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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 11 Oct 2020

      Recently, John Ioannidis, of "Most Published Research Findings Are False" fame, published a commentary piece on COVID-19 and global action I thought it would be good to do a bit of peer-review on twitter 1/npic.twitter.com/8oAJkBI5Hk

      34 replies 246 retweets 592 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

      2/n You can find the paper here - it is a classic commentary piece, which means it is mostly the perspective of the author:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13423 …

      5:22 PM - 11 Oct 2020
      • 6 Retweets
      • 55 Likes
      • #Defund #CloseJails #GeneralStrike Mela Eckenfels Rosewind Kausik Tobias 😷 💉 Ute Eppinger Claire 0xCAFE_BABE IVida Kryste Burn
      1 reply 6 retweets 55 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          3/n Given the author's very strong public stance since early March, it is perhaps unsurprising that the main message of the piece appears to be that COVID-19 is not very bad but government actions arepic.twitter.com/u8o7KK62cR

          4 replies 6 retweets 57 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          4/n Very broadly, the piece says: - the death toll from COVID-19 is probably low globally - government action causes lots of deaths - therefore, government action should be minimized except for protecting institutionalized elderly people

          4 replies 5 retweets 54 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          5/n Now, as I've said before (many times), the cost-benefit of government regulation is an IMPORTANT issue that we really need to discuss more, so I applaud Prof Ioannidis for looking into the question

          2 replies 7 retweets 68 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          6/n Unfortunately, the piece makes a large number of errors that makes the conclusion - that we should "learn to live with COVID-19" - somewhat problematicpic.twitter.com/s06efCvg31

          2 replies 10 retweets 80 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          7/n One problem is the attribution of deaths. The author raises the point several times that COVID-19 deaths may not be caused BY the disease, but occur WITH COVID-19 and be caused by underlying comorbiditiespic.twitter.com/16C7RDjI3H

          5 replies 8 retweets 53 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          8/n The reference to this - and indeed the most cited study in this commentary piece - is a short commentary piece written by Ioannidis back in Aprilpic.twitter.com/ROMVR2VmeV

          1 reply 5 retweets 70 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          9/n And if you follow the references back down the chain, what we find is that the author is using an investigation done in March in Italy that found that the majority of people who died had some comorbidity to support this argument But it doesn't, reallypic.twitter.com/Ufj7d9igbd

          5 replies 10 retweets 81 likes
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        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          10/n Conversely, there is fairly good evidence that in the majority of cases COVID-19 was indeed the primary cause of death, despite comorbidities, and that the biggest issue in many places may be UNDERCOUNTING of deathshttps://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2859 …

          2 replies 35 retweets 157 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          11/n The author then goes on to argue that while there have been excess deaths in 2020, these are most likely due to GOVERNMENT ACTION rather than the pandemicpic.twitter.com/6MKRZpRcE5

          4 replies 4 retweets 48 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          12/n Now, while this is purely speculative anyway, I thought it worth noting that it is incorrect to argue that all disruptions to (say) TB programs are due to government measures. It is likely that much of this disruption would've occurred anyway due to, well, the pandemic

          6 replies 9 retweets 106 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          13/n Therefore, the argument made by the author that there is harm caused by "recurrent lockdowns and other draconian measures" is not really substantiated by the evidence at hand Not great, that

          2 replies 6 retweets 73 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          14/n (I'm not saying that there is NO harm from these measures, just that the cost-benefit of government action is quite clearly more complex than the logic presented here)

          1 reply 4 retweets 66 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          15/n Moving on, the author basically makes the same argument about comorbidities as before, but in the framework of Years of Life Lost. Similarly, the basic argument is that people who died of COVID-19 were already very sickpic.twitter.com/zcY136e5BJ

          2 replies 4 retweets 45 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          16/n The author then argues (again, citing himself liberally in references 3 and 41) that many deaths due to COVID-19 were "avoidable" None of this is really well-supported as far as I can tellpic.twitter.com/j1re0nfhgE

          2 replies 4 retweets 62 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          17/n For example, the claim that "many deaths" in Lombardy were due to nosocomial (acquired though healthcare) infections is referenced back to the same April commentary as before, which itself actually suggests that hospital overcrowding was to blamepic.twitter.com/0vyrg6GCo6

          2 replies 4 retweets 55 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          18/n It's also worth noting that the idea that nosocomial infections are AVOIDABLE in a pandemic is perhaps not entirely reasonable, given the burden that it places on the healthcare system more broadly

          2 replies 5 retweets 70 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          19/n The author then looks at the infection-fatality rate of COVID-19, again liberally citing his (as-yet-unpublished) review on the topicpic.twitter.com/ybU8RBhny9

          1 reply 5 retweets 48 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          Health Nerd Retweeted Health Nerd

          20/n Rather than delving into the reasons why these numbers are likely inaccurate, I'll just link to my previous threads looking at the preprint version of this paperhttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1283232023402868737?s=20 …

          Health Nerd added,

          Health NerdVerified account @GidMK
          John Ioannidis, of Most Published Research Findings Are False fame has again updated his preprint on infection-fatality rate for COVID-19 Kudos to him for updating, let's again look at what's happened 1/n pic.twitter.com/nE4t1S6rQi
          Show this thread
          1 reply 5 retweets 57 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          21/n Of note, however, the author makes a classic statistical error in dichotomizing age into two buckets We now know that the risk from age is CONTINUOUS, and so looking at the arbitrary cutoff of 70 years will lead to an erroneous resultpic.twitter.com/EBQ3MVCLXT

          2 replies 9 retweets 75 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          22/n The author also makes the interesting claim that the WHO has estimated an infection rate of 10% of the world, referencing a recent news reportpic.twitter.com/yup98Ftm2Q

          1 reply 4 retweets 40 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          Health Nerd Retweeted Marc Bevand

          23/n However, as @zorinaq has pointed out, this is simply bad reporting, with the WHO arguing that LESS THAN 10% of the world is likely infected This is, perhaps, an issue with relying on headlines in a scientific paperhttps://twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1314160523613593600?s=20 …

          Health Nerd added,

          Marc Bevand @zorinaq
          The media claimed "about 10% of the global population may have been infected by the coronavirus"—eg. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/10/05/920453483/10-of-global-population-may-have-contracted-the-coronavirus-who-says … I investigated the claim. It's false. Bad reporting In reality "LESS than 10%" & in many situations it's "WELL UNDER 10%" of the general population 1/n
          Show this thread
          4 replies 6 retweets 78 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          24/n There are, sadly, further errors in the paper. The author repeats a common myth, that t-cells mean that the threshold for herd immunity is much lower than usually estimatedpic.twitter.com/q1sPO5voVd

          2 replies 9 retweets 64 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          Health Nerd Retweeted Prof. Shane Crotty

          25/n Interestingly, Ioannidis here cites @profshanecrotty, who has a great thread on why this interpretation is incorrecthttps://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1313580981341712386?s=20 …

          Health Nerd added,

          Prof. Shane Crotty @profshanecrotty
          1/ Our new perspective piece on “Crossreactive memory T cells and herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2”is out now. @mlipsitch @yonatan @SetteLab @ljiresearch @NatRevImmunol https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00460-4 … pic.twitter.com/2cea1xIIzr
          Show this thread
          1 reply 12 retweets 86 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          26/n Now, I actually think that all of these errors are a real shame, because the final parts of the commentary are both interesting and worth considering

          3 replies 5 retweets 50 likes
          Show this thread
        26. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          27/n The basic idea is that, rather than thinking about the next few months, we should be designing policies based on what will likely happen over the next 5-10 YEARS This is a good point, and not made often enough!

          1 reply 13 retweets 97 likes
          Show this thread
        27. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          28/n Short-term lockdowns made sense in the early days of the pandemic, but given the months since it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that there may be better ways to manage the disease moving forward

          1 reply 7 retweets 57 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          29/n For example, from a GLOBAL perspective, I think that there may certainly be places in which heavy long-term restrictions do not make that much sense

          2 replies 5 retweets 44 likes
          Show this thread
        29. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          30/n Nigeria, for example, has a median age of 18 years. Less than 10% of the population is over 55. Given how much lower the risk is for younger people, harsher restrictions may not make as much sensehttps://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v6 …

          1 reply 7 retweets 52 likes
          Show this thread
        30. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          31/n Conversely, the U.S. has a much older population, on average, and thus is at far greater risk from COVID-19 generally

          1 reply 6 retweets 49 likes
          Show this thread
        31. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 11 Oct 2020

          32/n That being said, this piece appears to use inappropriate evidence, misleading comparisons, and generally underestimate the risk/impact of COVID-19, which makes it problematic as a resource

          3 replies 7 retweets 66 likes
          Show this thread
        32. Show replies

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