      >how shall we accurately assign blame for the final outcome? That's a feature not a bug.
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      Whose to blame for 60,000 people dying in Vietnam? Whose to blame for Lobotomies winning the Nobel Prize? Whose to blame for Thalidomide being widely distributed? Almost anything can be passed off as legitimate without accountability with a concerted effort by 'authorities' and the 'news media', it's even worse in the modern short attention span news cycle.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        Who's to blame for 600,000 dead in the United States?
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        The average death is 80 years old with two comorbidies so....the natural cycle of life?
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        There's nothing natural about dying from COVID-19, except in the broadest of definitions of "natural" (i.e. the definition that we developed technology to minimize, control, and avoid).
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        I don't know how you define Natural.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        It's a good question and definitions vary. My working, broadest definition is "That which exists / that which occurs if humans do not use their intellect and ability to cause something else to exist / happen." Starvation is natural. Death by predator is natural. Death due to exposure is natural. Death due to disease is natural. Tornadoes are natural. A biosphere-disrupting asteroid impact is natural. There are other things that are natural that are positives too, but it's good, I think, to keep in mind that "natural" doesn't always imply "good."
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    It's looking like the reported numbers may be over-estimated by one or more orders of magnitude....that's the definition of sensational.
    - pwinnski 5y ago
      This is completely contrary to what "excess death" statistics suggest, which is that we might be under-counting COVID deaths by quite a bit. We've had many more unexpected excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 than can be explained by the official COVID death counts, so it's highly possible that some COVID-caused deaths aren't being recorded as such. It could be that a bit more than 625,000 people have died in the US due to COVID. Or it could be higher than that, and it may be a couple of years before we know for sure. It's not lower, though. Not at all.
- javagram 5y ago
  > red death map visualizations for people to see with inflated death counts. There is no indication of inflated death counts. Death counts from covid correlate closely with excess deaths. Some have claimed that deaths did rise but because of lockdowns, however in “locked down” regions where reported Covid cases and deaths were low, so were excess deaths.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    If you inflate infections, you are therefore are also inflating deaths, it's a 1 to X correlation.
    - javagram 5y ago
      Wrong, all-cause death statistics are tracked separately from infections. See for instance https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        How does reporting things that have nothing to do with covid separately have anything to do with it? Cause of illness is linked to cause of death and they will track proportionally.
        javagram 5y ago
        You can see that covid-19 related deaths aren’t “inflated” by comparing the numbers to excess deaths and seeing they correlate (not just nationally, but by region and time). When 100,000 people are reported to die of covid in the USA or another western country with a high quality reporting system, in the same region and time around 100,000 more deaths from any cause are recorded than would normally be expected. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe the covid-19 deaths are inflated (the “with covid not from covid” theory). Edit: see for instance https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=8185602_nihpp-2021.01.27.21250604v3-f0004.jpg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t... which is visually quite striking. Figure found in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240/
ianhawes 5y ago
Prior to the vaccine rollout (at least in the US), positive cases were used as a metric for public health officials to gauge whether the virus was spreading, whether containment efforts were effective, and how to manage the presumable change in hospitalizations and fatalities. As vaccination efforts have rolled out, there is still a relationship between positive cases and deaths, however the ratio of cases to deaths has dropped dramatically. If you Google "uk covid cases" and flip between new cases and deaths you will notice that the "2nd wave" in December/January had an increase in deaths 2 weeks after the increase in cases. The "3rd wave" has had a large increase in cases but no resulting massive increase in deaths. The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated.
- forcry 5y ago
  >The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated. That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. Hence the people should know about the cases. Of course, instead, if you are looking to push vaccines no matter what, you would say something like >The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated.
  - ianhawes 5y ago
    > That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. The risk of symptomatic illness is low if you are vaccinated. The risk of symptomatic illness is high if you are unvaccinated. The risk of death is high if you are unvaccinated and have pre-existing conditions and are under the age of 65. The risk of death is very high if you are unvaccinated and over the age of 65.
    - forcry 5y ago
      Please cite studies with randomised control trials to justify these claims.
  - 5y ago

by ssully 5y ago

analyte123 5y ago

I think his point is that having a minute amount (possibly non-viable) of viral DNA in your respiratory tract does not necessarily make you a true "case" in terms of being actively infected with the virus.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

He's saying the definition of cases in 'actual science' vs 'the media' is different. Not a shocker that the media would sensationalize things. Science and PCR amplification... has a much looser definition with the possibility for much more false positives with such small number of cycles of amplification. It was done ostensibly for cautionary purposes but the media seized on it and painted red death map visualizations for people to see with inflated death counts.

ssully 5y ago
I understand that. But I would hardly call it sensationalizing. It's a mixture of the best of what we had at the time (others have posted talking about how the tests have changed/improved), and the fact that reporting on things in a simple and straight forward manner is hard because people simply don't have the time, or don't give a shit about nuance.
- mistermann 5y ago
  I suspect that a pattern of not disclosing that statistics that are implied to be factual are actually to some degree ~estimates contributed to the extreme level of polarization over "facts" and "the science", as well as the increasing distrust of the media. Sure, most people don't consider these things too logically, but then if those distributing the facts can't be bothered either, how shall we accurately assign blame for the final outcome?
  - kook_throwaway 5y ago
    >how shall we accurately assign blame for the final outcome? That's a feature not a bug.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Whose to blame for 60,000 people dying in Vietnam? Whose to blame for Lobotomies winning the Nobel Prize? Whose to blame for Thalidomide being widely distributed? Almost anything can be passed off as legitimate without accountability with a concerted effort by 'authorities' and the 'news media', it's even worse in the modern short attention span news cycle.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Who's to blame for 600,000 dead in the United States?
      - nickthemagicman 5y ago
        The average death is 80 years old with two comorbidies so....the natural cycle of life?
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        There's nothing natural about dying from COVID-19, except in the broadest of definitions of "natural" (i.e. the definition that we developed technology to minimize, control, and avoid).
        nickthemagicman 5y ago
        I don't know how you define Natural.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        It's a good question and definitions vary. My working, broadest definition is "That which exists / that which occurs if humans do not use their intellect and ability to cause something else to exist / happen." Starvation is natural. Death by predator is natural. Death due to exposure is natural. Death due to disease is natural. Tornadoes are natural. A biosphere-disrupting asteroid impact is natural. There are other things that are natural that are positives too, but it's good, I think, to keep in mind that "natural" doesn't always imply "good."
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  It's looking like the reported numbers may be over-estimated by one or more orders of magnitude....that's the definition of sensational.
  - pwinnski 5y ago
    This is completely contrary to what "excess death" statistics suggest, which is that we might be under-counting COVID deaths by quite a bit. We've had many more unexpected excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 than can be explained by the official COVID death counts, so it's highly possible that some COVID-caused deaths aren't being recorded as such. It could be that a bit more than 625,000 people have died in the US due to COVID. Or it could be higher than that, and it may be a couple of years before we know for sure. It's not lower, though. Not at all.
javagram 5y ago
> red death map visualizations for people to see with inflated death counts. There is no indication of inflated death counts. Death counts from covid correlate closely with excess deaths. Some have claimed that deaths did rise but because of lockdowns, however in “locked down” regions where reported Covid cases and deaths were low, so were excess deaths.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  If you inflate infections, you are therefore are also inflating deaths, it's a 1 to X correlation.
  - javagram 5y ago
    Wrong, all-cause death statistics are tracked separately from infections. See for instance https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      How does reporting things that have nothing to do with covid separately have anything to do with it? Cause of illness is linked to cause of death and they will track proportionally.
      - javagram 5y ago
        You can see that covid-19 related deaths aren’t “inflated” by comparing the numbers to excess deaths and seeing they correlate (not just nationally, but by region and time). When 100,000 people are reported to die of covid in the USA or another western country with a high quality reporting system, in the same region and time around 100,000 more deaths from any cause are recorded than would normally be expected. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe the covid-19 deaths are inflated (the “with covid not from covid” theory). Edit: see for instance https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=8185602_nihpp-2021.01.27.21250604v3-f0004.jpg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/t... which is visually quite striking. Figure found in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7852240/

ianhawes 5y ago

Prior to the vaccine rollout (at least in the US), positive cases were used as a metric for public health officials to gauge whether the virus was spreading, whether containment efforts were effective, and how to manage the presumable change in hospitalizations and fatalities. As vaccination efforts have rolled out, there is still a relationship between positive cases and deaths, however the ratio of cases to deaths has dropped dramatically. If you Google "uk covid cases" and flip between new cases and deaths you will notice that the "2nd wave" in December/January had an increase in deaths 2 weeks after the increase in cases. The "3rd wave" has had a large increase in cases but no resulting massive increase in deaths. The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated.

forcry 5y ago
>The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated. That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. Hence the people should know about the cases. Of course, instead, if you are looking to push vaccines no matter what, you would say something like >The only metric the public should be concerned about is whether they have or have not been vaccinated.
- ianhawes 5y ago
  > That would be quite stupid. Because if the risk of the disease is low, vaccines does not make sense when you do risk/benefit calculation. The risk of symptomatic illness is low if you are vaccinated. The risk of symptomatic illness is high if you are unvaccinated. The risk of death is high if you are unvaccinated and have pre-existing conditions and are under the age of 65. The risk of death is very high if you are unvaccinated and over the age of 65.
  - forcry 5y ago
    Please cite studies with randomised control trials to justify these claims.
- 5y ago