Do you need to vent about things COVID-19?

[Arielle Popstar]

15 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

You still don't know what good Science is. There are procedures that must be followed in order to classify it as good science, yet you frequently cite sources that do not adhere to these procedures (like your citations from Gerome Corsi). The closer we follow these procedures the more certain we can be about its truth, but we are never absolutely sure about much of anything.

This doesn't mean parts of the Science won't change in the future in some cases when new information becomes available. Good Science does not mean perfect Science.

Perhaps it is simply that I am more impressed with the practical whereas you want to chew on the theory. I see graphs like this:

and think there may be something to this. When I do a search for countries using it for Covid 19, i see entry after entry of sites talking about its successes in other countries: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hydroxychloroquine+countries+using+it&atb=v245-1&ia=web

You are entitled to your opinion of course and hope for your sake it doesn't need to be tested but for me, I will put my money on quickly getting  some HCQ, as it may be some time before I would be eligible for a vaccine if I can even take it.

[Rowan Amore]

41 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Perhaps it is simply that I am more impressed with the practical whereas you want to chew on the theory. I see graphs like this:

and think there may be something to this. When I do a search for countries using it for Covid 19, i see entry after entry of sites talking about its successes in other countries: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hydroxychloroquine+countries+using+it&atb=v245-1&ia=web

You are entitled to your opinion of course and hope for your sake it doesn't need to be tested but for me, I will put my money on quickly getting  some HCQ, as it may be some time before I would be eligible for a vaccine if I can even take it.

Yet you skipped this one https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/19/fact-check-no-hydroxychloroquine-doesnt-work-better-abroad/3311483001/

From YOUR link

[Love Zhaoying]

I'm looking at some of these graphs for a crude Sharpie line 🙀😹..

[Lyssa Greymoon]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

I'm looking at some of these graphs for a crude Sharpie line 🙀😹..

You could drop it into Tineye and head down the rabbit hole of debunks of the junk science it's built on. It's pure garbage.

[Rat Luv]

 

[Lyssa Greymoon]

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/hydroxychloroquine-doesnt-benefit-hospitalized-covid-19-patients

Quote

Researchers assessed each patient’s condition 14 days after being assigned to a treatment group. They used a seven-category scale ranging from one (death) to seven (discharged from the hospital and able to perform normal activities). The results showed no significant difference between the hydroxychloroquine and placebo groups.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021801

Quote

Postexposure therapy with hydroxychloroquine did not prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection or symptomatic Covid-19 in healthy persons exposed to a PCR-positive case patient.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926

Quote

Among patients hospitalized with Covid-19, those who received hydroxychloroquine did not have a lower incidence of death at 28 days than those who received usual care.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/hydroxychloroquine-doesnt-benefit-hospitalized-covid-19-patients

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2021801

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926

 

But..but..showing studies that disagree isn't fair! All studies must come from DuckDuckGo! The New England Journal of Medicine isn't a real institution! 

[Love Zhaoying]

20 minutes ago, Rat Luv said:

 

Congrats..rat!!

[Rat Luv]

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Perhaps it is simply that I am more impressed with the practical whereas you want to chew on the theory. I see graphs like this:

 

Well... no?

You are impressed with the unsupported theory that misrepresenting data with graphs is practical.

Take a course in statistics sometime. I treated myself to several of them during my college years. They were great intellectual investments and humbling as hell.

I skimmed the hcqtrial page and found some bright red flags, all nicely planted within a single sentence.

"To account for future spread, we created an estimate of the future adjusted deaths per million for each country, 90 days in the future, based on a second degree polynomial fit according to the most recent 30 days, enforcing the requirement that deaths do not decrease, and using an assumption of a progressively decreasing maximum increase over time."

That sounds so impressive!

It's nonsense. First, they extrapolated 90 days into the future, based on 30 days of evidence. That rarely ends well. Second, they presumed that a second degree polynomial would "fit" the data. That's a hell of a stretch, particularly given the "wave" nature of the pandemic in many countries and the well understood correlation between the waves, holidays/events, and weather. I'm fascinated by the "deaths do not decrease" statement, which is poorly worded. Precluding the eventual appearance of the undead suggests a possible belief in them, so I'll discount that interpretation. Are they precluding troughs between the waves? Those actually happened and were easily anticipated. Are they precluding reassessment of historical data based on new information, after they draw their conclusions? That can be embarrassing, but it's unavoidable.

Regarding the "second degree polynomial fit", here's a graph (click on it to see the underlying Wiki page) showing the best possible such fit (green line) to something wavy (a sine wave in black dots).

See how crappy the fit is? It's not until you get to fourth degree (blue line) that the model looks anything like the data. Fourth degree fits are rarely predictive, unless the underlying system is well understood. See where that fourth degree fit goes at the end of the graph? Would you trust any researcher who, knowing the cyclical nature of the world's pandemic advance (and that cycle's high correlation to holidays/events and weather), would postulate fitting a second order polynomial to it? I knew better than to do that when I was a teen.

I've crafted and reviewed IRB (Institutional Review Board) submissions, and these kinds of errors are frustratingly commonplace. It's also difficult for people to comprehend what constitutes a sample population. If I compare a million people in one country to a million people in another, I do NOT have a sample population of two million. I have a sample population of... two. Though it feels right to think you've got a solid analytical case with two million data points, it's not that simple. You can learn a lot from studying a small number of large populations, I don't think the hcqtrial folks did.

ETA: I forgot another glaring error. I'm sure most, or all, of you have seen the weekly cyclical nature of Covid-19 numbers. That surprises nobody, right? So, if you wanted to reduce the impact of that weekly cycle on your analysis, would you extrapolate from 30 days of data or... 28/35? May I give most, or all, of you credit for knowing more about statistical analysis than the authors of that website? If so, why are you accepting the analysis of people who know less than you about... statistical analysis?

Yeah, I know, it's not that simple.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Madelaine McMasters]

Really, there is NO hope for me*

 

*ever learning to edit a post.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Madelaine McMasters

[Ceka Cianci]

Oh brother, they are taking it down to the wire with the stimulus package..

I swear, they will spend and throw our  money around like it's growing on tree's any other time, but if it's to give the people they are taxing any relief..It's like trying to get blood out of a turnip..

Just give up the 2k reps or lose the senate majority.

 

Edited December 29, 2020 by Ceka Cianci

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Probably getting their palms and tealeaves inspected!

Yeah naw. They used to hang out on SLU. They're not to sort to go in for tea leaf readings.

[Arielle Popstar]

3 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Yeah, I know, it's not that simple.

It is much simpler however when one is not tilting at windmills. Thanks for the refresher lesson in statistics 🤪 but the thrust of the linked study was about deaths per million from countries using HCQ treatments and those who didn't. The 90 day projection was not even included in the graph I posted. The pertinent part for me was this:

Many countries either adopted or declined early treatment with HCQ, effectively forming a large trial with 1.8 billion people in the treatment group and 663 million in the control group. As of November 14, 2020, an average of 138.5 per million in the treatment group have died, and 588.4 per million in the control group, relative risk 0.235. After adjustments, treatment and control deaths become 267.8 per million and 889.8 per million, relative risk 0.30. The probability of an equal or lower relative risk occurring from random group assignments is 0.030. Accounting for predicted changes in spread, we estimate a relative risk of 0.30. The treatment group has a 69.9% lower death rate.

No need to discount their entire study with current death rates just because you think their projection model is incorrect.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

6 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

 

 

That's an interesting list of countries. I see something else the two groups have in common. Can anyone else spot it?

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It is much simpler however when one is not tilting at windmills. Thanks for the refresher lesson in statistics 🤪 but the thrust of the linked study was about deaths per million from countries using HCQ treatments and those who didn't. The 90 day projection was not even included in the graph I posted. The pertinent part for me was this:

Many countries either adopted or declined early treatment with HCQ, effectively forming a large trial with 1.8 billion people in the treatment group and 663 million in the control group. As of November 14, 2020, an average of 138.5 per million in the treatment group have died, and 588.4 per million in the control group, relative risk 0.235. After adjustments, treatment and control deaths become 267.8 per million and 889.8 per million, relative risk 0.30. The probability of an equal or lower relative risk occurring from random group assignments is 0.030. Accounting for predicted changes in spread, we estimate a relative risk of 0.30. The treatment group has a 69.9% lower death rate.

No need to discount their entire study with current death rates just because you think their projection model is incorrect.

Did 1.8 billion people actually get treated with HCQ?

No? Then why are they in the treatment group?

I await a paragraph from your sources that doesn't contain such egregious errors.

[FairreLilette]

Report this morning says Moderna has enough vaccine for 50 million people in 2020 - that's just a few days.  So, come on...let's go already.  Let's go already.  I'm ready to be vaccinated period whenever it gets here.  However, I might assume I may need a second injection because of the new strain first found in the U.K. but it's been found in one state now in America.  But, I'm ready whenever it gets here.  

Edited December 30, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Luna Bliss]

20 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Perhaps it is simply that I am more impressed with the practical whereas you want to chew on the theory. I see graphs like this:

and think there may be something to this. When I do a search for countries using it for Covid 19, i see entry after entry of sites talking about its successes in other countries: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hydroxychloroquine+countries+using+it&atb=v245-1&ia=web

You are entitled to your opinion of course and hope for your sake it doesn't need to be tested but for me, I will put my money on quickly getting  some HCQ, as it may be some time before I would be eligible for a vaccine if I can even take it

Yes, you are seeing these charts all over the place -- on right-wing websites. To see a graph or article repeatedly referenced does not make it more accurate, however.  People tend to think something is true if they see it over and over, but to find truth one needs to go for quality and not quantity -- to understand quality research you need to understand what makes good Science, and then go to actual Scientific research to evaluate what's true vs right-wing rags on the internet.

The fact that your referenced article has no stated authors and is not published in a reputable Scientific journal should have been obvious red flags.
But there are many more faults if you read the following critiques of your article:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/hcqtrial-com-astroturf-and-disinformation-about-hydroxychloroquine-and-covid-19-on-steroids/
https://www.newsguardtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/COVIDAnalysis.pdf

If you study the above critiques of your article/graphs you can learn what good Science is as the critiques are because the article does not conform to established Scientific standards. The article you keep referencing and its subsidiaries (@CovidAnalysis, HCQMeta -- they use many names) falls horribly short. Here's a list of more names they use:

Edited December 30, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[LittleMe Jewell]

34 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

Report this morning says Moderna has enough vaccine for 50 million people in 2020 - that's just a few days.  So, come on...let's go already.  Let's go already.  I'm ready to be vaccinated period whenever it gets here.  However, I might assume I may need a second injection because of the new strain first found in the U.K. but it's been found in one state now in America.  But, I'm ready whenever it gets here.  

You will likely need a second injection regardless.  Both of the 2 currently approved vaccines require 2 injections, spaced roughly a month apart, to be effective.

So far, the opinions are that the current vaccines will be effective against the new strain, but they are still working on verifying that.

Ultimately, the vaccines might turn out to be like the flu vaccine, where they have to tweak it every year for new strains and we have to keep getting shots every year.

[Luna Bliss]

20 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

I will put my money on quickly getting  some HCQ

I think we need to evaluate what you get out of adhering to conspiracy theories.  I really wouldn't mind so much under normal circumstances, as whatever defenses you need to feel in control and safe is understandable. The problem is that these conspiracy theories surrounding Covid are likely to kill you and others, so they must be challenged.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Ceka Cianci]

You guys may want to have a look at your bank accounts and SSC accounts or where ever you have things deposited..

People are already getting their 600.00 stimulus checks..

Now they are talking about a total separate bill just for the 2000.00..  Turtle boy is feeling the pressure right now from Reps and Dems and Exect..

We'll see I guess.. They need to do something after keeping so many people hanging..

[FairreLilette]

56 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

You will likely need a second injection regardless.  Both of the 2 currently approved vaccines require 2 injections, spaced roughly a month apart, to be effective.

So far, the opinions are that the current vaccines will be effective against the new strain, but they are still working on verifying that.

Ultimately, the vaccines might turn out to be like the flu vaccine, where they have to tweak it every year for new strains and we have to keep getting shots every year.

Oh yeah...I think I heard that about two shots.  Is that for the Pfizer one and the Moderna one?   The Moderna one says it can be kept on dry ice like other types of vaccines while the Pfizer one needs a deeper type of freeze.  Moderna has 50 million vaccines for 2020 and will have about 1.3 billion doses in 2021.  If we have/had 50 million vaccines for 2020, let's get going!   I heard only about 2 million people have been vaccinated thus far.  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/doctors-explain-when-you-can-realistically-expect-to-get-the-covid-19-vaccine/ar-BB1bbcBB?li=BBnb7Kz

Edited December 30, 2020 by FairreLilette

[LittleMe Jewell]

3 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I think I heard that about two shots.  Is that for the Pfizer one and the Moderna one? 

Both.  If I remember correctly, one is a 21-day period between the shots and the other is 28 days.

[LittleMe Jewell]

10 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Now they are talking about a total separate bill just for the 2000.00.

I'll probably piss damn near everyone off, but I hope the $2000.00 amount does not pass.

We need to be helping the people that are out of work or making less than before due to Covid -- not just handing out money left and right to people that are still working as before (though that does make everyone happier and make them like the politicians more).   If everyone didn't just get handed a check, they could actually divert that money to unemployment/under-employment aid, we might actually help many folks come a lot closer to earning what they were before.

However, that would take a bit more effort to figure out............. and politicians & government prefer the easy way, especially if there is a chance it will get them more votes.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

11 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I'll probably piss damn near everyone off, but I hope the $2000.00 amount does not pass.

Don't worry, it won't, and the people who need it will get nothing along with the people who don't need it.