Corona Virus Thread Part 4 of Unknown (MOD NOTE IN OP)

[kcin94]

Just curious... has it made you rethink your stance on HCQ at all, or at least dig a little deeper on other studies and sources?

I wonder how this passed peer review in the first place

The issue with peer review is that the reputation of the journal needs to be taken into account as well. There are thousands of journals, and they have referees etc. I would imagine right now that the same people who are being asked to referee are the same people working day and night to study the problem. For reputable journals, they will get reputable scientists to do it. For lesser ones, they get who they get.

Of course I wouldn't have the first damn clue which journals are respected in that field, but that's why multiple studies need to be done and confirmed by a range of scientists. That way you don't get a fluke result passing through and the media latches onto it when it suits their narrative.

 

[buggs]

The issue with peer review is that the reputation of the journal needs to be taken into account as well. There are thousands of journals, and they have referees etc. I would imagine right now that the same people who are being asked to referee are the same people working day and night to study the problem. For reputable journals, they will get reputable scientists to do it. For lesser ones, they get who they get.

Of course I wouldn't have the first damn clue which journals are respected in that field, but that's why multiple studies need to be done and confirmed by a range of scientists. That way you don't get a fluke result passing through and the media latches onto it when it suits their narrative.

The problem though is pre-eminent journals f*** up too. The most obvious case is The Lancet. Nature published an attrocious study back around 96 in entomology that resulted in the government spending millions of dollars to re-examine that study and show that the purported conclusions didn't mean impending doom. Science published a study in the 90s as well regarding endocrine disruption that re-directed more millions of dollars to that area. No one could duplicate it and the study was subsequently withdrawn, though you can find many activist groups still referencing it to show the evils of pesticides. They simply cite the journal issue and pages; no mention of the retraction.

It should also be mentioned that journal editors can and do have a tremendous influence on what is reviewed and not always for the correct reasons. The Canadian Journal of Entomology had a period where the lead editor wouldn't print any regional material because he didn't deem it worthy, even though the entire 100+ year history of the journal it had been doing just that. It was a fairly dark time for that journal and the editor didn't have a very long run. That's a fairly trivial example and worse ones exist.

Peer review remains the best option we have, but it is far, far from flawless.

 

[Whileee]

Just curious... has it made you rethink your stance on HCQ at all, or at least dig a little deeper on other studies and sources?

I wonder how this passed peer review in the first place

I haven't seen any good evidence in favour of HCQ. I know that it was used very widely in Spain, and their mortality rates were high, so if it has an effect it's probably very marginal. There are a bunch of trials that have been ongoing, some of which have been halted to review data, or perhaps due to futility and caution. If evidence emerges showing good effectiveness I'll be the first to support it. However, the way it has been pushed as a political prop for a specific politician is irresponsible, making objective analyses fraught with ideological overtones.

 

[Howard Chuck]

I had posted in one of the earlier Covid threads that we have two different friends who have lost family members to covid. One of those two friends had a second family member who was still critical with covid - under intubation - when I posted.

Unfortunately, that second family member of a friend passed last night, after nearly a month in the hospital. These two families, who have lost three family members between them to Covid are devastated. Very sad time for many people in the US. Canada should keep the border closed with the states for a lot longer. Now with the demonstrations taking place all over the country due to the execution of a minority in broad daylight while being filmed live, the poor soul stating that he couldn't breath and calling for his mother with his last breaths, Covid 19 cases will likely shoot up again. America is a mess.

My condolences to your family friends.

 

[Whileee]

The problem though is pre-eminent journals f*** up too. The most obvious case is The Lancet. Nature published an attrocious study back around 96 in entomology that resulted in the government spending millions of dollars to re-examine that study and show that the purported conclusions didn't mean impending doom. Science published a study in the 90s as well regarding endocrine disruption that re-directed more millions of dollars to that area. No one could duplicate it and the study was subsequently withdrawn, though you can find many activist groups still referencing it to show the evils of pesticides. They simply cite the journal issue and pages; no mention of the retraction.

It should also be mentioned that journal editors can and do have a tremendous influence on what is reviewed and not always for the correct reasons. The Canadian Journal of Entomology had a period where the lead editor wouldn't print any regional material because he didn't deem it worthy, even though the entire 100+ year history of the journal it had been doing just that. It was a fairly dark time for that journal and the editor didn't have a very long run. That's a fairly trivial example and worse ones exist.

Peer review remains the best option we have, but it is far, far from flawless.

Agree that peer review is far from perfect, and "publication bias" is an important issue.

Bad science does get published, but the scientific community is so connected now that in general bad science on important topics tends to get challenged and corrected rather quickly, just as there was such a quick response to the large HCQ paper in the Lancet.

These days there are so many journals that almost anything that is of reasonable quality, and a lot of bad quality papers are also published. That's why systematic reviews and meta-analyses are increasingly used to review and summarize published studies to come to a better consensus around the evidence. It doesn't take care of publication biases so well, but it means that there is considerable additional review of material beyond the few peer reviewers selected by journals.

 

[sipowicz]

We are at the point now of doing more harm than good in terms of precautions and over the top paranoia, 9 cases in Manitoba out of 1.4 million and zero hospitalizations and yet we keep business shuttered! When I see people driving alone with masks and gloves on, ridiculous social distancing measures etc. it has become pure insanity and we will look back at the overkill of restrictions as a huge mistake!

 

[Derfel]

We should have done more, admits architect of Sweden's Covid-19 strategy

 

[Whileee]

We should have done more, admits architect of Sweden's Covid-19 strategy

 

[SensibleGuy]

Rough day for Sweden today too...2200 new cases and 74 deaths.

 

[10Ducky10]

He talks about how well Taiwan and Vietnam did against thhe virus and is not happy with his home country of the UK but you could put Canada or the US or a number of countries in the UK's place. Dropped the ball big time.

I'll say it again, I am glad I am living where I am and not Sweden...

 

[10Ducky10]

View attachment 348704

How telling is that graph. While MB has pretty much kicked the virus' ass, a big part of Canada is doing or did poorly.
Deaths per million in Canada is 2.96
Deaths per million in the US is 2.99

 

[Whileee]

How telling is that graph. While MB has pretty much kicked the virus' ass, a big part of Canada is doing or did poorly.
Deaths per million in Canada is 2.96
Deaths per million in the US is 2.99

Manitoba benefitted primarily from geography and demography.

Quebec has been pretty awful, and is driving most of the health burden in Canada.

 

[SensibleGuy]

Manitoba benefitted primarily from geography and demography.

Quebec has been pretty awful, and is driving most of the health burden in Canada.

Yep, almost entirely. Quebec is a mess.

 

[SensibleGuy]

How telling is that graph. While MB has pretty much kicked the virus' ass, a big part of Canada is doing or did poorly.
Deaths per million in Canada is 2.96
Deaths per million in the US is 2.99

That number for Canada is off a bit because of Quebec's recent 200 death data correction.

Our overall deaths/million number is considerably better than both the UK and US right now

 

[Gm0ney]

We are at the point now of doing more harm than good in terms of precautions and over the top paranoia, 9 cases in Manitoba out of 1.4 million and zero hospitalizations and yet we keep business shuttered! When I see people driving alone with masks and gloves on, ridiculous social distancing measures etc. it has become pure insanity and we will look back at the overkill of restrictions as a huge mistake!

What businesses are still closed?

 

[nobody imp0rtant]

View attachment 348704

As sports fans, we should all realize that leading in the game doesn't matter, it's the final score at the end that counts. Sweden's approach may be putting them in front early, but they may emerge from this sooner than countries taking the low and slow approach. I expect a lot of people are pinning their hopes on keeping the numbers down until such time as an effective and widely available vaccine is available, and/or more effective and widely available treatments appear that will lower the mortality rate in those who get very sick. As a pessimist, of course I'm of the view that neither of those things will happen anytime soon. Thanks to the Chinese government, and their corrupt puppets in WHO we may be stuck with this for the foreseeable future. It might have to work its way through the world's entire population and many more of the vulnerable may have to die before it can be considered just another bug (like the flu) that occasionally has a bad outcome and we just accept that.

 

[Whileee]

As sports fans, we should all realize that leading in the game doesn't matter, it's the final score at the end that counts. Sweden's approach may be putting them in front early, but they may emerge from this sooner than countries taking the low and slow approach. I expect a lot of people are pinning their hopes on keeping the numbers down until such time as an effective and widely available vaccine is available, and/or more effective and widely available treatments appear that will lower the mortality rate in those who get very sick. As a pessimist, of course I'm of the view that neither of those things will happen anytime soon. Thanks to the Chinese government, and their corrupt puppets in WHO we may be stuck with this for the foreseeable future. It might have to work its way through the world's entire population and many more of the vulnerable may have to die before it can be considered just another bug (like the flu) that occasionally has a bad outcome and we just accept that.

Problem for Sweden is that they haven't moved very far towards herd immunity, so they might have the same challenges ahead that other jurisdictions will.

What happened in Sweden was entirely predictable. Mortality will be proportionate to case load, which will be proportionate to social distancing.

It's possible that no effective treatment or vaccine will emerge, but betting on that and allowing the mortality to run high early is a sure way to have poorer outcomes. Also, by never limiting spread, they don't have the latitude of increased social interactions now without bursts in cases, as places that have dampened the epidemic more effectively.

 

[Whileee]

Bloomberg - Sweden

 

[lomiller1]

Just curious... has it made you rethink your stance on HCQ at all, or at least dig a little deeper on other studies and sources?

I wonder how this passed peer review in the first place

Don’t confuse editorial review with peer review. Editorial review decides if a paper gets published while this should include a review by selected peers in the field, the real process of peer review begins when a paper is published.


Based on such responses, the original paper on HCQ failed peer review, at this point, there is no evidence it is a useful treatment for COVID-19. Furthermore, now that we have significant data suggesting COVID-19 causes heart complications, administering a drug known to have heart arrhythmia as a side effect seems like a very bad idea. This is true regardless of the whether the study claiming it’s harmful holds up or not. (the oddities in the data set may turn out to have a valid explanation, and even if they don’t that doesn’t prove the drug IS safe to use)

 

[lomiller1]

How telling is that graph. While MB has pretty much kicked the virus' ass, a big part of Canada is doing or did poorly.
Deaths per million in Canada is 2.96
Deaths per million in the US is 2.99

That was luck more than anything. We were hit later, but started our social distancing campaign at more or less the same time everyone else did so the virus never really got a foothold before we started to contain it. If we had an infected traveler 2 weeks sooner it could have been a very different story.

 

[lomiller1]

Agree that peer review is far from perfect, and "publication bias" is an important issue.

Bad science does get published, but the scientific community is so connected now that in general bad science on important topics tends to get challenged and corrected rather quickly, just as there was such a quick response to the large HCQ paper in the Lancet.

These days there are so many journals that almost anything that is of reasonable quality, and a lot of bad quality papers are also published. That's why systematic reviews and meta-analyses are increasingly used to review and summarize published studies to come to a better consensus around the evidence. It doesn't take care of publication biases so well, but it means that there is considerable additional review of material beyond the few peer reviewers selected by journals.

It’s usually not even a question of "bad science" Scientific debate plays out in peer reviewed journals. By definition one side of the debate must be wrong and you can even get 3-4 different groups pushing theories that ALL turn out to be wrong. You can also get flawed papers where finding and correcting the flaws doesn’t change the result. In fact most early papers on any subject fall into this category.

 

[Jetfaninflorida]

How telling is that graph. While MB has pretty much kicked the virus' ass, a big part of Canada is doing or did poorly.
Deaths per million in Canada is 2.96
Deaths per million in the US is 2.99

That was a very short, recent sample.

Overall, Canada's death rate adjusted for population (like deaths per million) is about 40% lower than US.

 

[Derfel]

Deaths per million in Canada is 2.96
Deaths per million in the US is 2.99

That's not accurate as an overall measure.

Deaths per million, US: 329
Deaths per million, Canada: 199
Deaths per million, Sweden: 450

Coronavirus Update (Live): 6,523,208 Cases and 385,016 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer

 

[Edgar Halliwax]

Our head doctor in Manitoba said everyone should get the flu vaccine this year, i've never had one but i'm going to get one this year.

I’ve never gotten the flu shot. I will this year. I’ve had two colds in 6 years since switching to a plant-based diet, but even so, I’m in my late 50’s and don’t want to take chances with COVID still lurking...

 

[sipowicz]

I’ve never gotten the flu shot. I will this year. I’ve had two colds in 6 years since switching to a plant-based diet, but even so, I’m in my late 50’s and don’t want to take chances with COVID still lurking...

against my better judgement I got the flu shot for the past five years, guess what I’ve never had a flu or cold in those five years!