Plus the explanations for one case are orthagonal to explanations for the other. India is young! Oh wait Japan. It's air pollution. Oh wait India. etc.
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Replying to @zeynep
It's like when you read a paper using fancy stats and get the sinking feeling that that are fitting noise.
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Replying to @DrYohanJohn
I've been sitting on that exact sinking feeling for weeks now. I get the outbreaks that occurred and can create very convincing stories for each missing case but in the aggregate, they feel like just-so stories tbh.
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Replying to @zeynep
In this crisis a lot of (completely justified) blame goes to incompetent leaders. But as a computational modeler I also feel embarrassed about the way models and theories have been presented and interpreted publicly. We need better epistemological hygeine too. :P
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Replying to @DrYohanJohn
It's very early and it's possible there are tons of things we don't understand and uncertainty implies keeping up precautions, so I'm all for that. But to me it looks like there is something going on we do not (yet) understand. I want someone to tell me I'm wrong and explain it!
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Replying to @zeynep
Yup. Precautionary Principle is precisely for times like this. The virus seems to expose many long-standing holes in our understanding of biology and ecology. (To say nothing of economics and psychology.)
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Replying to @DrYohanJohn
Exactly! So many dimensions. Been watching doctors puzzle over the weird clinical picture (fascinating and viruses are weird!). But there is some major dynamic(s) here we don't understand. I read the papers. I fight the urge to fire up stats programs myself but I'm baffled tbh.
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Replying to @zeynep @DrYohanJohn
While we are puzzling over the rate of spread, it’s still clear that without a vaccine or treatment the extent of the spread will be largely similar across all geographies. So perhaps this rate component seems hugely important at the beginning, but will fade as time goes on...
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Replying to @bjbohman @DrYohanJohn
Maybe. But still the rate matters, because the later the spread, the better treatment we have, the less overwhelmed the hospitals are, etc. So what is the reason for the rate differentials?
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Replying to @zeynep @DrYohanJohn
Right, for all of the reasons articulate so clearly by
@CT_Bergstrom and@nataliexdean rate obliviously matters a great deal. I just meant that with nearly all of the world still susceptible, we may look back at early rate disparities as stochastic noise https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html …1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
Yes stochastic noise is usually underrated as a factor; though that is somewhat dispiriting as a thought as we are fighting so hard in so many places. Possible.
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