Dude. How long do you think 'schools were closed' in Australia?I cannot fathom how people think closing schools is good for the students. Kids out of school is one of the biggest harms of the pandemic. I don't think any other country except maybe Australia and China (just assuming from their hardcore zero-covid strat) kept schools closed for as long as the US. You always are talking about how bad such and such thing (that usually has rather minor to nonexistent effects) is for marginalized groups yet you're for policies that greatly disadvantage marginalized groups even more.
Opinion | We Learned Our Lesson Last Year: Do Not Close Schools (Published 2021)
The Omicron surge is scary. But schools must stay open.www.nytimes.com
Look at all the missing kids California has...
The curious case of California's disappearing kids
For the first time since the start of the century, fewer than 6 million kids are attending California public schools.calmatters.org
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This would be the same John Ioannidis who suggested the USA may only lose about 10,000 people to covid? Only, ooh, ~100 times out.
Okay, I know he didn't exactly say that. But even still, he was clearly far understating the death toll. He's a lot more careful in his wording, but he clearly implies it would be a bit like 'flu: a few tens of thousands. He underestimated covid's IFR substantially, and its infectiousness very heavily. More recently, he's clearly been a bit bad-tempered about the fact people are noting his heavy underestimates from early on, and he misrepresents what he said back then to pretend he didn't.
And there's a sad thing there. Ioannidis really has done some good work over the years - ironically, much of it on the quality of science. Numerous critics have pointed out that some of Ioannidis's own studies on Covid are distinctly poor, and precisely the sort of low quality he spent years dissecting. But no-one's right about everything. Einstein was majorly wrong about a unified field theory, and Linus Pauling ended up thinking massive doses of Vit C prolonged life. That he was wrong is not the sad thing though: what's sad is that rather accept he was wrong and move on, he's let his ego get on top of him and basically throwing a kind of science world tantrum (such as his "troll study", but see below). And herein lies a problem with you touting "world's most cited scientists". It doesn't matter how cited a person is, when the evidence is clear that they made a mistake. This is literally the appeal to authority fallacy in action, using someone's authority rather than available evidence.
So, appeal to authority. In response to a disagreement with another researcher, Ioannidis did the truly despicable thing of using a scientific paper to denigrate that researcher with the most jaw-dropping, poisonous, punching down load of ad hominem abuse I or most people have ever seen in academic publication - right down to attacking that researcher's physical appearance. I would say that I have no idea how the journal permitted that shit anywhere near public view... except that it was a journal which Ioannidis was until recently an editor of. Fucking hell.
Next up, Ioannidis's intervention in the Great Barrington Declaration, of which a major signatory was Bhattacharya. Wait, aren't Bhattacharya and Ioannidis at the same institution? Hey, not only that, but aren't they co-authors on several Covid studies, including the key study where Ioannidis declared such a low IFR? Uh-oh. Make your scientific points by all means, but let's not pretend these are brave thinkers independently coming from different places.
Incidentally, who else other than Ioannidis who keeps cropping up in these threads is also into quality of science? Oh, Vinay Prasad. And, oh look, Prasad and Ioannidis have published together, and not just the once. So, how independent really are these guys? Not as much as they might like us to think: it's the Covid skeptic club, isn't it, with mates sticking up for each other.
Alrighty, no response.I cannot fathom how people think closing schools is good for the students. Kids out of school is one of the biggest harms of the pandemic. I don't think any other country except maybe Australia and China (just assuming from their hardcore zero-covid strat) kept schools closed for as long as the US. You always are talking about how bad such and such thing (that usually has rather minor to nonexistent effects) is for marginalized groups yet you're for policies that greatly disadvantage marginalized groups even more.
Opinion | We Learned Our Lesson Last Year: Do Not Close Schools (Published 2021)
The Omicron surge is scary. But schools must stay open.
Look at all the missing kids California has...
The curious case of California's disappearing kids
For the first time since the start of the century, fewer than 6 million kids are attending California public schools.
Where did I say it's good for schools to be closed? I'm actually very against it. The 'lockdown' in Australia allowed schools to remain OPEN. It did the opposite of what you are pretending.
That 'lockdown' in Australia is finished. Now we have massive problems in schools. Kids not turning up. Teachers unavailable. The damage to children in Australia is being done by COVID. Not 'lockdowns'. Because, again, other than 8 weeks where the schools were physically closed, over the last two years. The schools have been opened and full attended and staff for 2020/1. Only 3 of those weeks were where school was not being taught. They just did it remotely. (I don't like this and would prefer physical school.)
Our premier made a decision at the start of the year. Delay 2 weeks of school due to the rise in cases (we just opened so it was expected). I actually critiqued this, I thought it was an over reaction, that we should living with COVID more. I was wrong. In the 8 weeks between the start and Easter, COVID crippled child attendances and schools struggled to staff. I'll note that we had major floods in the state. Most schools were shut down another week due to inability of people to get to school. So, there was a mid-term covid pressure release to reduce infections. That didnt work. Hopefully the Easter holiday will rectify this, but I doubt it
When I say, 'I cant fathom how opening up is better' I mean there is not much learning going on this term. The normal staff are not available, substitutes are running out and retired teachers are retired for a reason. And we are no where near as bad as the US who have called in the National Guards to teach kids. All this doesn't sound like effective schooling
This is not better than 'lockdown'. No one bothered to try and make schools sustainable while COVID exists and now the kids are paying the price. Again, one of the main purposes of the 'lockdown' was to KEEP the schools open without all this drama.
And lastly, if a district is paying extra for teacher, how will this help minorities? Because it sounds like it would just funnel teacher away from them. Thus creating the problem you pretend to care about. But then, if you actually cared about minorities, you would have focussed on making school sustainable instead of trying to score political points
No clue, I figured Australia might be worse than the blue liberal cities in the US that closed schools for 18 straight months because how crazy Australia went with covid lockdowns (kids couldn't even play outside). Basically no countries closed schools as long as the US and just included some exceptions I thought might have been.
How was someone going to get this from what you posted before that I replied to? It sounded like you were for schools being closed the entire time from what you posted. What is the methods for kids not being in school? Because if they are constantly being tested and having to stay home (possibly a 2 week quarantine) because they get a positive test with no symptoms, that is a joke and rather pointless. We shouldn't be testing kids without symptoms. That's what led to lots of absences in the US at least. One of my teacher friends told me how the kids already figured out how to get around testing as they eat like flaming hot Cheetos beforehand and then they won't even get tested because it messes up the test. Having the most testing and restrictions on the least vulnerable group is the opposite of what you're supposed to do. School has been very sustainable, look at Florida, or that school in Colorado Springs in the article I posted.
Regardless what the job is, you have to pay enough to get people to work said job. It really seemed like the pay wasn't enough if they weren't getting any applicants. The one thing that needs to be done in the US at least is have education money equally distributed to each student as the way it is now the school district gets funding from the property taxes of the community so if you have a rich community the school is way better than a poor community obviously. And keeping schools closed very greatly hurt minorities because white people were still sending their kids to school the entire time (private schools) while public schools were closed. That happened in obviously liberal areas while conservative areas did not close schools. You keep complaining conservatives are never for minorities yet a lot of conservative areas are far more favorable to minorities than liberal areas. There's a reason why black people are doing a reverse migration back to the south because they have more opportunity there, which doesn't align with the narrative that republicans are racist.
And Michigan with close to the most covid restrictions in the US with basically the same population as Sweden has more than double the deaths of Sweden.
Way to ignore the fact he's one of the greatest living scientists.
Someone asking for the actual data and science to be done is a bad? I don't know the IFR Ioannidis had in mind himself but I know that 1st Santa Clara study that Bhattacharya did remains in line with IFR estimates over a year after his study. Do you have some kind of evidence showing the GBD policy is worse than the JSM policy? Florida used the GBD policy basically (Bhattacharya talked with DeSantis) and performed better than average.
No, Florida has performed worse than the US average. In deaths and number of infections, it exceeds the US average by about 10%, ranking 17th (340 v. 300 deaths per 100,000) and 11th respectively of US states.
No, that's fine.
But you surely do see the problem with someone asking for the "actual data and science" designing bad studies and refusing to accept those studies' inaccuracies is a problem. Then those people privileged enough to get newspaper and TV interviews making snippy comments about others expressing themselves on Twitter, and using their privilege and authority to simply abuse dissenters in a way unimaginable for researchers with less institutional power.
Let's be clear here: currently in the USA ~0.3% of the population has died of Covid. And that's despite many of those infections occurring with most of the population vaccinated - I can only hope you grasp what that implies about how dangerous Covid was. So when Ioannidis predicted an IFR of just 0.17%, how is that looking now? Oh, but that was just the first study. In a later one, he revised it down, to 0.15%. It's not that I disagree that early estimates of over 1% were high, but then most scientists in the field recognised that probably was an overestimate, and they were readily suggesting 0.5-1% more likely pending additional data. And at least as that data rolled in, those other scientists revised their numbers towards the more likely real figure, rather than Ioannidis who moved further away.
And herein lies an issue with the GBD. If it's authors were relying on mortality data that was a heavy underestimate, what would the ramifications of that be?
I'd also note that Bhattacharya's agreement to sign up to a declaration organised by a notorious right-wing think tank, and subsequent involvement with other notable right wing individuals and organisations (beyond a purely scientific advisory role) should very much lead us to suspect that he has a substantial political ideological motivation rather than scientific.
Judging someone on their recent track record is a great deal more meaningful than judging someone on their past glories.
Didn't you say we should ignore Fauci because he's been wrong a bunch of times about Covid? He's never been so massively off the mark about Covid as Ioannidis has.
States Ranked by Age-Adjusted COVID Deaths
Cumulative age-adjusted COVID deaths per capita by state, updated weekly. The Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Upper New England have fewer COVID deaths.
www.bioinformaticscro.com
The Santa Clara study quickly revised it up
Researchers adjust results of startling Santa Clara antibody study
After originally reporting that coronavirus infections in Santa Clara County have been...
Have you listened to Bhattacharya talk about covid? He clearly has no major political biases. I recall him doing a interview with Hoover Institution (leans right) and the interviewer obviously was heavily biased by the type of questions asked but Jay never just went along with his implications and stuck to the known science at the time. You act like people like Jay are going against known pandemic policies when they are going by policies that we've always done in history while going against policies that are completely unknown.
Fauci also was wrong with AIDS.
I love this flim-flammery. "Just don't count old people lol, lmao."States Ranked by Age-Adjusted COVID Deaths
Cumulative age-adjusted COVID deaths per capita by state, updated weekly. The Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Upper New England have fewer COVID deaths.
Seriously, what is wrong with so many of you? If one state has more older people than another state and both states implement the same policies, the state with more old people is going to have more deaths, that doesn't mean they did worse. Adjusting for age isn't not counting old people, it's adjusting to put states are more equal grounds for comparison. It's like comparing say Ethiopia to the US in covid deaths, the US is going to do worse because the average age in the US is almost 40 and the average age in Ethiopia is under 20.
Yeah, enough old people died that our life expectancy in the US dropped, what, 2 years? That's too many old people doing stuff
It doesn't adjust for age, or at least it's a gross simplification for adjustment. I can read their formula perfectly fine. They assign weight to deaths by age simply by factoring it as a percentage of the total US population. Quite literally, they just count old people as "less" by virtue of the fact that there are fewer of them in the first place. It is correct that old people are at greater risk and that if your inputs are precisely the same, the outputs will reflect that difference. You don't account for that by just counting old people as 1/3rd a person.
That's... pretty random.States Ranked by Age-Adjusted COVID Deaths
Cumulative age-adjusted COVID deaths per capita by state, updated weekly. The Pacific Northwest, Hawaii, and Upper New England have fewer COVID deaths.
1) What about all the other factors that might affect mortality (poverty, diabetes, pop. density, etc.)?
2) What about all the other states? Are Florida and California actually representative?
3) How meaningful are their assigned numbers?
So they fucked up then. And that doesn't change the fact, as stated, Ioannidis published later papers also with unrealistically low IFR estimates.
In a WSJ article, apparently Bhattacharya freely admitted being right wing. Plus, actions speak louder than words.
Bhattacharya signed up to a declaration funded by a notoriously libertarian conservative Think Tank. Then he signed up to an institute founded by a libertarian Austrian economist. And an academy hosted at a libertarian conservative College, along with no less than Trump administration alumnus, Scott Atlas. The interview you're talking about was set up with one of these that he'd joined: so that's not exactly a neutral situation, it's a PR video.
Some regional/rural schools are getting smashed by staff absences, barely having enough warm bods to stay open.
That's not the formula.
Age is literally the biggest risk factor by a large amount, how is that random? I guess Ethiopia's response was a whopping 45 times better than the US then, the US obviously should've then copied what Ethiopia did.
How was his IFR unrealistically low? The US IFR is going to be higher than the world average due to age and obesity.
You keep attacking the person instead of the science. What scientifically has Bhattacharya said that is wrong?
It is actually, they print it at the bottom of the webpage.
It's literally a summation where every strata is weighted by their relative percentage of the population. They count old people less since old people make up a smaller and smaller portion of the population as their age increases.
EDIT: Side note to the comment to Agema about Ethiopia: https://www.reuters.com/article/hea...ould-cost-you-two-years-in-jail-idUSKBN277209
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Okay. You posted a video of Vinay Prasad attacking a paper because he made up some ways he thought it might not have taken into account differences between two areas compared. Then you use as evidence to compare two places figures based on a maths equation looking at just one thing that is vastly less robust even than that paper Prasad was attacking.
Consistency, dude.
It was literally low, as we can see from real world figures when more data was in, and as he had to correct a paper to get to.
What has he said that's right?
With the GBD, he was effectively positing an unproven hypothesis. When scientists put forward hypotheses with social and political ramifications, to what extent do you think these may be affected by political beliefs?
You said the formula is just counting old people straight up as a 1/3, which isn't true (maybe depending on a specific state the equation might end up there). So how would you make an equation to adjust for age that would be acceptable? If you have a state with say 10% elderly vs a state with 20% elderly, they both do exactly the same interventions, the 10% state is going to have less deaths. You're either going to have to weight the elderly more in the 10% state or weight them less in the 20% state to make an equal comparison. I really don't know how you're getting to the argument that "if you don't count old people..." If there's something wrong in the equation where the weighting is done inaccurately, then point that out; otherwise, it's not a legit argument.
Wow, they're 2 different things you're looking at. When you're looking at if an intervention works, you kinda have to know it works or doesn't work with eliminating all confounding elements. Trying to compare 2 different areas is a bit different than that. You're advocating for just comparing death rates per capita, which is a piss poor way to compare how well one area performed over another. Why even put in per capita then, just do it based on total deaths. right? Anyway after applying per capita obviously, the next biggest thing to adjust is age, and that's not even arguable. That's gets you more accurate, is it perfect? Nope. Find me a place that adjusts for everything from age to obesity to density to everything else, and that would be the most accurate comparison. I'd link to that if I knew of some place that did that. I don't know why you're advocating for a worse comparison over a better one (perhaps the worse one agrees with your politics more?).
I don't really care for whatever Ioannidis IFR estimates were. If you wanna go down that road, the data Britain used to decide on certain interventions was way further off than Ioannidis' IFR data. He's not an expert in viruses and transmission, he was mainly pointing out all the data that everything is getting based off is bad data while also ignoring the costs from doing XYZ. Just look at how backwards the US still is, the most covid restrictive group is the least vulnerable group, that makes no sense.
John Ioannidis and Medical Tribalism in the Era of Covid-19
The critical questions the Stanford professor is raising about Covid-19 have gotten lost amid partisan bickering.
undark.org
Bhattacharya was mainly going off historical precedents, lockdowns are a new thing, you're acting like they are somehow proven to work (and proven to work doesn't mean just less covid but less overall harm). The state that did mainly what he was advocating for did better than average so it seems like there's something to it. And restricting children the most (which is what liberal states are doing) is literally the opposite of who you should be restricting if you are going to be putting in restrictions.
I don't feel like looking up the specific percentage because it hardly matters. Last I checked the 65+ crowd in America is ~18%. But presuming they use the strata given by the CDC (They don't specifically say they do, but it's a fair assumption considering where they're getting their data from), then the 65+ crowd is further broken up into 65-74, 75-84, and 85+. Each of those groups will be subdivided into less than 18% by definition, if you want more concrete numbers and not recognizing the issue at hand.
Don't weight it. If you want to say the elderly population is the problem, compare just the elderly population between states. Find the per capita death toll among the elderly. They have the tools to do so and even did so at first... then added a ridiculous weight to it to smooth out the differences between states, making elderly dead count for less.