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"Coronavirus and the US" or "We are all going to die!!!!"

The unselfish adage uttered by the great JFK way back then has never held so true as today amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ask not what your country can do for you, but instead ask what you can do for your country. end quote.... and for your community.

If the Democrat party had not changed from JFK's philosophy I could be a Democrat. I interviewed RFK for an hour when I was in high school. They ran a superb campaign.
Too bad the party has become progressive socialist.

The Dems are far closer to that still than the GOP, who went from the party of Eisenhower to the party of white supremacist anti-science theocrats.

With a sprinkling of extremist, anarcho-capitalistic Randriods. Truly an alliance forged in the fires of hell.
 
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.20144592v1
Africans are more likely to die from COVID-19 because of genetics.

Do you have a better source for you claim, becaue your cited article explicitly states that your conclusion is not supported by their data.

"We do not believe that there is enough data to confirm the hypothesis of a genetic explanation to the imbalance in survival rates in the UK as published by the ONS, despite our genetic risk variants being similarly distributed over ethnic groups. The non-coding variant in the intronic region of
ALOXE3, common to 7.6% in the African population is definitely worth checking carefully
on a larger dataset when it becomes available, since all 3 people with the variant died.
...
With the amount of data we have it is premature to say that there is an ethnic bias in genetic risk. "


They went on a fishing expedition with "a small amount of data". They looked at the entire genome and found "no significant associations" with death rates. So, they took the 5 genetic variants that were closest to significant and examined some more specific things about them. The variant that they say is the most promising predictor of fatality is actually more prevalent amoung Europeans than Africans (0.5% versus 0.0%). All 3 other coding genetic variants were also more prevalent among Europeans than Africans, but all very rare in general. They only even mention the one variant that was more common in Africans, b/c all 3 people with that variant died, but not only was it only 3 people, but it is a non-coding variant. Plus, all their data is correlational. So, nothing in that data supports genetics being the reason for Africans higher death rates. There is merely a weak hint at a possible partial contributor to the disparity that requires way more data to conclude it means anything.

They only said that all mutations are similarly distributed except one. and all 3 people with it have died. 3 is not great statistics but it is an indication.
 
no. Not and indication. Perhaps interesting. Maybe worth further study or suggestive of other options, Not an indication.
They think it's an indication.
I don't know exactly how much fishing was in their fishing expedition. But having all 3 patients dying by pure chance has probability of pow(0.02,3) = 8e-06
(I assumed average death rate of 2%).
Humans have 24,000 genes, so probability of pure chance is 0.192. It's a good indication.

And yes, all such studies are fishing expeditions, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
now that they have an indication they can save money and efforts by concentrating on these few genes and have much larger statistics.
 
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Fishing expeditions are not justified. Every person with whom I've worked has, as have I, generated experiment based on substantial research - publications of results based on operational definitions derived from quantitative results of previously published work - prior to design and execution. Higgs Boson is a typical example of the trail left by good research whereas territorial floating - rats and other mammals tend to rise to the top of whatever they are embedded - kline is a hearsay niche among species even though it is usual that wrongly discarded animals are recovered from the tops of dumpster heaps.
 
Fishing expeditions are not justified. Every person with whom I've worked has, as have I, generated experiment based on substantial research - publications of results based on operational definitions derived from quantitative results of previously published work - prior to design and execution. Higgs Boson is a typical example of the trail left by good research whereas territorial floating - rats and other mammals tend to rise to the top of whatever they are embedded - kline is a hearsay niche among species even though it is usual that wrongly discarded animals are recovered from the tops of dumpster heaps.
You are wrong.
 
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.01.20144592v1
Africans are more likely to die from COVID-19 because of genetics.

Do you have a better source for you claim, becaue your cited article explicitly states that your conclusion is not supported by their data.

"We do not believe that there is enough data to confirm the hypothesis of a genetic explanation to the imbalance in survival rates in the UK as published by the ONS, despite our genetic risk variants being similarly distributed over ethnic groups. The non-coding variant in the intronic region of
ALOXE3, common to 7.6% in the African population is definitely worth checking carefully
on a larger dataset when it becomes available, since all 3 people with the variant died.
...
With the amount of data we have it is premature to say that there is an ethnic bias in genetic risk. "


They went on a fishing expedition with "a small amount of data". They looked at the entire genome and found "no significant associations" with death rates. So, they took the 5 genetic variants that were closest to significant and examined some more specific things about them. The variant that they say is the most promising predictor of fatality is actually more prevalent amoung Europeans than Africans (0.5% versus 0.0%). All 3 other coding genetic variants were also more prevalent among Europeans than Africans, but all very rare in general. They only even mention the one variant that was more common in Africans, b/c all 3 people with that variant died, but not only was it only 3 people, but it is a non-coding variant. Plus, all their data is correlational. So, nothing in that data supports genetics being the reason for Africans higher death rates. There is merely a weak hint at a possible partial contributor to the disparity that requires way more data to conclude it means anything.

They only said that all mutations are similarly distributed except one. and all 3 people with it have died. 3 is not great statistics but it is an indication.

"Similar", only b/c all the variants are rare in all populations, but still one is 6 times more common among Europeans, one twice as common, and a third is in 0.2% in Europeans and non-existent in Africans. These are variants that, despite being rare predict 5-13 times the death rate among those who have them. Plus the variant that is only found in Africans is non-coding which reduces the probability that it's playing a causal role and increases the likelihood of a spurious relationship, due to environmental/social factors tied to race.

Of the 19 other people who died with to one of the other fatality predicting genetic variants, none were likely African, given the provided probabilities in Table 1. The 13 people who died with the 2nd through 4th variant were likely all Europeans, and the 6 who died of the 1st variant were all Asians (since they are the only one's with that variant. So, your conclusion that overall higher death rates of Africans is genetic has no support. Even if the 1 non-coding African-only variant happens to somehow have a non-spurious causal influence, it still would not support your general claim, which ignores the other variants than Africans don't have and that predict fatality rates.
 
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They only said that all mutations are similarly distributed except one. and all 3 people with it have died. 3 is not great statistics but it is an indication.

"Similar", only b/c all the variants are rare in all populations, but still one is 6 times more common among Europeans, one twice as common, and a third is in 0.2% in Europeans and non-existent in Africans. These are variants that, despite being rare predict 5-13 times the death rate among those who have them. Plus the variant that is only found in Africans is non-coding which reduces the probability that it's playing a causal role and increases the likelihood of a spurious relationship, due to environmental/social factors tied to race.

Of the 19 other people who died with to one of the other fatality predicting genetic variants, none were likely African, given the provided probabilities in Table 1. The 13 people who died with the 2nd through 4th variant were likely all Europeans, and the 6 who died of the 1st variant were all Asians (since they are the only one's with that variant. So, your conclusion that overall higher death rates of Africans is genetic has no support. Even if the 1 non-coding African-only variant happens to somehow have a non-spurious causal influence, it still would not support your general claim, which ignores the other variants than Africans don't have and that predict fatality rates.
If you think they made a mistake in their statistics you are free to send them an email. But then again you don't even accept their whole approach.
 
They only said that all mutations are similarly distributed except one. and all 3 people with it have died. 3 is not great statistics but it is an indication.

"Similar", only b/c all the variants are rare in all populations, but still one is 6 times more common among Europeans, one twice as common, and a third is in 0.2% in Europeans and non-existent in Africans. These are variants that, despite being rare predict 5-13 times the death rate among those who have them. Plus the variant that is only found in Africans is non-coding which reduces the probability that it's playing a causal role and increases the likelihood of a spurious relationship, due to environmental/social factors tied to race.

Of the 19 other people who died with to one of the other fatality predicting genetic variants, none were likely African, given the provided probabilities in Table 1. The 13 people who died with the 2nd through 4th variant were likely all Europeans, and the 6 who died of the 1st variant were all Asians (since they are the only one's with that variant. So, your conclusion that overall higher death rates of Africans is genetic has no support. Even if the 1 non-coding African-only variant happens to somehow have a non-spurious causal influence, it still would not support your general claim, which ignores the other variants than Africans don't have and that predict fatality rates.
If you think they made a mistake in their statistics you are free to send them an email. But then again you don't even accept their whole approach.

Both fromderinside and ronburgundy have made pertinent arguments.

Both have more relevant expertise than you do.

The article you link clearly doesn't show what you want it to show. I'm not sure you've even read it. Here's a direct quote: "We do not believe that there is enough data to confirm the hypothesis of a genetic explanation to theimbalance in survival rates in the UK as published by the ONS".

You are like those electrical engineers who think they can overturn cosmology and argue for young earth creationism based on their lack of understanding.
 
The Dems are far closer to that still than the GOP, who went from the party of Eisenhower to the party of white supremacist anti-science theocrats.

With a sprinkling of extremist, anarcho-capitalistic Randriods. Truly an alliance forged in the fires of hell.

All political parties have their extreme left/right kooks! No party can claim holier than thou status.
 
If you think they made a mistake in their statistics you are free to send them an email. But then again you don't even accept their whole approach.

Both fromderinside and ronburgundy have made pertinent arguments.
ronburgundy maybe, but certainly not fromderinside.
Both have more relevant expertise than you do.
LOL, no, I can assure you my expertise is more relevant than theirs.
The article you link clearly doesn't show what you want it to show. I'm not sure you've even read it. Here's a direct quote: "We do not believe that there is enough data to confirm the hypothesis of a genetic explanation to theimbalance in survival rates in the UK as published by the ONS".
The Article clearly says what I said it says. They don't claim to have a proof, they claim they have an indication and more statistics is needed.
I skimmed the article and gave them benefit of the doubt, With these kind of articles it is usually not possible to check math anyway.
As I said, we don't know how much fishing was in their fishing expedition.


You are like those electrical engineers who think they can overturn cosmology and argue for young earth creationism based on their lack of understanding.
Who the fuck are you to even think that you can compare me to some electrical engineers?
 
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Plus the variant that is only found in Africans is non-coding which reduces the probability that it's playing a causal role and increases the likelihood of a spurious relationship, due to environmental/social factors tied to race.
Does not matter, Introns regulate gene expression. In any case I looked it up and apparently there are 139,418 introns in human genome. That's more than enough to get their 3 dead and 0 alive distribution by pure chance. So yeah, the article is total bullshit

Of the 19 other people who died with to one of the other fatality predicting genetic variants, none were likely African, given the provided probabilities in Table 1. The 13 people who died with the 2nd through 4th variant were likely all Europeans, and the 6 who died of the 1st variant were all Asians (since they are the only one's with that variant. So, your conclusion that overall higher death rates of Africans is genetic has no support.
I don't care about first 4 rows.
Even if the 1 non-coding African-only variant happens to somehow have a non-spurious causal influence, it still would not support your general claim, which ignores the other variants than Africans don't have and that predict fatality rates.
It does not compute. Nothing is being ignored there. It's a fishing expedition kind of study (which is perfectly fine if you do it right)
They compare genomes of dead to genomes of these who survived, and see if there is a statistically significant difference. Problem is, the difference has no statistical significance. Again, fishing is fine if you do it right.

Chang Lu, Rihab Gam, Arun Prasad Pandurangan, Julian Gough are all stupid idiots.
Or not and simply wanted to get some money for further "study".
 
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