The healthy don't need to shelter in place?

[George K]

A very contrarian view:

Link to video

Those are excerpts from a rather lengthy discussion. I don't know what to make of it, so if you have an hour to kill, look at this:

Link to video

[jon-nyc]

Here’s are two news summaries.

https://news4sanantonio.com/news/coronavirus/accelerated-urgent-care-provides-statistical-update-on-covid-19

https://www.bakersfield.com/news/two-bakersfield-doctors-cite-their-testing-data-to-urge-reopening/article_eb1959e0-84fa-11ea-9a07-2f2bea880bf9.html

They run an urgent care clinic. They extrapolate from the percentage of positive tests in their clinic to the entire state of California, and deduce that 4MM Californians have the virus, ergo the death rate is really small.

Yes, they did that, They assumed that the people who go to an urgent care clinic with Covid symptoms are a representative sample for the whole population.

No really, seriously, they did that.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

They run an urgent care clinic. They extrapolate from the percentage of positive tests in their clinic to the entire state of California, and deduce that 4MM Californians have the virus, ergo the death rate is really small.

Yes, they did that, They assumed that the people who go to an urgent care clinic with Covid symptoms are a representative sample for the whole population.

No really, seriously, they did that.
Exactly. I'm amazed that this is getting any press.

His comment about Fauci not seeing a patient in 20 years may be true on its face, but so what?

Also, this guy probably hasn't been in an ICU in 20 years, so there's that.

And in the short interview on the news channel, he gets into some tinfoil hat territory.

[Horace]

Considering the scientific value of knowing how many people actually have this thing based on some good random samples, it's interesting to me that we don't yet have those numbers. I believe we have all the tools necessary to generate such numbers.

[George K]

His comparison of Norway and Sweden seems silly:

[Copper]

That sounded like a lot of emotion was involved in the decision.

It seems like we still need objective goals and a way to measure them.

The goal? We seem to be stuck between "Flatten the Curve" and "Every Life Matters".

I say pick a goal and go for it.

I wonder if we could eliminate the virus if everyone, no exceptions, stayed home for a couple weeks. No exceptions, including police, fire, medical and supermarket.

[Loki]

95% of tested positive inmates at four prisons were asymptomatic. It merits its own thread.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-us-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX

[Mik]

My experience with urgent care docs, limited as it is, leads me to believe they are not our best and brightest.

[jon-nyc]

@Horace said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

Considering the scientific value of knowing how many people actually have this thing based on some good random samples, it's interesting to me that we don't yet have those numbers. I believe we have all the tools necessary to generate such numbers.

Test capacity has been too limited to 'waste' them on that.

[jon-nyc]

@Mik said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

My experience with urgent care docs, limited as it is, leads me to believe they are not our best and brightest.

I don't mean this as an insult of any sort, but the field of medicine simply does not select for numeracy. Certainly some subfields do, and certainly some physicians are highly or reasonably numerate, but there's nothing about the course of study in itself that filters out those not particularly good with numbers.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

@Horace said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

Considering the scientific value of knowing how many people actually have this thing based on some good random samples, it's interesting to me that we don't yet have those numbers. I believe we have all the tools necessary to generate such numbers.

Test capacity has been too limited to 'waste' them on that.

Be that as it may, it's odd that it's considered a 'waste'.

[jon-nyc]

I put it in quotes for a reason, the backlog of untested symptomatic patients has seemed more urgent.

[Horace]

@Mik said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

My experience with urgent care docs, limited as it is, leads me to believe they are not our best and brightest.

I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that it's the most work with the worst hours.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

I put it in quotes for a reason, the backlog of untested symptomatic patients has seemed more urgent.

Right. It's odd that tests which don't actually mean much regardless how they turn out, are considered more important than tests which could direct social policy which affects everybody.

[jon-nyc]

I had this conversation with Klaus a week or so ago (IOW, eons in pandemic time). I don't think it would have much of an effect on our actions in the short or medium term.

At least if you consider the range of feasible outcomes, not the range of theoretically conceivable outcomes.

[Horace]

You speak of directing social actions as if it's a thing distinct from shaping public opinion. I think these numbers have power to shape public opinion. Every study that comes out which implies lots of people having it and having no issues from it seems to make a splash.

[brenda]

@jon-nyc said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

@Mik said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

My experience with urgent care docs, limited as it is, leads me to believe they are not our best and brightest.

I don't mean this as an insult of any sort, but the field of medicine simply does not select for numeracy. Certainly some subfields do, and certainly some physicians are highly or reasonably numerate, but there's nothing about the course of study in itself that filters out those not particularly good with numbers.

This has been my experience over the last several decades with a number of doctors. Even simple stuff like how many four week cycles are there in a year. I went round and round with my gyn when in my mid 20s. He kept prescribing for 12 cycles per year. I finally asked him to divide 52 by 4. He had a blank look, so I gave him the answer: 13.

Three years ago in the ER, the docs asked if I had taken any fever reducing meds. I said I had taken 8-hour Tylenol at 650 mg. They went crazy. I tried to explain this is a delayed release product that lasts for 8 hours, not 4. They didn't understand that it would be comparable to taking 325 mg for four hours, and then repeating after the first four hours. They knew lots of things, but got hung up on that. More than one doc was in that conversation, and none of them grasped the delayed release idea.

Lots of other examples over the years, but those two are classics. I still laugh about the 52 divided by 4. I got a free pill pack for that one!

[Copper]

My previous primary care physician, an MIT graduate, was one of the guys in NASA's Houston backroom during Apollo that was calculating spacecraft trajectories. He, and the guys he worked with were arguably some of the best practical mathematicians you would ever need.

The Apollo program ended so he decided to go to medical school.

[Doctor Phibes]

@George-K said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

@jon-nyc said in The healthy don't need to shelter in place?:

And in the short interview on the news channel, he gets into some tinfoil hat territory.

Basically, he's incorrectly extrapolated data, disparaged the head of the NIAID, and ended with a conspiracy theory.

NEXT!

[Mik]

My primary care is exceptionally intelligent, an luckily very well connected in the health system. He has the juice to get things done. I suspect he is pretty numerically savvy too, but he's not a statistician.