Covid-19 miscellany

[lpetrich]

Peter R. Hansen on Twitter: ""Lockdowns only reduced mortality by 0.2%" ..." / Twitter

Peter R. Hansen on Twitter: ""Lockdowns only reduced mortality by 0.2%" claims (unreviewed) meta study, and it is getting much press in @FoxNews and the like.

A #metastudy aggregate the entire body of evidence. This one is based on 18,590 studies. So, 0.2% must be a credible estimate... Well. No so fast.

A meta study often begins with a large set of studies (18,590) then eliminates irrelevant studies, duplicates, etc.

This meta study ends up with 34 papers.

Thus 0.2% is based on 34 studies, right? Well, actually not.

Somewhat oddly the number is not 34, but 24.
There are 34 studies listed in Table 2, but 10 of them are listed as excluded. Apparently based on some criterion that is missing in Figure 2.

OK. But 0.2% based on 24 studies still gives a precise estimate, right? Sadly no

The 0.2% is not based on 24 studies, just 7 studies listed in Table 3.

But wait a minute.
The estimates ranges from -35.3% to +0.1% (highlighted in yellow).
How do the authors end up with -0.2%?

Weighting, is the answer.

The only study to find lockdowns mortality is given weight 91.8% = 7390/8030, and then you get -0.2% to be the estimate.

To summarize: -0.2% META-STUDY ESTIMATE is based on 91.8% ONE STUDY and 8.2% ALL OTHER STUDIES.

Where was the study given 91.8% weight published?

In MDPI Sustainability. MDPI is a controversial outlet, was classified as predatory journals. Median time from submission to publication is 39 days and
MDPI Sustainability published 7,414 article in 2019.
Impressive!

What happened to the 17 = 24 - 7 other papers in the "meta analysis"?

Well they are other Tables, such as this one, with some oddities, I might follow up on later.

Turns out @videnskabdk wrote about this “meta study” before me, in which Mathias Heltberg (PostDoc at @uni_copenhagen) makes many of the same comments (in ).
He also makes an observation about the MDPI study that I overlooked. It concluded the opposite!

Central point in the paper, which was weighted 91.8%, is the importance of NON-LINEARITY. The authors conclude: "interventions at higher levels of severity reduce deaths".

The "meta study" ignored this and just extracted a linear term. That is "creative".

I found a bit more information about the journal, MDPI Sustainability, which published the 91.8%-weighted article.
Authored by @maoviedogarcia
Journal citation reports and the definition of a predatory journal: The case of the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) | Research Evaluation | Oxford Academic

@videnskabdk has translated their article into English.
Scientists: No, new analysis cannot conclude that lockdowns only reduced COVID deaths by 0.2 percent

I appreciate the effort necessary to untangle such shoddy research.

 

[lpetrich]

Tom Whipple on Twitter: "I'm going through this paper by Johns Hopkins economists ..." / Twitter

I'm going through this paper by Johns Hopkins economists, that assesses the efficacy of lockdown in the US and Europe - and concludes it was essentially useless.

I'd love thoughts on something I've found, which may well be my misinterpretation 1/x

The study is a meta-analysis, combining other previous between-country comparisons. To produce the combined estimate, they take 18,000 studies, exclude all but a handful and then pool their findings.

Looking at the weighting, it actually seems to be based almost entirely on one study. So rather than being a meta-analysis it is really a recapitulation of that study, by Chisadza et al

The other odd thing is that study itself comes to a very different conclusion about the efficacy of lockdown.
Sustainability | Free Full-Text | Government Effectiveness and the COVID-19 Pandemic | HTML

The JH study does mention they have a difference of opinion. But, it does seem odd - if indeed this study is the sole basis for their study - that they differ so widely.

It also struck me as strange to exclude the other data from other regions that is in the chisadza paper. If your meta analysis includes other papers, then obviously you have to take the relevant bit of each. But if the meta analysis is just a reanalysis, why lose info?

(unless I've misunderstood in particular what the weighting means which - again - I may well have. This thread is me thinking aloud, hoping for answers!)

I spoke to the author of the paper on whose research this entire meta-analysis was based. She said: "They already had their hypothesis. They think that lockdown had no effect on mortality, and that’s what they set out to show in their paper."

A couple of studies from high impact journals that somehow didn’t make the cut, when the authors decided of 18,000 papers effectively just one met their exacting standards:

From Nature Human Behaviour

"The social distancing and movement-restriction measures discussed above can therefore be seen as the ‘nuclear option’ of NPIs: highly effective but causing substantial collateral damage"
Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions | Nature Human Behaviour

From Science

Limiting gatherings to fewer than 10 people, closing high-exposure businesses, and closing schools and universities were each more effective than stay-at-home orders, which were of modest effect in slowing transmission.
Inferring the effectiveness of government interventions against COVID-19

More and more evidence of what a shoddy paper those economists produced. Were they a bunch of think tankers accustomed to publishing advocacy pseudo-research?

 

[lpetrich]

The Problem with COVID Contrarianism - Cathy Young

"Establishment" opinion can certainly be wrong. But especially on issues of science and medicine, anti-establishment dissent can become a path to crankdom.

Reminds me of Bertrand Russell in "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish":

But if conformity has its dangers, so has nonconformity.

Some "advanced thinkers" are of the opinion that any one who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is. There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths.

Back to CY's article.

Every day, a new Battle of the Pandemic seems to break out. ...

...
The clash is complicated by the fact that in recent months, a number of politically liberal outlets, such as The Atlantic, have conceded that certain COVID policies supported by progressives—in particular, school closures and school mask mandates—have questionable value. Also, a number of jurisdictions in the U.S. and elsewhere have been lifting or easing mask mandates and other COVID restrictions. A number of “COVID doves” (most of whom are on the political right) see this as proof that the restrictive measures were wrong in the first place and that dissenters who argued for allowing normal life to continue were always right. ...

In fact, the restrictions are being lifted mostly because the situation is changing and the danger is declining. Yet there’s also a perception—no doubt true in some cases—that many liberals and progressives are unreasonably clinging to COVID restrictions even when they are unwarranted, simply because of political tribalism.

So, what to make of all this?

The political and cultural alignment on COVID-19 formed and solidified almost immediately after the pandemic came to America, with the right broadly taking the “dovish” position (opposing restrictions and generally tending to downplay the severity of the threat caused by the virus) and the left and mainstream liberals taking the “hawkish” side (seeing the virus as a serious threat and supporting lockdowns, later mask mandates, and later still vaccination mandates).

Almost as if right-wingers take their stance because it enables them to say how autocratic "the left" is, and not out of whatever merit their position might have. Even as some of them die of the disease because of that attitude toward protection against it.

 

[lpetrich]

Canadian truck drivers block border crossing and protest at capital over vaccine rule : NPR

Canadian truck drivers have been blocking a border crossing with Montana and shutting down traffic in the capital, Ottawa. The so-called Freedom Convoy began almost a week ago as a protest over truckers losing their right to cross the U.S.-Canada border unvaccinated. The protesters include members of Canada's far right, as Emma Jacobs reports from Ottawa.

ACOBS: The convoy is having an impact well beyond Parliament Hill. For blocks, many businesses are closed. Jared Shecter, who works at a coffee shop that has stayed open for takeout, says protesters coming in argue about being asked to wear masks.

JARED SHECTER: Yeah, it's been very tough on, like, all of us, all the staff here.

JACOBS: There have been other incidents blamed by the mayor on the convoy and its supporters - an assault at a homeless shelter, vandalism and epithets shouted at neighbors. Signs for QAnon, right-wing militias and confederate and Nazi flags have been spotted amid the protesters.

SHECTER: Like, a lot of people are saying it feels like an occupation.

Convoy protests ignoring real hardships truckers face, Peel drivers warn | CBC News

Truckers in Peel Region say the convoy protest that has gripped Ottawa for more than a week isn't addressing the real problems they face — and they're trying to shift the conversation away from COVID-19 vaccine mandates and toward stopping abuse and wage theft in the industry.

Attar Sodhi, a 37-year-old Brampton resident and truck driver, says very few of the protesters in Ottawa are South Asians, who make up more than half of the truckers operating in the Greater Toronto Area, according to some estimates. The protests are sparking debate across the country, but especially in Peel, where trucking and warehousing account for a large percentage of local jobs.

"Something else is happening behind the scenes, because the real issues are completely different," Sodhi told CBC News.

With 90 per cent of truck drivers vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the majority of the industry is sitting out the convoy protest, which started in response to vaccine mandates imposed on essential workers crossing the Canada-U.S. border. Another convoy protest has set up this weekend in downtown Toronto.

So those protesting truck drivers are not even typical truck drivers.

 

[lpetrich]

Trudeau says he will not send military to end trucker 'anti-vax' protest in Canadian capital

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday poured cold water on sending in the military to clear protestors opposed to Covid vaccine mandates, whose convoy of big trucks are clogging Ottawa's downtown.
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The city's police chief, under pressure from locals weary of harassment and incessant honking, had pitched the idea during a briefing the previous day.

...
By midweek, their numbers had dwindled to several hundred from a peak of 15,000 over the weekend, but they continued to make their case against public health measures loudly.

...
Outside parliament, protestors -- whose leaders vowed at a news conference Thursday to stay until all Covid restrictions are lifted -- strolled between the big rigs, Canadian flags draped over their shoulders and waving anti-Trudeau placards.

...
The so-called "Freedom Convoy" set out from Canada's Pacific coast in late January, with supporters along the way joining them for the 4,400-kilometers (2,700-miles) drive.

 

[Metaphor]

Canadian truck drivers block border crossing and protest at capital over vaccine rule : NPR

Canadian truck drivers have been blocking a border crossing with Montana and shutting down traffic in the capital, Ottawa. The so-called Freedom Convoy began almost a week ago as a protest over truckers losing their right to cross the U.S.-Canada border unvaccinated. The protesters include members of Canada's far right, as Emma Jacobs reports from Ottawa.

ACOBS: The convoy is having an impact well beyond Parliament Hill. For blocks, many businesses are closed. Jared Shecter, who works at a coffee shop that has stayed open for takeout, says protesters coming in argue about being asked to wear masks.

JARED SHECTER: Yeah, it's been very tough on, like, all of us, all the staff here.

JACOBS: There have been other incidents blamed by the mayor on the convoy and its supporters - an assault at a homeless shelter, vandalism and epithets shouted at neighbors. Signs for QAnon, right-wing militias and confederate and Nazi flags have been spotted amid the protesters.

SHECTER: Like, a lot of people are saying it feels like an occupation.

Convoy protests ignoring real hardships truckers face, Peel drivers warn | CBC News

Truckers in Peel Region say the convoy protest that has gripped Ottawa for more than a week isn't addressing the real problems they face — and they're trying to shift the conversation away from COVID-19 vaccine mandates and toward stopping abuse and wage theft in the industry.

Attar Sodhi, a 37-year-old Brampton resident and truck driver, says very few of the protesters in Ottawa are South Asians, who make up more than half of the truckers operating in the Greater Toronto Area, according to some estimates. The protests are sparking debate across the country, but especially in Peel, where trucking and warehousing account for a large percentage of local jobs.

"Something else is happening behind the scenes, because the real issues are completely different," Sodhi told CBC News.

With 90 per cent of truck drivers vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the majority of the industry is sitting out the convoy protest, which started in response to vaccine mandates imposed on essential workers crossing the Canada-U.S. border. Another convoy protest has set up this weekend in downtown Toronto.

So those protesting truck drivers are not even typical truck drivers.

You can be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate.

 

[lpetrich]

Ottawa protests: tensions grow as ‘intolerable’ truck blockade paralyzes Canada capital | Canada | The Guardian

But Ottawa police say the situation has become increasingly difficult to navigate.

Police say that a number of blockade members are believed to armed, and amid growing calls for counter protests, there is growing of fear that violence could erupt.

Officers say their strategy has been to defuse tensions, but critics say that other demonstrations, including those by Indigenous peoples, are often met with force.

“It’s OK if angry white men do it, because they are politically aligned with you, but it’s not OK if Indigenous people peacefully protect their own rights,” Indigenous lawyer and professor Pam Palmater told APTN News.

The pandemic – and the public health restrictions that came with it – have brought together a number of disparate movements and ideologies, including far-right and separatist groups.

“The pushback to government overreach or public health policies brought QAnon, the Proud Boys and ‘sovereign citizens’ or anti-government people into the same room,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, a researcher into extremism and populism movements at Queen’s University.

These truckers get a lot of support from south of the border.

But the spectacle has caught the attention of influential far-right voices in the United States, including former president Donald Trump and his son, and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Tesla founder Elon Musk also tweeted his support of the truck convoy. On Wednesday, Ottawa police said a “significant” amount of the funding and organizing was coming from the United States.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The trucker 'Let us die' protest is quite something. They have decent financial backing and they are just clogging up Ottawa at the moment and won't go until PM Trudeau caves. The residents in Ottawa are fatigued by the occupation, a Liberty Protest that is restraining liberty. Canada isn't exactly known for crushing protests. And of course, any attempt to manage it will be villified by the pro-Covid people. A poll indicated about 70% of Canadians say these people don't represent them, which is a large percentage, over 2 in 3 people.

But the loud minority demand total control.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Germany and Russia appear to be approaching the peaks. Japan went from nadda to spiking. The Netherlands, you can see the 'care if it spikes' to 'giving up'. France is dropping. The US is getting to whatever our normal is now. The UK has re-plateau'd. What is with the UK daily cases?

Hard to make out what happened in India, as their spike drops. Most people get Delta or did they just give up in tracking?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Canadian truck drivers block border crossing and protest at capital over vaccine rule : NPR

Canadian truck drivers have been blocking a border crossing with Montana and shutting down traffic in the capital, Ottawa. The so-called Freedom Convoy began almost a week ago as a protest over truckers losing their right to cross the U.S.-Canada border unvaccinated. The protesters include members of Canada's far right, as Emma Jacobs reports from Ottawa.

ACOBS: The convoy is having an impact well beyond Parliament Hill. For blocks, many businesses are closed. Jared Shecter, who works at a coffee shop that has stayed open for takeout, says protesters coming in argue about being asked to wear masks.

JARED SHECTER: Yeah, it's been very tough on, like, all of us, all the staff here.

JACOBS: There have been other incidents blamed by the mayor on the convoy and its supporters - an assault at a homeless shelter, vandalism and epithets shouted at neighbors. Signs for QAnon, right-wing militias and confederate and Nazi flags have been spotted amid the protesters.

SHECTER: Like, a lot of people are saying it feels like an occupation.

Convoy protests ignoring real hardships truckers face, Peel drivers warn | CBC News

Truckers in Peel Region say the convoy protest that has gripped Ottawa for more than a week isn't addressing the real problems they face — and they're trying to shift the conversation away from COVID-19 vaccine mandates and toward stopping abuse and wage theft in the industry.

Attar Sodhi, a 37-year-old Brampton resident and truck driver, says very few of the protesters in Ottawa are South Asians, who make up more than half of the truckers operating in the Greater Toronto Area, according to some estimates. The protests are sparking debate across the country, but especially in Peel, where trucking and warehousing account for a large percentage of local jobs.

"Something else is happening behind the scenes, because the real issues are completely different," Sodhi told CBC News.

With 90 per cent of truck drivers vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the majority of the industry is sitting out the convoy protest, which started in response to vaccine mandates imposed on essential workers crossing the Canada-U.S. border. Another convoy protest has set up this weekend in downtown Toronto.

So those protesting truck drivers are not even typical truck drivers.

You can be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate.

Oddly, these people aren't vaccinated (which kind of makes your point not relevant), which is what created the protest in the first place due to trucking rules for crossing the US-Canada border.

 

[TSwizzle]

“Experts” talk shite;

The number of Covid patients in ICU in New South Wales has dropped dramatically just weeks away from the state binning its mask mandate, with all signs pointing to Australia reaching the end of the pandemic. Despite predictions from doomsayers that the health system would 'collapse', there are now just 137 Covid patients in intensive care units in NSW hospitals - far less than during the winter Delta outbreak despite there being significantly more cases in this wave.
Last month, University of New South Wales professor Raina MacIntyre warned that the 'enormous volume of (Omicron variant) cases means the small proportion needing hospital care will overwhelm the system'.
She said NSW was in for 'some pretty grim times', and even mocked the government's commitment to 'magical freedom'.

Daily Mail

The “experts” have consistently exaggerated the problem. And the legacy media have been complicit in the fear mongering.

Any, Australia seems about ready to lift restrictions. Heartbreaking for the authoritarians.

 

[Metaphor]

Canadian truck drivers block border crossing and protest at capital over vaccine rule : NPR

Canadian truck drivers have been blocking a border crossing with Montana and shutting down traffic in the capital, Ottawa. The so-called Freedom Convoy began almost a week ago as a protest over truckers losing their right to cross the U.S.-Canada border unvaccinated. The protesters include members of Canada's far right, as Emma Jacobs reports from Ottawa.

ACOBS: The convoy is having an impact well beyond Parliament Hill. For blocks, many businesses are closed. Jared Shecter, who works at a coffee shop that has stayed open for takeout, says protesters coming in argue about being asked to wear masks.

JARED SHECTER: Yeah, it's been very tough on, like, all of us, all the staff here.

JACOBS: There have been other incidents blamed by the mayor on the convoy and its supporters - an assault at a homeless shelter, vandalism and epithets shouted at neighbors. Signs for QAnon, right-wing militias and confederate and Nazi flags have been spotted amid the protesters.

SHECTER: Like, a lot of people are saying it feels like an occupation.

Convoy protests ignoring real hardships truckers face, Peel drivers warn | CBC News

Truckers in Peel Region say the convoy protest that has gripped Ottawa for more than a week isn't addressing the real problems they face — and they're trying to shift the conversation away from COVID-19 vaccine mandates and toward stopping abuse and wage theft in the industry.

Attar Sodhi, a 37-year-old Brampton resident and truck driver, says very few of the protesters in Ottawa are South Asians, who make up more than half of the truckers operating in the Greater Toronto Area, according to some estimates. The protests are sparking debate across the country, but especially in Peel, where trucking and warehousing account for a large percentage of local jobs.

"Something else is happening behind the scenes, because the real issues are completely different," Sodhi told CBC News.

With 90 per cent of truck drivers vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the majority of the industry is sitting out the convoy protest, which started in response to vaccine mandates imposed on essential workers crossing the Canada-U.S. border. Another convoy protest has set up this weekend in downtown Toronto.

So those protesting truck drivers are not even typical truck drivers.

You can be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate.

Oddly, these people aren't vaccinated (which kind of makes your point not relevant), which is what created the protest in the first place due to trucking rules for crossing the US-Canada border.

You've spoken to every person participating in the convoy? Really?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oddly, these people aren't vaccinated (which kind of makes your point not relevant), which is what created the protest in the first place due to trucking rules for crossing the US-Canada border.

You've spoken to every person participating in the convoy? Really?

Are you seriously going to trot out that argument? Heck, a few of the protesters are probably Neo-Nazis.

The protest started because of the border crossing vaccination requirement. As with most things, the vast majority of truckers in Canada are vaccinated, and this is a minority of a minority out there protesting, an ever growing set of concerns.

 

[Metaphor]

Oddly, these people aren't vaccinated (which kind of makes your point not relevant), which is what created the protest in the first place due to trucking rules for crossing the US-Canada border.

You've spoken to every person participating in the convoy? Really?

Are you seriously going to trot out that argument? Heck, a few of the protesters are probably Neo-Nazis.

The protest started because of the border crossing vaccination requirement. As with most things, the vast majority of truckers in Canada are vaccinated, and this is a minority of a minority out there protesting, an ever growing set of concerns.

I understand what the protest is about, and I understand that anyone at a protest is a minority.

I'm saying to you that your assumption that the only people who are against a vaccine mandate are the unvaccinated is false.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Oddly, these people aren't vaccinated (which kind of makes your point not relevant), which is what created the protest in the first place due to trucking rules for crossing the US-Canada border.

You've spoken to every person participating in the convoy? Really?

Are you seriously going to trot out that argument? Heck, a few of the protesters are probably Neo-Nazis.

The protest started because of the border crossing vaccination requirement. As with most things, the vast majority of truckers in Canada are vaccinated, and this is a minority of a minority out there protesting, an ever growing set of concerns.

I understand what the protest is about...

Do you? Have you spoken to every person participating in the convoy?

I'm saying to you that your assumption that the only people who are against a vaccine mandate are the unvaccinated is false.

Yeah, that is just lazy reading on your part.

 

[TomC]

Yeah, that is just lazy reading on your part.

No it isn't.
I'm opposed to a government mandate for vaccination. I'm vaccinated. I want enough people to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

I don't want a government mandated vaccination. Because I believe the side effects would be worse than the many other possible options.
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

Do you? Have you spoken to every person participating in the convoy?

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm opposed to a government mandate for vaccination. I'm vaccinated. I want enough people to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

I don't want a government mandated vaccination. Because I believe the side effects would be worse than the many other possible options.

Do you realize how bonkers this sounds? It's not like you get a differant vaccine if it's mandated.

 

[Elixir]

Future waves OF OMICRON will be less and will have lower total deaths.

If the plague rats are numerous enough, there will be yet another variant.
Your projection, btw, doesn't seem to be panning out. Here in the US, we've had over 100,000 Omicron deaths in less than two months.
Delta deaths were as low as 258/day (7-day avg) when your "blessing" appeared.
Now we are at nearly ten times that death rate.
Can you guarantee that we won't see another spike like that after omicron goes away?
No?
Why Not?
Let me help you out:

PLAGUE RATS

I'm saying to you that your assumption that the only people who are against a vaccine mandate are the unvaccinated is false.

Nobody made such a stupid assumption, but thank you Captain Obvious for that profound insight.

 

[crazyfingers]

I'm opposed to a government mandate for vaccination. I'm vaccinated. I want enough people to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

I don't want a government mandated vaccination. Because I believe the side effects would be worse than the many other possible options.

Do you realize how bonkers this sounds? It's not like you get a differant vaccine if it's mandated.

I could be wrong but I'm guessing that he means social side effects such as right-wingers taking up arms against local health officials and such. He may not mean vaccine side effects.

I disagree. But that's how I read that after considering it a bit.