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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
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@GidMK

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Health NerdVerified account

@GidMK

Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him

Sydney, New South Wales
theguardian.com/profile/gideon…
Joined November 2015

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    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

      A lot of people are misrepresenting/misunderstanding this Lancet systematic review into school closures for #COVID19 so I thought I go over it a little bit 1/npic.twitter.com/f1VlmcvYzu

      4 replies 32 retweets 54 likes
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    2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

      2/n Study is here:https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(20)30095-X/fulltext#seccestitle40 …

      1 reply 2 retweets 5 likes
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      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

      3/n The basic question? Will closing schools prevent or slow the spread of coronavirus The basic answer? We don't really know (THE ETERNAL TRUTH)

      4:49 PM - 16 Apr 2020
      • 4 Retweets
      • 20 Likes
      • André Bardow josh T. Tian Frank Sowa Mum-la 💙 Moeez Jon Huang, MPH, PhD | BLM | 🙏🏽 Masked Marie & The Hand Washers Gautam Menon
      1 reply 4 retweets 20 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          4/n The study itself is a rapid systematic review, which basically means the authors searched the literature (in mid-March) to look at all studies published on the topic of school closures and various respiratory disease outbreaks 🤧🦠pic.twitter.com/7lCreRBlk5

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          5/n cont. and then rapidly collated and analyzed these studies They specifically looked for things relating to coronaviruses (i.e SARS and MERS) as well as the current novel coronavirus

          1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
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        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          6/n What did they find? - 6 studies evaluating school closures for SARS - 2 modeling studies for SARS - 1 interview study for SARS - 5 preprints of school closures in China for COVID19 - 1 preprint of other human coronaviruses - 1 Imperial College modelpic.twitter.com/u8WealVXZD

          2 replies 1 retweet 6 likes
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        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          7/n Confusingly this is both a very broad pool of evidence (lots of information) and also not very helpful in giving us evidence (limited in scope) The challenge of causal inferences in epidemiology 🥴

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          8/n For example, one preprint looked at Hong Kong, and found that school closures in combination with other measures reduced the R(eff) below 1 Great 😃 Except, hard to know what role school closures themselves played 🙃pic.twitter.com/kI1YL7ZS6z

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          9/n Some published work on SARS examined school closures and had mixed findings 🤔🤔🤔 Maybe a benefit, but maybe not - hard to say!pic.twitter.com/3NdAF8A7yB

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          10/n Another study looked at coronaviruses during snow days ❄️ in Seattle in 2019 and found a reduction in other coronavirus infections of ~6% Not shabby, but hard to compare to our current situationpic.twitter.com/uz0rP55mZM

          2 replies 1 retweet 8 likes
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        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          11/n Which brings us to the modelling studies This is actually where things get much more complexpic.twitter.com/2woeBo1hix

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
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        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          12/n The problem with some modelling studies is that they aren't necessarily *evidence* in the traditional sense What you can find is that the information you are looking for is ASSUMED in the model, rather than demonstrated by it

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          13/n ⚠️This is actually exactly what we find when we look at the Imperial model ⚠️ They ASSUMED that school closures would reduce transmission by a set amount, and then predicted how many deaths this would eliminate if that were truepic.twitter.com/GPPY5hvNet

          1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
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        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          14/n Other models similarly ASSUMED things about SARS and COVID-19, and similarly concluded that school closures might be effective if these things were true But again, these are not demonstrating efficacy, they are putting a number on closures IF they workpic.twitter.com/pP5HXxd4Vk

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          15/n The flipside to this is that we know very well the negative social implications of school closures 😕 They are not great for a whole host of reasonspic.twitter.com/DJ3xkTQDVP

          1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
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        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          16/n Which brings us to the MAIN FINDING of this systematic review There isn't much data 🤷‍♂️🤷🤷‍♀️ We really don't know how great a policy school closures may be, especially considering the societal impact of the policypic.twitter.com/NtCIFZ8FPb

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        15. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          17/n As a package intervention, it seems that school closures may be effective, but we have no real idea what role they played in reducing transmissionpic.twitter.com/Ab3ozYsFff

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        16. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          18/n On the other hand, there isn't even much insight into non-closure options for schools No one has so far looked into how we might socially distance children without closing schools entirely Is it possible❓ No ideapic.twitter.com/YGZO8YGjrd

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        17. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          19/n In addition to this, the only modelling study to look at school closures separately, which also assumed that they were effective, found a "relatively marginal" impact from the interventionpic.twitter.com/n9dp3wHUJK

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        18. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          20/n We also don't know to what extent non-school social gatherings play a role in transmission, and whether these may lower the impact of school closures as wellpic.twitter.com/sCEXqbgzRf

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        19. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          21/n It's also worth noting that the 2-4% figure that you may've heard on the news or from certain celebrity doctors is from a model ASSUMING that school closures do indeed work

          1 reply 3 retweets 12 likes
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        20. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          22/n Which brings us to the conclusions of this policy-focused review What should countries do? Well, Taiwan and China may be a guide - school closures early, but one of the first measures to be scaled backpic.twitter.com/6un7nUszJ1

          2 replies 1 retweet 9 likes
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        21. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          23/n However, given that we aren't sure how effective school closures may have been - potentially quite effective - we should consider OTHER ways to minimize transmission while opening thempic.twitter.com/TtcJIF66P9

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        22. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          24/n It's unlikely that we can keep schools closed forever, but there may be ways to reduce harms without the enormous cost of closing them completelypic.twitter.com/yN1MGAviMw

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        23. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          25/n So...do school closures work to prevent the spread of #COVID19? WE DON'T KNOW They probably help, but maybe not that much and have some definite harms

          2 replies 4 retweets 18 likes
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        24. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          26/n And while dumping on Dr. Oz is fun, he's not entirely misrepresenting the evidence when he says that school closures may have an overall detrimental effect during this pandemic

          1 reply 2 retweets 11 likes
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        25. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Apr 2020

          27/n (Although, to be fair, he says it in a MUCH more absurd way. Fuck, who calls 2-3% of deaths trivial? Ugh)

          3 replies 2 retweets 19 likes
          Show this thread
        26. End of conversation

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