Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

It's been talked about. The study is very flawed.

 

I just saw that. But I disagree with the posters who say it’s flawed. I’ll wait until after the actual peer review has been completed. Stanford is a renowned medical research university - one of the best in the world. The peer review of other field experts may shoot it down but until other renowned statistical and medical peers find problems with it, I’ll wait to see what happens vs arguments shooting it down from non renowned experts in the actual field.

 

At the very least it will hopefully lead to a larger more controlled study.

 

Yeah, be nice if some were already being done. I think some European country (France maybe? Or germany?) May have done one as well but also only about 4000 people and I don’t know if they had results yet. The LA times article mentioned a similar study has been completed in LOs Angeles and results are supposed to be out tomorrow.

 

"He's turning these briefings into a self-aggrandizing, self-justifying, overly defensive, politically partisan, almost like a rally to him -- almost like what's more important is winning the election in November,"

Piers Morgan

 

I'm one of those posters. I was excited to hear of the study, because this is absolutely something we need to be doing. Unfortunately, the Stanford study was ad-driven on Facebook, participants self-selected by opting in. It is in no way a scientific random sampling. Stanford then weighted the data to account for over- and under-represented groups to reflect broader population makeup.

You don't have to be a medical expert of statistician to see the major flaw here. By letting study participants self select, you don't have a random sample. That is the most fundamental thing in statistics - how to pick a valid sample. Who would be the most likely to want to participate? Were they people that had coughs and fevers previously? People that thought they were exposed to covid-19 somewhere? People that think they had it but never got tested? You simply don't know. Point is, there is no way to know that their group of self selected volunteers is representative of the broader population. To do that, you need a truly random sample.

UM is doing a similar study in S Florida, and working with FPL to get phone numbers of geographically distributed customers selected at random and recruiting those people to participate. This will result in much better data to understand how the virus is spreading.

 

you're wasting your time. There are experts in everything on this board

 

So Fox has Newt Gingrich on this morning from Rome. Talks about Italy restricts being necessarily tight, can’t leave house by 200 feet or so, he approves. Pivots on the US and says we need to be careful but Democrats are politicizing restrictions. “You can have an abortion but can’t go to church”. “Democratic Govs think they are mini gods.”

I would like to open churches for Newt especially. Let’s get him among 400 people. Immediately. Divisive POS. I loath the Republicans.

 

You got that from “bacon” on my post? That he was telling me to go and research? Please. You went out of your way to call me out specifically but whatever

 

Every study has some flaws, or *limitations.* Basically impossible not to have some. Doesn't matter what institution or who the researchers are that conducted the study. Just the way things are. That said, they're clearly skilled researchers and it wasn't some rinky dink study.

But...I can see this study as being a tough sell. The non-probability convenience sample introduces a bias that they can't easily overcome (which the statistician in the medium article makes a compelling case). It might still get published, I just can't see it as generalizable,

*FWIW, by bias I mean a sampling bias that isn't political. It's just about how they recruited people. Non-probability samples are used often in research, but due to the non-randomized sampling design, it's basically impossible to generalize to a larger population.

But...we can still learn a lot from these types of studies.

 

Newt doesn't know that abortions, as elective medical procedures, have been shut down in the US? Or he doesn't think his followers know?

 

Except the NIH is granted by congress not Obama.



NIH grant - Wikipedia

Each institute of the NIH has separate appropriations from Congress determined on an annual basis.

 

Well, if unintentional there are some mistakes that should not be made and this is one. This error by a “business” publication is akin to a Gator fan accidentally yelling Go Noles in The Swamp on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It just doesn’t happen.

I suspect the publication caught some heat for their blatant and easily detected misrepresentation and were forced to change the title.

 

I havent heard anyone say it is "very flawed". It is only representative of one region and a select group of respondents and it remains to be seen how that translates nationwide.

That doesn't mean the study is flawed. It just means we are not to a conclusion. Boston is seeing similar things in studies there.

 

In fairness, they havent been shut down in the US. A few states have limited them...but the US has not shut them down.

 

The irony in this post. Very tolerant.

1. Italy and the US are completely different. My region of almost 400k people and I think 3 deaths...and last report was that every active case was quarantined and being monitored.

Our hospitals are basically empty with no PPE concerns.

Tests are easy to get here. (I mentioned an employee of mine getting tested same day and getting her good news 48 hours later.

They opened our beaches back today because we dont need the same restrictions as a place like Italy.

Heck, we don't need the same restrictions as Raleigh and Charlotte (as you know.)

2. I mean wishing him to fall ill then doubling down by "loathing" and entire pocket of America that disagrees with you?

Yes. Very tolerant. I know that is a frustrated statement, but you are better than that.

 

For a lot of us the tolerance finally gave out once Americans started dying en masse because of the incompetence of this sorry excuse for a POTUS... that there are still folks willing to cosign his bs is a disgrace all its own.