1/n Some more movement on this study from earlier in the year by Drs Ioannidis, Bhattacharya, Oh, and Bendavid
Along with @lonnibesancon, @FLAHAULT, and others, we've published a series of responses and ongoing critiques of the piecehttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1349164532627693570 …
-
-
4/n Our basic arguments are pretty simple: 1. Sample size - this study uses a very small sample. That's not really debated by the authors, and it's a limitationpic.twitter.com/pETDhIA4cT
Show this thread -
5/n (Weirdly, they have also contradicted their original paper in the replies to the piece - where before they said that their paper had data for every country available, they're now saying they applied a strange exclusion)pic.twitter.com/M6UYVpzDFP
Show this thread -
6/n 2. The classification of countries as "high" or "low" restriction is arbitrary. In their reply, the authors literally just contradicted us, so we've now got quite a bit of text demonstrating why this is an issuepic.twitter.com/wKQfmK56FI
Show this thread -
7/n This is pretty simple - if you don't explain why (say) South Korea is a "low" restriction country, how can we compare it to "high" restriction ones? The categorization is fundamental to the entire paper
Show this thread -
8/n 3. Issues with the model. In particular, the policy variablepic.twitter.com/JW7MKXu6tY
Show this thread -
9/n 4. Issues with the use of time lags, and the time period studied In particular, the authors say that they analyzed the data up until the "elimination of rapid growth in the first wave"pic.twitter.com/ie6Qt71EyY
Show this thread -
10/n This is a problem because it means that the analysis is entirely limited to the 'upwards' part of the epidemic curve If mrNPIs have an effect that is mostly seen on the decline, this would by definition be missed
Show this thread -
11/n 5. While we also had some quibbles about language, the final major argument is to do with the model againpic.twitter.com/B0a0rh6UMS
Show this thread -
12/n Ultimately, we still have the same overall gripe. It is pretty much impossible from the evidence presented in the original research to conclude that mrNPIs work or do notpic.twitter.com/YH4MMbZBJg
Show this thread -
13/n Indeed, as we point out, unless the authors spend some time delineating exactly what a "more" or "less" restrictive response to COVID-19 actually is, there isn't much you can take home from the analysis anyway
Show this thread -
14/n My personal position remains mostly the same on these interventions, that more restrictive ones probably weren't that beneficial in the early days of the pandemic, but that it's really, really hard to know either way
Show this thread
End of conversation
New 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.