COVID 19 Vaccination Discussion

[jaylw314]

32 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

All epidemiologists agree?

No, of course not.  Again, fallacy by "black or white thinking," but it is another common trope among those those who seek to discredit consensus developed by the scientific process.

[aviatoreb]

51 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

I'm not stating fact but more observation. Many of the people on this board and elsewhere point to correlations that support their POV and ignore correlations that do not.  Many people on this board and elsewhere act as though the medical community is a monolith in lock step agreement about the actions that are being taken and anyone who dares to question those actions is often maligned as anti-data, anti-science or anti-social.  

Well riffing on all this - epistemology.

I am not sure we mean the same thing you and I when we use the word correlation.  Any scientist worth a darn works with multivariate random variables and tests for correlations across many variables.  That said, it is famously said that correlation does not imply causation and that is day one in any advanced statistics class.  But statistics are hardly the answer to everything which is why I wonder if we mean the same thing by the phrase correlation.  If I crash my bike into a tree on a mountain bike ride, and break my arm, I am not going to say there is a correlation and wait for a debate.  There is no data suitable for posing any statistical test. what am I going too create a sample experiment of a thousand people and run them into trees and other vegetation and test for statistical significance to a hypothesis that crashing bikes into trees causes broken arms?  Is it ok if I just sit there in the woods with my broken arm and blame the crash into the tree without developing a correlation statistic?   

And I am not sure we mean the same thing when we use the word fact.  In my world 1+1=2 is a fact. If I ask 1000 people and 3 people say no it is 3, 1+1=3 is that controversial?  Experts disagree? Should I say it is not a fact because 3 people disagree?  Or is it not a fact or is the opposite - gasp - a controversy?  1+1=2 is a controversy.  If I find someone on YouTube?  In some circles fact is whatever supports whatever is convenient and expedient for right now.  In some circles fact is a thing that exists with or without the observer.   The if a tree falls in an empty forest thing.  Its epistemology.  That is above my pay grade.  Me, when I broke my arm, I blamed the tree and satisfied its a fact how my arm broke, and even though developing a correlation is not possible with exactly 1 data point.

 

[rbridges]

7 hours ago, Shadrach said:

I have thought about it a lot. The only other variable is the Vitamin D3 brand.  Perhaps what I have been taking lately is of lower quality.  I am hopeful but realistic.  The only symptom of covid-19 that was really bothersome for me was losing my sense of taste/smell and the occasional, very odd phantom cigarette smoke smell that would fill my nose randomly and inexplicably. It was so intense that I initially had an odd sort of olfactory nostalgia for my college years. The nostalgia was short lived and then it was just gross...

That piqued my interest. I couldn't find any studies that showed people's plaque psoriasis improving with covid-19. In fact, one study I read said that psoriasis symptoms worsened. It would be interesting to learn why yours improved 

[Shadrach]

8 minutes ago, rbridges said:

That piqued my interest. I couldn't find any studies that showed people's plaque psoriasis improving with covid-19. In fact, one study I read said that psoriasis symptoms worsened. It would be interesting to learn why yours improved 

Indeed. I’d like to know as well.  It did not just improve, it completely resolved for several months. I have searched for others with similar outcomes and had no luck.  

[MikeOH]

1 hour ago, jaylw314 said:

No, of course not.  Again, fallacy by "black or white thinking," but it is another common trope among those those who seek to discredit consensus developed by the scientific process.

And, absent some valid statistical data on exactly how many epidemiologists agree, and to what degree (and, not just hand-picked politically correct ones), I'll posit that the exact shade of gray is not so easy to know with certainty.

[Marauder]

That is immediate mortality.  I wonder what the long term studies will show regarding changes in longevity.  Will there be heart damage for example in long haulers that will result in changes to their long term health?  Will people die of heart disease because of all this a decade earlier?  Time will tell.  Knock on wood and stay healthy friends.

For some COVID survivors, it wasn’t the long term effects…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/22/texas-roadhouse-kent-taylor-suicide/


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[N201MKTurbo]

On 4/25/2021 at 4:02 PM, ilovecornfields said:

Totally agree. You can find idiots everywhere.

Just trying to keep you in business...

[N201MKTurbo]

https://cic.nyu.edu/blog/building-back-better-COVID-19
 

Interesting article considering it was written over a year ago. Interesting that the plan was in place before COVID and before Biden.

[jaylw314]

3 hours ago, MikeOH said:

And, absent some valid statistical data on exactly how many epidemiologists agree, and to what degree (and, not just hand-picked politically correct ones), I'll posit that the exact shade of gray is not so easy to know with certainty.

I recall a humor article from the BMJ many years ago jokingly titled "The Seven Alternatives to Evidence-Based Medicine," with one being "Diffidence-Based Medicine -- Some [people] see a problem and look for an answer.  Others merely see a problem."

[ilovecornfields]

1 hour ago, jaylw314 said:

I recall a humor article from the BMJ many years ago jokingly titled "The Seven Alternatives to Evidence-Based Medicine," with one being "Diffidence-Based Medicine -- Some [people] see a problem and look for an answer.  Others merely see a problem."

 

6 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

Well riffing on all this - epistemology.

I am not sure we mean the same thing you and I when we use the word correlation.  Any scientist worth a darn works with multivariate random variables and tests for correlations across many variables.  That said, it is famously said that correlation does not imply causation and that is day one in any advanced statistics class.  But statistics are hardly the answer to everything which is why I wonder if we mean the same thing by the phrase correlation.  If I crash my bike into a tree on a mountain bike ride, and break my arm, I am not going to say there is a correlation and wait for a debate.  There is no data suitable for posing any statistical test. what am I going too create a sample experiment of a thousand people and run them into trees and other vegetation and test for statistical significance to a hypothesis that crashing bikes into trees causes broken arms?  Is it ok if I just sit there in the woods with my broken arm and blame the crash into the tree without developing a correlation statistic?   

And I am not sure we mean the same thing when we use the word fact.  In my world 1+1=2 is a fact. If I ask 1000 people and 3 people say no it is 3, 1+1=3 is that controversial?  Experts disagree? Should I say it is not a fact because 3 people disagree?  Or is it not a fact or is the opposite - gasp - a controversy?  1+1=2 is a controversy.  If I find someone on YouTube?  In some circles fact is whatever supports whatever is convenient and expedient for right now.  In some circles fact is a thing that exists with or without the observer.   The if a tree falls in an empty forest thing.  Its epistemology.  That is above my pay grade.  Me, when I broke my arm, I blamed the tree and satisfied its a fact how my arm broke, and even though developing a correlation is not possible with exactly 1 data point.

BMJ actually has an aviation-related article that addresses some issues both of you have raised:

https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459

Free full-text article:

https://europepmc.org/article/med/14684649

Follow-up study:

https://europepmc.org/article/MED/30545967

Edited April 27, 2021 by ilovecornfields
Added free full-text articles.

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, ilovecornfields said:

 

BMJ actually has an aviation-related article that addresses some issues both of you have raised:

https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459

Free full-text article:

https://europepmc.org/article/med/14684649

Follow-up study:

https://europepmc.org/article/MED/30545967

https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3m5d7/are-parachutes-safe-skydiving-deaths-randomized-controlled-trial
 

[Hank]

2 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3m5d7/are-parachutes-safe-skydiving-deaths-randomized-controlled-trial
 

Sadly, I know people who were injured because they chose to jump from a plane wearing a chute. Granted, their injuries would have been worse had they jumped without a chute, but no one who didn't jump out of a plane  that day was hurt . . . . 

[steingar]

10 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

Any scientist worth a darn works with multivariate random variables and tests for correlations across many variables.

Actually, any scientist worth his or her salt reduces the test to one variable, to determine the effect of that variable on the problem at hand.  That's the scientific method right there.  Not everyone has such luxury, but lots of us do.  Where do you think all this wisdom about viruses and how they work came from in the first place?

[N201MKTurbo]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

Sadly, I know people who were injured because they chose to jump from a plane wearing a chute. Granted, their injuries would have been worse had they jumped without a chute, but no one who didn't jump out of a plane  that day was hurt . . . . 

I once knew a lady who’s chute malfunctioned. She lived. Was in the hospital for months. And JD BASE jumped in the Grand Canyon and his chute got tangled with his friend’s. JD lived after six months in the hospital, his friend didn’t. 

[aviatoreb]

49 minutes ago, steingar said:

Actually, any scientist worth his or her salt reduces the test to one variable, to determine the effect of that variable on the problem at hand.  That's the scientific method right there.  Not everyone has such luxury, but lots of us do.  Where do you think all this wisdom about viruses and how they work came from in the first place?

As you said, and the poster I was responding to said, one cannot always reduce relevant factors to one variable and we have multivariate statistics, multivariate calculus and multivariate functions as tools to discuss those situations.  I should have added the word "can"  for can use. Certainly if an experiment or analysis can be reduced to a single variable then do it.  

[aviatoreb]

5 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

 

BMJ actually has an aviation-related article that addresses some issues both of you have raised:

https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459

Free full-text article:

https://europepmc.org/article/med/14684649

Follow-up study:

https://europepmc.org/article/MED/30545967

I love it - a very witty and perfect discussion.  I loves the titles of sections in that first study.  Those guys are just funny!

Natural history of gravitational challenge

 

The parachute and the healthy cohort effect

The parachute and the healthy cohort effect

Parachutes and the military industrial complex

 

A call to (broken) arms

Anyway, they are clearly pointing to what I was describing with my rambling paragraph, not all knowledge is derived from randomized experiments that then are analyzed by statistics.  Not even in science.  

[bradp]

10 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Indeed. I’d like to know as well.  It did not just improve, it completely resolved for several months. I have searched for others with similar outcomes and had no luck.  

Hypothetically- change in environment (ie lack of a previous trigger) or a sort of natural immune modulation to with infection.  

[ilovecornfields]

6 minutes ago, aviatoreb said:

I love it - a very witty and perfect discussion.  I loves the titles of sections in that first study.  Those guys are just funny!

Natural history of gravitational challenge

 

The parachute and the healthy cohort effect

The parachute and the healthy cohort effect

Parachutes and the military industrial complex

 

A call to (broken) arms

Anyway, they are clearly pointing to what I was describing with my rambling paragraph, not all knowledge is derived from randomized experiments that then are analyzed by statistics.  Not even in science.  

Some of the references were pretty funny too. They went Old School with the gravity stuff.

[aviatoreb]

2 minutes ago, ilovecornfields said:

Some of the references were pretty funny too. They went Old School with the gravity stuff.

Do parachutes work on the Moon?  I think not!  I don't think gravity has anything to do with parachutes.

I was just looking at the second paper, with a picture of a lady jumping off a biplane on the ground with her parachute on.

[flyboy0681]

1 hour ago, aviatoreb said:

Do parachutes work on the Moon?  I think not!  I don't think gravity has anything to do with parachutes.

I was just looking at the second paper, with a picture of a lady jumping off a biplane on the ground with her parachute on.

Of all the video shot on the moon during the Apollo days, this one fascinates me the most..

 

 

[Mcstealth]

13 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

Of all the video shot on the moon during the Apollo days, this one fascinates me the most..

 

 

I have never seen that before. Thank you. 

Galileo was a smart guy!!! 

[aviatoreb]

5 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

Of all the video shot on the moon during the Apollo days, this one fascinates me the most..

 

 

I know right!  Its so counter intuitive since our monkey brains intuition are developed in a pressure environment.

...it would have been a lot cheaper to put those guys in space suits in a big pressure vessel in vacuum on Earth though.  But lots more fun on the Moon.

[EricJ]

3 hours ago, steingar said:

Actually, any scientist worth his or her salt reduces the test to one variable, to determine the effect of that variable on the problem at hand.  That's the scientific method right there.  Not everyone has such luxury, but lots of us do.  Where do you think all this wisdom about viruses and how they work came from in the first place?

Many times, however, the problem is akin to Jello where no matter where you apply pressure, it just distorts somewhere else.   In other words, many problems cannot be sufficiently simplified to be usefully univariate.   The most useful math class I took in grad school was Design of Experiments, where multivariate effects can be separated by careful structuring of the experiments and data collection.   Many of the concepts overlapped with my signal processing background, anyway, so it was a fun class.

So, no, it is often not possible, and sometimes not even a good idea, to reduce a test to a single variable.   Sometimes the effects are small and have to be teased out from among their friends, like recovering a weak spread spectrum signal from a lot of noise and interference.  Any modern scientist worth his or her salt knows this. 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by EricJ

[Shadrach]

15 hours ago, ilovecornfields said:

This one does. And so do my epidemiology friends from grad school. 
 

If 99 out of 100 is experts agree on something some will see that as a “controversy” and not know what to think, while others will realize that the 99 are statistically much more likely to be right. 
 

The people that don’t like what the 99 are saying will find the one who disagrees and make a huge fuss over the controversy, give him interviews, make YouTube videos and then say “See! Even the other experts can’t agree.”

I believe you will have a hard time finding a practicing epidemiologist with a degree in the field that tells you that a bunch of unmasked (most likely) unvaccinated people from different places sharing a room together eating and drinking is a smart idea right now. If you do, it’s still not a “controversy” — they are the outlier. 
 

But what do I know? I only spent half my life in public health and medicine so I’m sure everyone else knows more about this than I do.

99 out of 100 agree? That may be your perception but I’ve seen no evidence that it”s a reality. I appreciate the anecdotal evidence from your epidemiology friends but that’s merely a data point.  I was in finance for many years, I have seen firsthand the power of credentialed peer pressure on consensus thinking. I do not put a lot of stock in consensus; I like data analysis. Unfortunately, it is hard to have good real-time data analysis during a crisis. I certainly listen to people in the consensus, but I am absolutely, always looking for dissenting opinions. There is no risk in being a member of the consensus. If it all goes pear shaped, one can always fall back on the “Mistakes were made but not by me” trope.  It takes true conviction for a professional to stand up and have a dissenting opinion. The risks are real. It can be very detrimental professionally.  For that reason, I tend to go out of my way to listen to what credentialed dissenters have to say.  You might pretend everyone who disagrees with you is foolish, ignorant or worse but that is your perception, not reality. It is not at all difficult to find epidemiologists that are critical of current policy. It’s just that you’re not looking. Why that is, I don’t know

The Great Barrington Declaration is not a group of quacks or outliers. It is comprised of highly credentialed professionals in multiple disciplines including epidemiology and economics. These are professionals that hold degrees from or are currently doing research at some of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the world. Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, etc... They are not being trotted out on talk shows. Quite the opposite. Their Facebook page was deleted. Twitter posts disappear. YouTube deleted videos of discussions between highly credentialed and accomplished professionals. Not because discussing infectious disease violates terms of service but because “google inc” will now decide when a Stanford educated MD with a specialty in epidemiology and a PhD in economics is making the appropriate statements. That scares me. It also bothers me that a credentialed individual such as yourself are not only dismissive, but absolute in your certainty that you are correct. You may be well-meaning. I like to think that everyone is. But many if not most of the most reprehensible things done throughout human history have been done by large groups of people who likely saw themselves as well-meaning. I’d be a lot less concerned about the data on mask wearing if there didn’t appear to be such a concerted effort to shut down any dissent and characterize those dissenters as antisocial, uneducated and selfish. Difficult conversations are the only way to get anywhere close to the truth. That will be the case until the end of time. Conducting those conversations in the most civil manner is the best way to bring people to your way of thinking. Smugly suggesting that no one of consequence disagrees with you and then stating your credentials. Is textbook “ipse dixit “…appeal to authority.  I have seen you dismiss people as QAnon followers for suggesting this virus may have been manmade. Do you think the virologist Luc Motagnier a QAnon follower?  Was it before or after his work discovering the AIDs virus?  Perhaps post Nobel peace prize but before he became merely an outlier…maybe just  age related dementia.

In addition to all of the noise that we’re all trying to glean some understanding from there is personal experience with the virus.  I can say firsthand that it will necessarily influence how one views the virus.  I deal with the dissonance between my personal experience and what I am being told every day. It is unavoidable. You can’t un-ring the bell. What you experience removes it from the abstract. All you can do is seek out as much information as possible. No one in my circle of infection (5 adults 33, 46, 59, 70, 82 two kids 3, 5) had respiratory symptoms. In fact, no one had any symptoms when the disease was transmitted. This does not mean that we were not aerosolizing the virus it just means no sneezing or coughing. This has piqued my interest in masks. Not because I chose to be a subversive but because I have seen the way masks are used around the country (world).  Some are store-bought paper surgical type masks. Some are homemade fabric masks. It matters not, a staple of today’s automobile is the used mask wrapped around the gearshift knob, in the center console or hanging from the rearview. I absolutely question the wisdom of handling and strapping on a multiple use handkerchief every time one goes into a public space. I never projected droplets via sneeze. But I am damn sure that I was shedding the virus via mucus membranes around my face and mouth. Like most, I walked around for several days not knowing that I was infected. I am better than most when it comes to washing masks and using disposables. But the reality of our local guidelines is that I was frequently handling a contaminated handkerchief with straps every time I went into public.  That may or may not be a vector for the virus. I haven’t been able to find any studies that analyze masks are used in the real world. Regardless, it surely should not be taboo to have the discussion.

A bit about correlation @aviatoreb.  When I say correlation, I mean a statistical relationship, that is all. What I said above is my observation that people pick statistical relationships that support their arguments while ignoring statistical relationships that do not.  I would much prefer to discuss all the data not just some of it.  If a state experiences a jump in caseload with the relaxation of the mask mandate, I am not going to dismiss that as useless data. On the other hand, I am not going to dismiss that Texas was supposed to be an apocalyptic hotspot post mask mandate. So much of the rhetoric from the chattering classes predicted disaster, yet there has been no correlating spike in cases. That is a piece of data then I am grateful we have. It is a piece of data that we would not have if Texas had followed the current narrative. What is odd to me is that I have a considerable number of friends and acquaintances that are disappointed that there was no disaster in Texas after the mandate was lifted. I do not just find that troubling, I find it reprehensible. It is not science it is pure politics. If there had been a spike those same people would likely be smugly basking in their “I told you sos”.

 

Florida and New York are the third and fourth most populated states in the country, respectively. They are the ninth and eight most population dense states, respectively. The outcomes in New York are some of the worst in the country while Florida placed around the 50th percentile for Covid stats despite never having a mask mandate and never closing schools.  There has been little discussion on those differences in the media.  Treatment of the leadership of those two states has been markedly different. One was celebrated as the benchmark for how to handle a crisis and the other excoriated as an anti-science fool. One followed consensus and implemented draconian policies, the other took a much less heavy-handed approach. Outcomes be damned, one was heralded as the benchmark for crisis management (right up until the sexual misconduct allegations made him a pariah) and the other as the second incarnation of Trump… That is not an intellectually honest approach it is purely political. 

I appreciate the diverse group of individuals on this board. It is a great place to get perspectives to which you may not otherwise be exposed.  I think the expertise of our credentialed members would be most useful directed discussing anomalies that do not fit with the current narrative and why. I do not need a doc to say “shut up and mask up” I know plenty of Karens ensuring I get my fill.  I’d like something a bit more substantial than, and I am paraphrasing - “I am credentialed and you’re not. I don’t need to address that there is credentialed dissent it’s not worthy of my consideration.”  One can get away with that here, with someone like me. One could not get away with it in a more credentialed forum nor do I think they would try. For that reason, I see it as both dismissive and disrespectful.

[Marauder]

Third day after the second Moderna vaccine and not only do I feel good, I think I am better looking.