Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Verified account
@GidMK

Tweets

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

Tweets

  • © 2021 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

      Ok, so I've had a read of this paper (which has been all over the news) that says quite explicitly that closing schools will probably cause more years of life lost than leaving them open in a pandemic Let's do some peer-review on twitter! 1/n https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1327791987014074369 …pic.twitter.com/ZxjMUXem5y

      42 replies 315 retweets 749 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

      2/n Paper is here. It's actually very simple, basically the authors took an estimate of how many days of school kids lost due to closures during COVID-19, an estimate of how much that impacts their years of life, and multiplied outhttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2772834 …

      2 replies 5 retweets 74 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

      3/n Specifically, they said: 1. Children miss days of school 2. Days of school cause decreased educational attainment 3. Decreased educational attainment causes less lifepic.twitter.com/oeS65P1FWl

      11:13 PM - 14 Nov 2020
      • 5 Retweets
      • 76 Likes
      • Suzanne 💉J&J trial patient Covid Vax Mizzy T 🐝💙🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈 Michael Flohr a.k.a. Níthilhêr The Colourless Dr VeniceLaura Steffi (🏡) Jacqueline ᚷᚱᛁᛗᚾᛁᚱ ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ #DestroyTheAadhaar Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH Aderyn
      1 reply 5 retweets 76 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          4/n They then compared this with estimates of the number of years of life lost due to COVID-19 already, and found that the loss of educational attainment caused more death (with 98.1% probability!)pic.twitter.com/ThAbSAERqa

          1 reply 3 retweets 82 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          5/n Now, that sounds very robust. 98.1% probability is extremely certain! It's also, as far as I can tell, an incredibly meaningless number. NONE OF THIS IS THE SLIGHTEST BIT CERTAINpic.twitter.com/DV4F2rHDFu

          1 reply 11 retweets 194 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          6/n Firstly, the paper that all of this extrapolation is based on - reference 14. This is where the authors got the relationship between days of schooling missed and overall educational attainmentpic.twitter.com/aeCYm7YNnZ

          1 reply 5 retweets 108 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          7/n This is a long and fascinating examination of the association between teachers' strikes in Argentina and the eventual earnings that children achieved when they grew up

          1 reply 4 retweets 92 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          8/n Note there that I said ASSOCIATION. This is a key point. The authors of this paper WARN AGAINST USING IT CAUSALLY because, among other issues, the data for children in Argentina in the 70s and 80s (especially schoolkids) was not greatpic.twitter.com/2GSkNtgLDy

          2 replies 9 retweets 190 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          9/n Indeed, the main analysis of this paper explicitly excludes the impact of missing secondary education because their data was incomplete and many Argentinian children in the cohort at the time did not attend secondary schoolpic.twitter.com/qO0MHdrU1w

          1 reply 7 retweets 112 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          10/n It should also be noted that the impact of TEACHERS' STRIKES on ARGENTINIAN CHILDREN may not mean much when we're talking about American children, some % of whom could learn at home and thus were not explicitly missing class

          1 reply 7 retweets 151 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          10.5/n (Also, whether the impact of teachers formally striking on children in the 70s is the same as missing days of in-person education during a pandemic in 2020...I would say probably not)

          2 replies 5 retweets 133 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          11/n Next, the authors did something odd. They decided to compare this to the DIRECT mortality from COVID-19. This means that they are only counting people who have died as a direct result of the diseasepic.twitter.com/MQiG2PapOc

          1 reply 9 retweets 112 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          12/n But, if we're comparing the total impact of missed education on children over a lifetime, this makes no sense. COVID-19 has many other harms, after all, some of which are disputed but many of which are easily attributable

          1 reply 9 retweets 134 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          13/n Where are the years of lost life due to ICU stays? Hospitalizations? Disability, mental health issues, avoided care due to full hospitals, etc etc etc???

          2 replies 10 retweets 178 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          14/n (This is also a problem for the YLL calculation for children missing school, FYI, it is FAR more complex than just missing educational attainment. So many potential things that are not included here!)

          2 replies 3 retweets 102 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          15/n Ultimately, what we get in the end - the "98.1% probability" figure - makes almost no sense at all. Even if the Argentinian study was applicable to the US situation, which it clearly isn't, the counterfactual is just inappropriate

          1 reply 9 retweets 125 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          16/n It may be possible to do a rigorous cost/benefit of school closures, but I really don't see how this can be considered one

          1 reply 5 retweets 104 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          17/n At best, what we've got here is a very rough inference about what the impact of school closures could possibly have been (as long as US kids in 2020 are the same as Argentinians in 1977), compared to an undercount of the impact of what COVID-19 probably was

          4 replies 12 retweets 118 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 14 Nov 2020

          18/n I should add - I am not saying that closing schools is necessarily a positive in this thread. What I AM saying, however, is that we could not possibly know whether it was or not from this paper

          8 replies 12 retweets 214 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          Health Nerd Retweeted Ilya Kashnitsky

          19/n Many further criticisms of this paper that I missed in this also excellent thread. It appears that almost none of the assumptions in the paper make any sense at allhttps://twitter.com/ikashnitsky/status/1328121853970436100?s=20 …

          Health Nerd added,

          Ilya Kashnitsky @ikashnitsky
          I have a very strong opinion about this paper that went viral over the weekend. I cooled down a bit since coming across it yesterday and will try to refrain from strong wording. Here is my negative 🛑 post-pub peer-review THREAD 1/ pic.twitter.com/n0lu9STHVS
          Show this thread
          2 replies 14 retweets 99 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          20/n Another point I've been thinking about - the authors fail to consider the impact of an ongoing epidemic on school attendance. Lots of cases in the local area probably impacts schooling as well!

          3 replies 3 retweets 58 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          21/n Also, what's the impact of parents/carers getting sick and dying? Presumably this will have an outsized impact on the children it affects, which would cause (based on this model) large increases in YLL

          8 replies 3 retweets 71 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          22/n Ok, there's another HUGE problem with the study The findings are entirely based on the idea that an extra year of schooling reduces your risk of death by 25%, a figure reached by aggregating studies in a meta-analysis modelpic.twitter.com/va8PWXeBc3

          2 replies 3 retweets 39 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          23/n This number is the ENTIRE BASIS for the paper. If schooling reduces mortality by less than 25%, then the number of deaths caused by missed school days will drop as well And we have a problem, because this 25% figure is...wrong

          1 reply 3 retweets 38 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          24/n Firstly, we have these top 2 papers. Because they're from the US, they are more heavily weighted than the others (this is arbitrary, but whatever) Except the values for the second paper are flatly incorrectpic.twitter.com/VxC2Krkj3z

          1 reply 4 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          25/n Mazumder (2008) did not find a relative risk of 0.65 (0-1.3), it found an RR of 0.89 (0.74-1.04) The paper is here. I've read it very carefully and this appears to be the main finding from the author https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/economic-perspectives/2008/2qtr2008-part1-mazumder …pic.twitter.com/1FY15LCXFe

          1 reply 2 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          26/n So the number is wrong, but this brings us to another issue - the two papers at the top that were double-weighted...are ON THE SAME DATASET This is a massive issuepic.twitter.com/trCaHySTYE

          2 replies 5 retweets 46 likes
          Show this thread
        26. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          27/n You see, Lleras-Muney compiled an estimate based on a number of factors on the reduction in risk from 1 year of extra schooling. Mazumder, three years later, took that same database and re-analyzed it considering additional factors, and estimated a lower reductionpic.twitter.com/2pWUNsP6Qb

          1 reply 3 retweets 28 likes
          Show this thread
        27. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          28/n However you slice it, it's inappropriate to just bung these two estimates together into a model and treat them as separate. I would argue that the Mazumder paper is probably a better estimate, but either way what they've done here is wrong

          1 reply 2 retweets 37 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          29/n If I re-run the meta-analysis they've purported to use with the correct numbers, we end up with this graph instead. A relative reduction in risk of death of 5% for every year of schooling This is A QUARTER of the estimate used in the studypic.twitter.com/xQk5F1tDzT

          2 replies 5 retweets 44 likes
          Show this thread
        29. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 16 Nov 2020

          30/n So AT BEST assuming there are no other errors, the estimate of the years of life lost due to school closures should be divided by 5

          12 replies 4 retweets 53 likes
          Show this thread
        30. End of conversation

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2021 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Cookies
        • Ads info