Not sure what else to say other than you don’t know what you’re talking about. Selection bias exists in any study. I didn’t say you just run a simple query.
BCG is super safe and helps against other infections, as well as bladder cancer. also people travel to countries with TB more often than they used to. it’s just a good idea imo, although i’m biased because i was vaccinated.
This i’m not as familiar with, but whatever.
ok, let’s play armchair data scientists. you can’t de-identify and run some queries on the patient data you collected in an ER. those people are already sick. it’s obvious bias.
to properly do a study you would probably first choose a random sample of population subjects, and see if they want to be tracked. then you collect their bcg/blood-type data and see how many got covid, how many required hospitalization, categorize by preexisting conditions, symptoms, and quality of treatment.
or you could ask for volunteers, take out some randomized sample for control, and do the same thing. then you build a predictive model of whether bcg/blood type makes a treatment difference, then test it again on the control group.
both methods reduce but not remove selection bias, so you probably want to run similar studies in other populations. THEN you do it again since ERs started different treatments because of changing ventilator guidelines, novovax, or regeneron, or whatever.
12 months later you publish. in the meantime you make pretty graphs and leak them to oann/foxnews.
Good luck, I know worrying about a vulnerable parent sucks a lot. I hope she managed to not get it and she can be home and safe ASAP!
You know this but it’s not your fault, you have nothing to feel guilty about, and you’ll be back helping again soon hopefully. Better to wait until it’s safe than take any chances. Maybe send her some delivery food or video chat with her 8 year old for a bit to buy her a few minutes of time to not have to worry about him/her as much.
It could be like that, but also there is very strong science to back up associations with different blood groups with susceptibility to various diseases. It’s all sort of academic, no one should be changing their behavior based on their blood group.
This has nothing to do with what has been discussed. You stated that you needed all sorts of paperwork to look at a set of data. That’s not true.
to run a proper study, you need all of that, so you can go into any hospital and get the treatment information for those in your study.
how do you think these studies happen? do you think there’s a nerd doctor in the basement of mass general looking at a blood type spreadsheet?
I’ve done these studies. They require a very basic irb proposal and approval with zero individual consents.
ok but how do you actually collect data and what do you do with it? are you a doc, or what?
The data for these types of studies are generally already collected in the course of other events.
You can see this in the study from Denmark here.
They datamined their EMR. They didn’t collect consent from everyone. In fact:
According to Danish law, studies based entirely on registry data do not require approval from an ethics review board.
that’s a cohort analysis of relative risk that showed a slight difference in distribution for positivity, but not severity or outcome. it’s virtually meaningless except to point to other studies that look a lot closer at blood types (which they do cite). it’s cool and all that they did this, but it’s one big shrug.
i guess your point is that they can write a lot of these papers because the data is there?
I think the main reason that would be important would be if we could figure out why a certain blood type was less susceptible and use it in treatments/vaccines. I assume if that’s research we can do, someone in that field is on it.
I frequently find myself amazed that we’re basically giving up as a country right now seven months in, and likely 2-3 months from knowing a vaccine works and 3-6 months from being able to distribute it broadly (and 2-4 months from being able to distribute it to certain groups).
It would be like lining up on Black Friday at Best Buy at 4am, waiting til 7am and being most of the way to the door and saying, “Fuck it, this is taking forever, I’m going to go get an Egg McMuffin.”
But you can analyze it from the other side where lots of people are being forced to accept more risk for financial reasons, and tacking on additional risk because it seems to be about the same to them. Although it’s still pretty sad/crazy to be going to indoor bars, sporting events, rallies, etc.
But if we prevail soon on a vaccine/treatment, the loss of life in Q4 of 2020 will go down as one of the craziest avoidable mass losses of life.
Nearly cracked 10,000 new cases in the CR yesterday.
Perhaps they’ve upped the testing a bit.
.1% of the population in new cases in one day?
That seems like hospital-crushing levels.
It is. They’re setting up tents outside of some hospitals.
One in the eye for herd immunity…
The concept of ending the Covid pandemic through herd immunity is “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence”, say 80 researchers in a warning letter published by a leading medical journal.
The international signatories of the open letter in the Lancet say the interest in herd immunity comes from “widespread demoralisation and diminishing trust” as a result of restrictions being reimposed in many countries because of surging infections in a second wave.
The suggestion that the way out is by protecting the vulnerable and allowing the virus to transmit among those less at risk is flawed, they say. “Uncontrolled transmission in younger people risks significant morbidity and mortality across the whole population. In addition to the human cost, this would impact the workforce as a whole and overwhelm the ability of healthcare systems to provide acute and routine care.”
The signatories have expertise spanning public health, epidemiology, medicine, paediatrics, sociology, virology, infectious disease, health systems, psychology, psychiatry, health policy, and mathematical modelling. They include a number of scientists who sit on the breakaway Independent Sage group in the UK, such as former chief scientist Sir David King, former WHO director Anthony Costello, virologist Prof Deenan Pillay, behavioural scientist Prof Susan Michie and professor of European public health Martin McKee.
There is no evidence that immunity after recovering from Covid-19 lasts, they say, adding that people who are vulnerable would be at risk for the indefinite future and cannot be kept safe.
“Prolonged isolation of large swathes of the population is practically impossible and highly unethical,” they say, calling for action to suppress the levels of virus in the population.
“It is critical to act decisively and urgently,” they say. “Effective measures that suppress and control transmission need to be implemented widely, and they must be supported by financial and social programmes that encourage community responses and address the inequities that have been amplified by the pandemic.”
Those restrictions will be needed “to reduce transmission and fix ineffective pandemic response systems, in order to prevent future lockdowns”. If the numbers of infections can be pushed down to a low level, it will be possible to keep the virus suppressed through “an efficient and comprehensive” test, trace, isolate and support system, “so life can return to near-normal without the need for generalised restrictions. Protecting our economies is inextricably tied to controlling Covid-19. We must protect our workforce and avoid long-term uncertainty.”
There are success stories – among them Japan, Vietnam and New Zealand, they say.
“The evidence is very clear: controlling community spread of Covid-19 is the best way to protect our societies and economies until safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics arrive within the coming months. We cannot afford distractions that undermine an effective response; it is essential that we act urgently based on the evidence.”
Other signatories to the letter from the UK include epidemiologist Prof David Hunter, cancer researcher Prof Charles Swanton of the Crick Institute and global health professor Devi Sridhar. Those from the US include global health professor Gavin Yamey of Duke University, Prof Rochelle P Walensky from Harvard medical school and Dr Ali Nouri of the Federation of American Scientists. Researchers from Italy, Israel, Malaysia, Spain, Ireland, Germany, France, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada have also signed.
Man you know a government is getting desperate when they propose things like “quarantine schools” where students who test positive for covid will go in order to continue their education without infecting others.
Seriously, that’s how bad the government wants kids to go to school in face-to-face classes. Just straight up insanity.
But basically we’re on our way to an Italy situation. Fuck the Czech government for being so arrogant and incompetent. If this doesn’t wipe the current government out of power in 2021 then nothing will.
More trouble for the NFL
https://twitter.com/adamschefter/status/1316720267025174528?s=21
From the wife this morning… shockedpikachu.gif
“So one of the elementary schools has a shit ton of staff being quarantined because they were all at a teachers wedding and there are pictures everywhere with them all together unmasked. And a few of them are sick. It makes me super thankful of our decisions”
It seems like Europe and the US are headed for disaster. I would not be at all surprised to see Suzzer get the last laugh as winter ends up mattering a ton and multiple countries and multiple states in the US go full Italy in the next couple of months.
The US is kicking this off with a terrifyingly high baseline and hospitals full in many places already.