svara

39 ms·

571.
by svara 7y ago
I'm sorry that I seem to have offended you with what I wrote, but I honestly don't understand why. St. John's wort can be better in terms of side effects than synthetic antidepressants, with similar antidepressant effects, fo
572.
by svara 7y ago
"Effective" in the context of the text I quoted refers to efficacy against depression, but you need to also take the side effects into account when deciding between drugs. Since those vary on a case by case basis and can be signif
573.
by svara 7y ago
"Several studies support the therapeutic benefit of St. John's wort in treating mild to moderate depression. In fact, some research has shown the supplement to be as effective as several prescription antidepressants." ( https
574.
by svara 7y ago
Standardized total extracts of natural sources are pretty standard in the pharmacopeia, so what you're saying makes total sense. Making sure that the dosage is standardized is a solved problem. Unfortunately this type of drug preparati
575.
by svara 7y ago
No randomized control group. Without one all that these findings mean is "go get more data".
576.
by svara 7y ago
They get basically two superimposed chromatograms from Sanger sequencing, one from the control and one from the patient sample. They need to sort out which chromatogram peak belongs to which and calculate the relative abundance of the seque
577.
by svara 7y ago
Nothing wrong with recognizing that few things are all black or all white. In fact, I suspect those beautiful things that you mention happened at least in part because people were motivated by the darkness they saw.
578.
by svara 7y ago
> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 Thanks for this reference, hadn't seen it yet. One important limitation - they estimate R0 based on serial interval and time course of number infect
579.
by svara 7y ago
At the end of the day, hiding exponential growth of this is impossible. That's what really bugs me about those who love to point fingers at how this or that country is counting things wrong (often revealing their biases in the process)
580.
by svara 7y ago
What I'm saying is that this particular explanation for the apparent difference in fatality ratios of Coronavirus infections is a fringe one, and it's not right to point to that as an example of sentiment in Germany in general. I&
581.
by svara 7y ago
> However blaming first southern people for being "inferior" to Germans and having "less hygiene" fails to the fertile ground there I understand that you find that offensive, I do as well. But please don't genera
582.
by svara 7y ago
I think there are some people everywhere who like to find confirmation for their nationalist prejudice in this crisis. It's wrong, but it's also just way too early to draw any conclusions. You shouldn't be proud of your achie
583.
by svara 7y ago
> Some arguments from there like to explain their results as "superior" hospitals and the "lack of hygiene" as the cause of the results of Italy, Spain, France etc. and I just don't buy it. That sounds pretty wro
584.
by svara 7y ago
The "false sense of security" point needs evidence the same way that we need evidence on whether masks are beneficial or not. There's evidence for the latter, and, to the best of my knowledge, only speculation on the former p
585.
by svara 7y ago
That's nonsense. How are you going to blind people to whether they're wearing a mask or not? There's already a lot of evidence supporting the use of mask to protect the wearer and to protect transmission of infection from the
586.
by svara 7y ago
When you have a correlation plus a plausible mechanism for causation, it's not appropriate to invoke "correlation is not causation". It's literally true, but distracting. That's where you do additional studies.
587.
by svara 7y ago
This paper is being misinterpreted everywhere in this very misleading fashion. See this blog post Raina MacIntyre (the first author) wrote to clarify this: https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/impact-ppe-shortages-healt..
588.
by svara 7y ago
Probably the MacIntyre et al. paper. It's being misinterpreted everywhere in this very misleading fashion. See this blog MacIntyre wrote to clarify this: https://iser.med.unsw.edu.au/blog/impact-ppe-shortages-healt
589.
by svara 7y ago
No doubt that contraception yes a big deal, but it's not actually that new a thing. This article has a lot of interesting detail, going back to antiquity. It really started to pick up steam in the mid 19th century. https://e
590.
by svara 7y ago
> We failed to understand that complex systems defy simplistic reductionism. That reads like anti intellectual mumbo-jumbo to me. What complex system [0] are we talking about? There aren't very many feedback loops in the dynamics of
591.
by svara 7y ago
I've posted this here before, so sorry about that, but in this case I think it's just so important that I belive it's justified: The messaging around masks has been so aggravating to me that I got together with a couple of co
592.
by svara 7y ago
We reviewed this and related literature in detail in a pre-print: https://medium.com/@matthiassamwald/promoting-simple-do-it-y... The upshot is, masks work, and the simple ones are particularly effective for protecting
593.
by svara 7y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598803
594.
by svara 7y ago
They also happen to be the countries that have the most control over the epidemic. https://studylib.net/coronavirus-growth
595.
by svara 7y ago
Fair, but the author is about as well-respected an epidemiologist as you will find. The article is explaining what the default assumption should be. Empirical data might change that view.
596.
by svara 7y ago
Negative R0 meaning the virus actually heals people? ;) Maybe you should read this from an actual epidemiologist: https://ccdd.hsph.harvard.edu/will-covid-19-go-away-on-its-o...
597.
by svara 7y ago
Simple DIY masks may be an effecive stop-gap measure until professional masks become available again in sufficient numbers [0]. Fully agree that official & media messaging with respect to masks is quite misleading, of course they work.
598.
by svara 7y ago
The viruses are not similar at all, the symptoms are to some degree. SARS-CoV-2 is in the same family as SARSv1, MERS, a number of viruses that cause the common cold (229E, OC43, NL63), plus a number of bat viruses. But not influenza! The t
599.
by svara 7y ago
The idea is great in principle. But this is going to be a problem: "We need a mechanical device which can automatically sort the samples into well group" PCR machines are actually not that complicated by comparison. Basically just
600.
by svara 7y ago
Singapore is an interesting one. Their outbreak looks really benign, but actually they are on an exponential trajectory as well. The rate is just much lower, something like 7% daily. It doesn't register compared to the countries with f

More ›