2 ms·

That's... incredibly unhelpful, although I suppose it explains why the US has more of these deaths than other countries: accounting practices.

ty6853 2y ago
The US has some of the highest levels of public health research (NIH) and science funding (NSF). And despite not having universal healthcare, we have I think the highest government funded health care spending in the world (~8% of GDP or ~2 Trillion). Part of the way to gain this funding is to label things 'associated' or 'related' in order to trigger a funding grab for your particular field of interest. NIH and NSF funding is mostly adversarial, for the most part the pot is fixed and you can win by making your case more dire than the other guy. Thus you have weird stuff like anything remotely having a connection to COVID or pregnancy getting tagged in to influence the purse strings.
mrandish 2y ago
One would hope any study comparing statistics between countries would normalize for differences in thresholds and time frames. But maybe not?
- potato3732842 2y ago
  It's a systemic problem. The people crunching the numbers want to leave open the door to future research. If they ask X and crunch numbers and get answer Y but think it could be explained by Z they'll just leave it at Y and make Z it's own follow up so then can get credit for two rather than one. The people summarizing it for mass market consumption have every incentive to go with the most outrageous interpretations of Y because that's what grabs eyeballs and that's how they get paid. And this is before you account for all the bad actors who'll willfully make little "oversights" like not correcting for stats across countries because they or their backers or colleagues they're trying to curry favor with have an axe to grind and want to see a particular result.

2 ms·

That's... incredibly unhelpful, although I suppose it explains why the US has more of these deaths than other countries: accounting practices.

by EA-3167 2y ago

ty6853 2y ago
The US has some of the highest levels of public health research (NIH) and science funding (NSF). And despite not having universal healthcare, we have I think the highest government funded health care spending in the world (~8% of GDP or ~2 Trillion). Part of the way to gain this funding is to label things 'associated' or 'related' in order to trigger a funding grab for your particular field of interest. NIH and NSF funding is mostly adversarial, for the most part the pot is fixed and you can win by making your case more dire than the other guy. Thus you have weird stuff like anything remotely having a connection to COVID or pregnancy getting tagged in to influence the purse strings.
mrandish 2y ago
One would hope any study comparing statistics between countries would normalize for differences in thresholds and time frames. But maybe not?
- potato3732842 2y ago
  It's a systemic problem. The people crunching the numbers want to leave open the door to future research. If they ask X and crunch numbers and get answer Y but think it could be explained by Z they'll just leave it at Y and make Z it's own follow up so then can get credit for two rather than one. The people summarizing it for mass market consumption have every incentive to go with the most outrageous interpretations of Y because that's what grabs eyeballs and that's how they get paid. And this is before you account for all the bad actors who'll willfully make little "oversights" like not correcting for stats across countries because they or their backers or colleagues they're trying to curry favor with have an axe to grind and want to see a particular result.