Here the QZ moderator banned a poster from a thread for posting further in a thread due to “blatant misinformation” … when the specific information posted was within the range of expert opinion, albeit on the low side.
@Trom politely pointed out the possible confusion of the moderator: “of people who contract the virus” is NOT the case fatality rate (CFR) estimate but the infection fatality rate (IFR), and was shut down with a “take it to another thread.” The apparently moderator approved “fact” (alternate one) is that roughly 2% of Americans infected with SARS-CoV2 die of the infection, the Johns Hopkins observed CFR, based off of confirmed cases. Experts’ best guesses however are that there are somewhere between 8 to 20 times more infections in the United States than there are confirmed infections.
IF so such would estimate somewhere between 99.75 and 99.9 of infected Americans with SARS-CoV2 survive it. Could be off. Fauci stated an IFR of 0.6%, meaning 99.4% infection survival rate back in September. A recent article agrees with that number. But 99.8% is a reasonable figure for the percent of Americans contract SARS-CoV2 who won’t die of it; the not moderated figure of 1.9% is OTOH blatant misinformation. Using CFR as that number is, at best, ignorance of great degree.
The mods mistake is excusable. Doubling down on the mistake after it was politely pointed out is embarrassing willful ignorance. Saying I’m right last word no more talking about it is worse than that.
This disease is scary enough without misinformation being promoted by our mods.
I personally think the person who got the warning is a strong net negative in Covid discussion. But you’re right, this is not what he should have been moderated for. As I said in the thread about the warnee in BBQ, the comment about “1.9% rough fatality rate” is equally misinforming.
Other expert opinion comes btw from Oxford’s CEBM although it may be a dated article by now:
Also leaving the moderated post claim far from misinformation.
@FigNorton - I wouldn’t know as I’ve given up actually engaging in or contributing to that forum - I skim now every so often looking for links to interesting articles that I may have not seen myself. Could be. But true or not it excuses not this simply incorrect and power abusive moderation. 1.9% is much more misinforming. NO expert or expert body states that 1.9% of all who contract SARS-CoV-2 infection die from it.
The post was not “breaking news”, though, and didn’t belong in that thread. And it was, at best, misleading. And a lengthy explanation of exactly what was what REALLY didn’t belong in the thread.
Moderation that had said that this is not breaking news and does not belong in the thread? Would be fine. Banning from a thread ON THAT BASIS (unless instruction had been ignored)? No. And then other posters would have deserved the same response.
That is not what the moderator did though. The moderator instead banned based on their ignorance of the facts, stated they were right about the incorrect fact, and THEN said no more discussion.
As pointed out it wasn’t. It is in the range of expert opinions. Not misleading at all. On the low end of expert beliefs but in the range. Only 98.1% of all who contract it not dying is OTOH not misleading - it is simply false. Wrong. Incorrect. Not in the range. Not even pining for the fjords close.
And given that 40ish % of deaths are among nursing home residents, the second part is in the range as well.
For what it’s worth, if you take the CDC’s best guess, which you can find here, and get a weighted average using the age distribution found here, you get an IFR of .1834 percent, or a survival rate of 99.82.
I take FigNorton’s point that averaging the risk by age is not that useful given how much the risk varies by age, but people still do it. And when you do it with the CDC’s numbers, that’s what you get.
I’m trying to find a link to it, but I read somewhere that Minnesota tested something like a third of its population and got the very same numbers (and the 99.9 percent outside of long-term care). Which, I suppose, is exactly what you would expect.
According to that, they have tested 2.67 million members of their population, which is getting close to half, and they’ve found 350,000+ cases. They have 4000 deaths, with 2600 in LTC or assisted living facilities.
It’s just one state, I know, and conditions vary, but it’s not a tiny sample. And it seems like they’ve done some pretty impressive jobs of both testing and record keeping. Doesn’t seem like their data would deserve to be dismissed out of hand.
It will let you dig in and get the data you and I were talking about.
With this data release, how hospitals are impacted by COVID-19 will be shown on a per-hospital basis, allowing researchers, policy makers, and others to have greater insights into local COVID-19 response efforts. This time series data will update weekly, going back to August 1, 2020.
When data are aggregated at county or state level, the average across all facilities can mask what is happening at each local hospital. Some hospitals might have additional capacity to treat COVID-19 patients, while others lack that capacity, for example. Using this new data, the public will have access to hospital-specific COVID-19 numbers to understand hyper-localized community impacts. This new level of transparency and increased access will accelerate COVID-19 insights and understanding.
Perhaps of further relevance to our back-and-forth:
Entrepreneurs and researchers can use these datasets to build novel data analysis tools and approaches. Data scientists are encouraged to detect, predict, and visualize insights and patterns in this high-resolution data. Such COVID-19 insights can identify what works, what is failing to work, and how we might scale best practices in one locality for other regions to collectively optimize the U.S. data-driven response.
Or, I don’t know…I’m still not sure what you meant by ‘off season hospitals may be running close to 90% capacity’ and ‘this is worse than that’. But I guess the data might now be freely available for us all to dig into.
It may be within the expert opinion, but it was still stated in a manner that would be misleading, as the assumptions baked into it weren’t stated. The statement was treated as fact, rather than just some low estimate based on the data and assumptions you gave. Had the poster stated it the way you did, I could see it being allowed. But they did not.
Plus they appear to have a history of problematic posts on the topic. Heck, they’ve been pitted for basically being a COVID-denier. It definitely reads to me that @Colibri is fed up with the poster at this point, so it was more than one post that led to his decision to ban the poster from the thread entirely.
It actually seems to me that mod tolerance for this particular poster is wearing somewhat thin. Poster tolerance for them is definitely thin, to the point that I don’t see anyone saying anything positive about them.
I read relevant reports about the numbers. I am trying to get to the heart of what your problem is with this exchange, so much so that you brought it up again in this thread. You threw out a number of 90% hospital usage and said this is worse than that. I wanted to know how you came to that conclusion. I pointed you to HHS data for hospital usage, and now this new time series at a county/hospital level going back to August, and you seem to be saying none of it is relevant. If it’s not relevant, I’m trying to figure out what it is that would be.
Otherwise, it’s sure starting to look as though it’s simply frowned upon to cite any statistics/reports/databases that don’t align with a certain narrative.
If your concern is misinformation, you could follow the moderator suggestion and start a new thread in QZ about your opinion of the validity and importance of this piece of information on the pandemic.
Conversation was not shut down, just asked to be moved elsewhere.
The mod didn’t post that the information was wrong, although he did disagree, He posted that what Trom posted didn’t refute the argument and was asking for further discussion be taken to another thread from here
The mod had labelled something as “blatant misinformation”, a big statement to make of something that is within expert opinion range, and banned a poster from a thread for posting it. That’s calling information “wrong” in my books. You may read different books I guess.
When correctly pointed out that it was not misinformation the mod doubled down on their incorrect belief, said the correction was wrong, and shut down further discussion in the thread, leaving a blatantly false claim in the thread standing as the allowable moderator-approved fact.
What I said was that some hospitals can be at 90% even outside of flu season. Two months ago, our regional children’s hospital was at 87% without a single covid patient. I have no desire to prove this to you.
The spirit of the post is the problem. SayTwo’s post is dismissive of COVID’s lethality, which has a confirmed fatality rate that puts it in the neighborhood of the 1918 Spanish Flu - pretty serious shit if you ask me.
If the poster in question didn’t have a questionable history, I’d be willing to argue that he deserves a pass.
Yes, the 1918 flu pandemic was higher but how much higher is perhaps debatable. Spanish flu CFR is estimated to be around 2.5% (perhaps higher).
According to Johns Hopkins the fatality rate for COVID-19 is about 2.1% - which I assume is CFR and not IFR.
Keep in mind, too, that in 1918, they didn’t even know much about viruses. They had much less knowledge about viruses and relatively few treatment options. By contrast, we know a lot about COVID-19 and viruses generally. And it’s still doing a pretty good job at killing us.