Short thread. I keep seeing claims on how some places may have reached herd immunity & calculations on whether a variant is more virulent or disporportionately affects the young etc. These are not easy things to discern so let’s not do confident back-of-the-envelope calculations.
-
Show this thread
-
True seroprevalence is not easy to figure out outside of true random sampling—rarely done. A lull in cases after a surge? Maybe, maybe not. (Not very likely, to be honest). Blood bank etc. sampling? Maybe. Confounding issues are thorny. Modeling? Very parameter dependent. Hard Q.
8 replies 8 retweets 159 likesShow this thread -
More younger people at the ICU compared to past? Could be an outbreak affecting them more because of network structure or behavior, vaccine/past immunity among elderly, ICU capacity change compared to past or even temp reporting blip in some countries, among many other things.
6 replies 11 retweets 151 likesShow this thread -
A variant rising in an area could be founder or stochastic effects (one version happened to catch in a superspreading event—this pathogen is very overdispersed) or actually outcompeting others through more transmissibility. That’s why it took time to establish B.1.1.7 was.
2 replies 6 retweets 129 likesShow this thread -
Similarly, previous (not that well-established) claims of high infection rate through models based on (maybe, maybe-not accurate) nonrandom seroprevalance are NOT, by themselves proof of widespread reinfection, or even that reinfected cases are severe or equally contagious etc.
1 reply 5 retweets 107 likesShow this thread -
I used to teach methods and stats for sociology students, and epidemiology examples were always very useful because they really are among the thorniest to try to untangle. And I believe harmful to overclaim, and not necessary to do so to make basic public health recommendations.
2 replies 11 retweets 196 likesShow this thread
Since last year, docs have learned to avoid putting patients on ventilators if possible. Thus patients on ventilators this year are likely to be sicker that such patients last year. Can’t this be an explanation for the rise in mortality?https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2767021 …
-
-
Given that elderly are not filling up beds and they have rooms full of empty ventilators, do you think they are still as incentivized to avoid putting on ventilators as they were before? People still seem to think this is standard of care.
0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
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.