Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19
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KSHSAA voted to go on with sports as scheduled. Local units get to decide on crowds and all that. It’s probably fine. If two schools from districts with no active cases play each other it’s probably as minimal risk as you can have. A blanket policy for the entire state doesn’t make much sense given most schools are in very small districts in rural areas with few, if any, active cases.
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Kind of a shock to the wichita community
https://www.kwch.com/2020/07/29/wind-surge-owner-dies-from-complications-of-covid019/
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Young gal from Lawrence. I say young, 42 and very healthy
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Seen where both Cardinals and Marlins have players with COVID. Interesting why the MLB didn’t go with a double like the NBA. It’s also worrisome for how both CFB and the NFL will fair. If they can keep everyone in a bubble without actually having a double they may stand a chance. I’ve heard several of the MLB guys aren’t taking it seriously.
I’ve obviously become mad again about March madness being cancelled when the case numbers have sky rocketed since March. School is in the same boat with me, canceled for a few cases in my county. But now with hundreds they say let’s go back to school. Makes no sense logically.
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@kjayhawks said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
Seen where both Cardinals and Marlins have players with COVID. Interesting why the MLB didn’t go with a double like the NBA. It’s also worrisome for how both CFB and the NFL will fair. If they can keep everyone in a bubble without actually having a double they may stand a chance. I’ve heard several of the MLB guys aren’t taking it seriously.
I’ve obviously become mad again about March madness being cancelled when the case numbers have sky rocketed since March. School is in the same boat with me, canceled for a few cases in my county. But now with hundreds they say let’s go back to school. Makes no sense logically.
Neighbor was telling me last night that THREE other teams now have players with the COVID- 19 , three more other then the Marlins, I still think this sports season when it’s all said is done will be screwed. - -Baseball just the start
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@jayballer73 I’m glad they’re making an effort but I think if they show these pro clubs can’t contain the virus despite the caution they’ve tried to take it adds to the overwhelming proof that sending our snot nosed kids to school is a bad idea.
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@approxinfinity said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@jayballer73 I’m glad they’re making an effort but I think if they show these pro clubs can’t contain the virus despite the caution they’ve tried to take it adds to the overwhelming proof that sending our snot nosed kids to school is a bad idea.
agree. We got these kids coming back to Campus from all over the Country and some outside the Country right , and who’s to say how many people have come in contact with others that might be carriers - remember a lot of these people don’t even realize they have COVID-19 cause their cases are so mild - -BAD IDEA
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That being said I got the MLB.tv this month. I think it’s going to be an interesting season until it isn’t.
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School opening off to a good start.
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Nominating this for the worst graph in the history of graphs. #helth https://twitter.com/michaelstavola1/status/1291461585035288579?s=21
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Chicago I heard is the 1st Big School that is not going to have class at present - -going to hold off until after November and re-evaluate - -Said as badly as students wanted , and as Parents also wanted to go back and even Parents agreed that this is just NOT a good time for students to go back, Then today I heard that Michigan was to vote about not having Classes now , Mississippi has school district where they had 100 confirmed cases when students returned, wasn’t implementing Social Distancing - -not wearing mask , showing video of hall ways just an ABSOLUTE ZOO.
Dr Norman said he fully expects the COVID to spike yet again after Labor day - - and there you go. - -the lead Dr the White House Dr responded to the remark from President Trump - -Trump saying this is going to go away like other things this will go away. Dr Faucci said that he just doesn’t think this is AGOING TO GO AWAY , saying this virus is to infectious to just GO AWAY
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@FarmerJayhawk explain, I was watching this when he explained it
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@FarmerJayhawk I think it’s a great graph
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@FarmerJayhawk explain, I was watching this when he explained it
Sure. In cases where you have two variables (in this case, date and cases/100k) you should only use 1 y-axis to ensure the scales are the same. You’ll notice that by using 2 different scales for the y-axis, the actual numbers are really distorted, making it look visually like masks had a much bigger effect than they actually did vs. non-mask counties. Here’s what it looks like using a common scale for the y-axis:
The difference is striking! And to be clear, I support wearing a mask because the science is pretty clear it does help slow the spread, but using misleading documents they’re hurting their case. It’s also not really possible given these data to make a causal claim about masks being the driver of the decrease in cases because there are almost certainly other variables that explain the decrease, and it would take careful analysis and a bunch more data to tease out. To make the claim just using these data we’d have to run time forward with a mask mandate, then go back in time, don’t implement the mandate, and assuming masks were the only thing that changed, look at the difference between the two periods (basically run a giant RCT).
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It’s extremely easy to make charts/graphs look misleading. But yes, wear a mask, it’s basically zero cost.
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for many this will not pertain , nor will people care. BUT I am going to listen anyways just thought I would FWIW pas this along. - - Dr Anthony Fauci will be doing a one on one interview with WIBW at 2:15 - -think it could be interesting his views about Kansas and I’m sure he will give his opinion seeing it is doing the interview with WIBW.
Heard on National news they showed the map & said where it WAS California now the WHO now says there are a NEW 11 hot spots in the United States & Good ol Kansas is kind of stuck like Chuck
They list Colorado - - - Kansas - - - Missouri - - - - & - - - -Oklahoma as hot spots so that is 4 of the 11 new hot spots right here on top of us - if you want to follow by chance all you need to do is type WIBW.Com and should be able to listen - I am just because
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@FarmerJayhawk did you watch his video? He explained why he did it, I understand what you mean, but I also was trying to get why he did it that way. It had to do w/population being so small in the no mask counties and he was doing it per 100,000. 1/3 pop. 90 counties were unmasked, 2/3 pop masks, 15 counties. I wrote that down because I was confused. He also started graph about a week after mandate cause nothing shows up then.
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@FarmerJayhawk did you watch his video? He explained why he did it, I understand what you mean, but I also was trying to get why he did it that way. It had to do w/population being so small in the no mask counties and he was doing it per 100,000. 1/3 pop. 90 counties were unmasked, 2/3 pop masks, 15 counties. I wrote that down because I was confused. He also started graph about a week after mandate cause nothing shows up then.
Yeah, whatever he said it was a really bad way to do it. You’re purposefully altering the scale so the effect size looks a lot bigger than it actually is. You’re already controlling for population by normalizing rates to per 100k. It’s quite misleading to put the same time series on different scales and sell them as equivalent. With two variables and two groups you should only use two axes. Full stop.
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@FarmerJayhawk did you watch his video? He explained why he did it, I understand what you mean, but I also was trying to get why he did it that way. It had to do w/population being so small in the no mask counties and he was doing it per 100,000. 1/3 pop. 90 counties were unmasked, 2/3 pop masks, 15 counties. I wrote that down because I was confused. He also started graph about a week after mandate cause nothing shows up then.
I watched the video before I saw this thread with keen interest as it suggested compelling evidence that masks are effective. And when he explained that the blue line had a different scale than the red line and that the key was to focus on the trend lines, I let out a deep sigh. I get it, but he’s got to know that approach can be interpreted as deceptive.
It’s a bad graphic that opens him up to questions of objectivity… and undermines his message. Did they do that to make the “mask mandate” counties look better or was it to create a more compact graph or some other reason?
@FarmerJayhawk did it right. In his chart, the evidence is still compelling and accurate.
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If I quit posting for awhile, you all know why. https://twitter.com/unc/status/1294726798387761152?s=21
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@FarmerJayhawk ugh. Be safe man.
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@approxinfinity said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@FarmerJayhawk ugh. Be safe man.
Thanks my dude. I pulled the plug on my in-person courses so I’m trying to keep everyone off campus as much as possible. Three outbreaks in a week tells me we won’t be here for long. And check out Aggieville last night. Just wut https://www.facebook.com/ureddi/posts/3310231629063564
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“Students are not to blame. This is on us.” ??? If they’re at the bar they’re presumably 21.
Why must it be zero-sum blame? There’s enough to go around for all!
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Saw a bunch of OU players came back infected. 9
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Yikes, be safe my friend @FarmerJayhawk. @Crimsonorblue22 this was kinda what I was talking about on the football thread. These football players in bubbles are probably safer than the other students that are hanging out, in bars etc. Tho I question anyone’s intelligence that goes to bars and eats in at restaurants in these times.
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@kjayhawks I’ve seen people waiting in line to eat at the Cheesecake Factory in the mall. Like, what are you even doing? They serve to go people! I’m certainly not risking it for over priced, mediocre at best food.
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@FarmerJayhawk The anxiety of going back to school and interacting with groups of people is very real. Glad my district is starting all online for the first 4 weeks and reevaluating from there. I was in a CPR training today and 3 people continually pulled down their masks to talk to each other. Why where the mask if you’re just going to take it down to spew your droplets all over the people you are excited to see?!!
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Basically it’s all an overblown election year stunt. Sure the disease is bad for a subset of people, but the hysteria and the politicalization of medicine and science has been over the top.
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The 9 OU players had gone home since they weren’t playing for awhile. Came back infected.
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@Bwag interesting article. what would be the appropriate level of response in your eyes? No shut down?
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@Bwag said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
Basically it’s all an overblown election year stunt. Sure the disease is bad for a subset of people, but the hysteria and the politicalization of medicine and science has been over the top.
It’s bad for even non-olds. I know several in their mid-late 20’s who are still having neurological issues months after infection. Add that to the very likely case that we’re significantly undercounting covid deaths makes it a huge deal to me. All cause mortality in the US is much higher this year than it’s been in quite awhile, even though mortality had cratered for those under 18. In folks 18-64, deaths are about 15% higher than a year ago. If you add in all age groups, we’ve had as many deaths this epidemiological year than all of last year, with 6 weeks to go. So it’s hard for me to say it’s overblown when we’re barreling toward the worst year for death in 30 years, even though we’ve taken extraordinary steps to contain it.
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UNC up to 4 outbreaks now. Good times
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@FarmerJayhawk school start Monday?
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@Crimsonorblue22 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@FarmerJayhawk school start Monday?
We started last Monday
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What’s your prediction for how long this lasts before you’re fully remote? Sorry if you already said.
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@approxinfinity said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
What’s your prediction for how long this lasts before you’re fully remote? Sorry if you already said.
I think we pull the plug before the end of the month. At this rate, our quarantine dorms will be full in a matter of a week or two.
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@approxinfinity To me the real question is how long until people start talking about an acceptable death rate for schools.
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@benshawks08 morbid, but you’re keeping it real. Ironically, once they’re all infected, sending them home may make the death rate explode. Finishing my attic is starting to sound better and better. What house is complete without an isolated sick room?
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@benshawks08 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@approxinfinity To me the real question is how long until people start talking about an acceptable death rate for schools.
I think it’s a reasonable conversation to have. Usually flu deaths among kids range from 50-150 per year. The biggest vector is schools and we kind of just chug along like normal. Under 18 we’re at 73, per the CDC. I think for kids, especially elementary age, there’s an acceptable risk across most of the country to reopen schools utilizing proper protocols. In hotspots maybe you wait. But my local district is fully remote until January, which seems an overreaction to me. The district is very affluent, but also has the largest racial achievement gap in the country (right up with Evanston, IL and Ann Arbor, MI). I think it’s unacceptable to lose another semester to year of learning for those kids.
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@FarmerJayhawk I just know there was one year where we lost three kids in my school of 1600 and it was probably the most traumatic year of my life. Each one was so devastating and the next just compounded the loss. For reference, 1% Of my student population would be 16, .5% would be 8. So I will be watching those numbers carefully. A majority of our students are Latinx, the community who statistically taken the biggest hit both locally and nationally.
I think a big thing people haven’t really been thinking about is how much kids have been protected up until this point by schools shutting down and being closed all summer. We have no idea what this is going to look like when it hits the school population for real.
Good news is death rate overall is going down As we learn more how to treat it and I think I saw fda approved new tests that should provide faster results but I can’t remember where I saw that.
@FarmerJayhawk First rule Of a pandemic is if it feels like an overreaction you are probably doing it right.
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People have already been talking about this. It’s not just the kids. The reasonable conversation to have is how many deaths among teachers, staff, students and family members we’re willing to accept… before shutting it down after a couple of weeks or a month for zero meaningful learning for kids, but the experiment sets us back 2+ more months and 50K more dead.
I know it’s not possible to just shut down for everyone. My 77 year old mom is flying back from Raleigh to KC tomorrow. I’m picking her up at the airport because… well, wtf else am I supposed to do. She’s been in Goldsboro, NC, for 2 weeks to help with my military nephew and his wife who just had their second baby in 18 months (never underestimate Air Force fertility). They probably were not hanging out at fraternity houses at UNC, but it sure sounded like they were going out to eat a lot like everything was all 2019. I’m stocking her fridge, leaving a new thermometer on her bathroom counter, and I’m hoping she can hunker down for a few days to make sure she avoided it… before she drives around town getting her favorite groceries at every store in Lawrence.
College kids are pouring into town anyway, so it’s going to get interesting. My wife is a prof at KU, and I can assure you that faculty have all spent their summers putting together 2 or 3 or 4 scenarios for their fall semester syllabi. EVERYONE wants to get kids back in school and college in person, but the stupidest thing will be to try against obviously bad odds … and fail… for nothing.
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@DanR
agreed. what is the point?It seems the only schooling that can reasonably open would be hyperlocal rural school.
Universities are only opening because they’re a business imo
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@benshawks08 said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@FarmerJayhawk I just know there was one year where we lost three kids in my school of 1600 and it was probably the most traumatic year of my life. Each one was so devastating and the next just compounded the loss. For reference, 1% Of my student population would be 16, .5% would be 8. So I will be watching those numbers carefully. A majority of our students are Latinx, the community who statistically taken the biggest hit both locally and nationally.
I think a big thing people haven’t really been thinking about is how much kids have been protected up until this point by schools shutting down and being closed all summer. We have no idea what this is going to look like when it hits the school population for real.
Good news is death rate overall is going down As we learn more how to treat it and I think I saw fda approved new tests that should provide faster results but I can’t remember where I saw that.
@FarmerJayhawk First rule Of a pandemic is if it feels like an overreaction you are probably doing it right.
The IFR for covid for under 18 (and even moreso under 12) is far less than the flu. It seems like we can eyeball it at less than .01% based on this preprint meta-analysis. So in that scenario, a school of 1600 would expect to lose .16 students if every single student became infected. If they’re off by a factor of 10 and everyone got infected, you’d expect to lose 1.6 to COVID. So then the calculus changes some in multiple ways. At what level is ok vs. not ok to open? 1 student too high? 2? 10? I don’t know the answer, though I certainly think 0 is too low a threshold. Even among COVID cases, kids have a 4-9x lower risk of hospitalization than people aged 18-29. Overreacting has significant costs as well. Potentially putting parents out of work, destroying their finances and mental health. Wealthy parents can buy pods and all these things, less well of parents don’t have much choice in most of the country,
We all have to take on some level of risk to avoid increasing and permanent damage to kids and the economy. The costs of losing all the learning, plus the costs of lost work hours for parents, are just too high across most of the country. I’m all for virtual charter schools and others that specialize in online learning for kids and families who don’t want to take any risk (yay choice!) though they do underperform traditional charters and traditional neighborhood schools.
These are hard choices, and takes very serious and sober examination of the data by decision makers. If parents want to pull their kid out, fine, that’s their choice. The more information that comes in, the more I lean to opening at bare minimum K-6, possibly K-8.
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I’m still amazed that people are trying to solve a million consequential problems rather than the one big problem. Basically, we all already frittered 5 months away, half-assed, for nothing and the problem is worse than when it started. Too eager to eat the turkey before it was completely cooked. Still–at any point, no matter how bad this is–we could suck it up, isolate for 6-8 weeks and this thing is mostly long gone. Will it happen? Nope. Nobody offers that as a solution.
And, we’ll have this same discussion in January about re-opening schools.
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@DanR said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
I’m still amazed that people are trying to solve a million consequential problems rather than the one big problem. Basically, we all already frittered 5 months away, half-assed, for nothing and the problem is worse than when it started. Too eager to eat the turkey before it was completely cooked. Still–at any point, no matter how bad this is–we could suck it up, isolate for 6-8 weeks and this thing is mostly long gone. Will it happen? Nope. Nobody offers that as a solution.
And, we’ll have this same discussion in January about re-opening schools.
Probably because that’s my daily life. Solving issues as they come up. I’m not the governor. I can’t lock down the state. I also think another lockdown is impossible. The public health establishment already shot its wad when it said people couldn’t go to church or anything else, but mass protests are a-okay. Politically it’s just not feasible.
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@FarmerJayhawk said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@DanR said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
I’m still amazed that people are trying to solve a million consequential problems rather than the one big problem. Basically, we all already frittered 5 months away, half-assed, for nothing and the problem is worse than when it started. Too eager to eat the turkey before it was completely cooked. Still–at any point, no matter how bad this is–we could suck it up, isolate for 6-8 weeks and this thing is mostly long gone. Will it happen? Nope. Nobody offers that as a solution.
And, we’ll have this same discussion in January about re-opening schools.
Probably because that’s my daily life. Solving issues as they come up. I’m not the governor. I can’t lock down the state. I also think another lockdown is impossible. The public health establishment already shot its wad when it said people couldn’t go to church or anything else, but mass protests are a-okay. Politically it’s just not feasible.
It would be possible if the right people supported it. But they don’t. The left has taken this more serious from the get go. If our “leader” were to use his influence over his “shoot someone in the street and they’ll still vote for me” crowd we could knock this out like a lot of europe has done. All it takes is being truly pro life (The real kind not just anti-abortion), pro health and pro science. That’s it.
I still don’t get the protest v church dichotomy. They just aren’t the same thing.
