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This doesn't seem like a sound argument to me. Applied more generally, it quickly turns a bunch of statistics into nonsense. E.g. the same argument could be m
by everforward 3y ago
This doesn't seem like a sound argument to me. Applied more generally, it quickly turns a bunch of statistics into nonsense.
E.g. the same argument could be made about COVID deaths themselves. They didn't die because of COVID, they died because they were obese, or smokers, or diabetic, or old, etc. Hell, you could argue that nobody died of COVID at all. They all died from failing to properly isolate themselves. Exposure to other people is causally related to getting COVID.
People don't die from heart attacks, they die from poor diet and exercise. People don't die of cancer, they die from eating red meat or not taking enough D3 or whatever. People don't die of gunshots, they die from poverty and poor mental health.
The cold is the proximate cause of death here. They have a risk factor from COVID (or diabetes, or age, or any of the other crapload of comorbidities related to hypothermia), which made them vulnerable to dying from the cold. They might have survived if they hadn't had COVID, but they also might have survived if they were younger, or in better shape, or didn't have a different health condition.
- tuatoru 3y ago> Applied more generally, it quickly turns a bunch of statistics [published in popular magazines] into nonsense. Well done! Remember that.
- iudqnolq 3y agoYou've identified a lot of complexity. But the answer is not to throw up your hands and declare everything equally unknowable, it's to do the hard work to figure out what's actually going on. That's not something we can do behind our keyboards right now, that doesn't mean their isn't a correct, knowable answer.
- nerdponx 3y agoI'm not sure what your point is here. You're trying to make some kind of reductio ad absurdum argument about what, statistics in general? Causal analysis is bad because causation is complicated at the intersection of social science and medicine? All models are wrong and therefore all models are useless? The primary absurdity here is that the author didn't even do an acceptable correlational study, yet presented a specific and strong causal conclusion. The author failed to establish any causality for anything at all, other than weakly ruling out Covid as a notable cause of excess death in Germany. The author's hypothesis is that people being cold (due to high energy prices) is the cause, but they absolutely do not manage to establish even the faintest hint of a valid causal argument to support that hypothesis.
- meh8881 3y agoClaiming the cold is the proximate cause of death while you’re dying of COVID seems like a poor analysis