There is concept in Clinical Trial ethics called equipoise that means there has to be a reasonable opportunity for possible benefit for what you subject a patient to. It is generally used to guide what you do with a control group, meaning you cannot give a placebo in a study of a new therapy when there is an existing standard of care with known benefit/risks.
On rare occasions it is also used to ask “why the fuck are you even studying this? We know this doesnt work!” This is now the stage we’ve reached with Ivermectin after another dud of a study has been published
If you are still remotely paying attention to Covid discourse you probably hear in the last month or so “proof” that masks don’t work. This was the supposed conclusion of a recent Cochrane review.
Cochrane is a group whose mission is to aid evidence based medicine in areas with lots of study but a lack of clarity over best practices. Their reviews, typically meta analyses, have largely come to be viewed as the definitive word on the current state of a clinical question, so when they published this lots in the scientific community were very surprised by how bad it appeared to be. It was generally regarded as a terrible review that used the data poorly and still made conclusions not supported by its own misuse of the data. This was presented by people ideologically committed to ideas like “masks dont work” as hypcritcial…trust the science people were now decrying the science when it didnt agree with them. But that missed the point that it was terrible “science”, and the beauty of science is having to show you work and defend it. Now Cochrane have come out to say they completely dropped the ball and that one of the lead authors has been publicly misrepresenting the meta’s findings.
In short, we know masks “work”. Whether mask mandates work is a different question though and one that its not able to answer at this time (saying you cannot answer the question is not the same as saying they dont work).
EDIT: Importantly, when understanding the efficacy of any Public Health Initiative you have to factor in bad actors intend on undermining people’s faith in them or ability or willingness to abide by them. None of these people ever stop to think how much of the lack of measured efficacy from any initiatives is due to how they contributed to them being defanged.
There has been a weird turn in the discourse I’ve noticed recently where the people who decided from the beginning that Public Health interventions were wrong have somehow now decided that something has happened that has proven they were right all along and now they are out looking for their apologies. I think a lot of it predates the bad Cochrane review, but it’s definitely played into it.
That’s another great example. I read excerpts from the WhatsApp and all I saw was further evidence of what we could see contemporaneously - a failed response driven by incompetence and perceived self-serving political responses. Yet somehow there is a core group who have responded to it as if it demonstrates that Covid was never a big deal and the government knew it all along.
My experience in the field of science has long made it clear to me how strong motivated reasoning is when people want to believe something, and that intelligence, even education in the very thing being discussed, isnt an inoculation to that. But what has really struck me with covid, especially in the past year, is how common it is for people to present evidence of their claim that offers no such support of the claim it is being used to prop up.
Indeed. I’d even go on to say that there’s two branches to the Hancock saga. Incompetence and ignorance on one side and a belief in lockdowns being ineffective by Oakeshott. (I think I’ve got her stance right on this).
Add another example to how shallow and disingenuous the covidskeptic criticism of the media coverage is for being biased and unfair
“It’s a lie to call it a horse dewormer. They only say that to discredit a legitimate treatment they dont want us to know about”
No, it was referred to as a horse dewormer because of the trend of people self-Rxing with veterinary grade version of the drug (mostly because reputable medical professionals wouldnt Rx). That meant a drug with no evidence of efficacy, a narrow therapeutic window even for conditions it works for, and extensive dangerous side effects, was being used for self medication by idiots who didnt know their arse from their elbow.
I read that a day or two ago…fuck me, the narrative from the woman who decided that what she was feeling was an enormous tape worm inside her dying because of the success of the drug. I haven’t felt right since…
A brilliant conversation about the debate on the origins of the outbreak. It is science heavy in some parts, but it’s more a conversation about the faults in the arguments the lab leak arguments are based on. It is as much a conversation on the philosophy of knowledge as it is pure science.
For context, two of the scientists interviewed were people who the skeptic community originally pointed to as scientists whose public comments validate the lab leak argument.
the only reasons to consider a lab leak origin are speculative. These are the sort of ideas that early on might be reasonably used as the basis of a hypothesis to test, but they havent subsequently been supported by any of the evidence. It is all still just innuendo and “what ifs” that fail to explain the actual data. Doesn’t mean its wrong, but it does mean that holding this idea is at this point an article of faith and requires some big revelation to be made that can reconcile the discrepancy between what the various leak hypotheses predict and what has been observed
They as people are evidence that the argument that lab leak ideas were shut down without being tested are nonsense seeing as they 1) publicly called for it to be seriously considered, 2) participated in the sort of experiments that could have provided support for a lab leak origin if it existed, 3) found nothing that would support it but plenty that supports the natural spill over origin
Lots of focus this week on an interesting new study showing sizable protection against Long Covid from a cheap, very well studied, diabetes drug called Metformin. It’s benefits are probably concentrated in patients who are close to being candidates to taking Metformin for metabolic health anyway (overweight and inactive), and that probably gives some insight into who/why its working.
More interesting though and getting way less attention is the benefits of Metformin are dwarfed by the protective effective of being vaxed and boosted.
in Florida and Ohio between March 2020 and December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before
Well that clarifies a few things in my mind. Been laughing at some daft conspiracy theory type stuff of late and the “how’s your jab” comment tends to make an appearance. No real secret that these people tend to be;
a) from America
b) Right leaning political views, sometimes, full Trump.
