nomadscientist wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 1:28 pm
To my mind he answers these questions like any politician, starting from the very first answer*. More consequentially, his statement that mortality varies "slightly" with age is both false and grotesquely dishonest.
*an independent scientist would've said something like "I'm fine, not that it matters." Both through the mindset, and actually being in a position to not care what anyone thinks of him. This guy is courting a positive public image, and he does it so slickly it's surely deliberate.
I think this is completely uncharitable. He is the CMO. Recognising that his colleagues are working flat out is part of leadership and that is a totally legitimate answer. This is also someone who has worked on the coal face for years, prior to this role he was still doing acute on calls. I would be unimpressed with a scientist that didn't recognise their colleagues when given a platform.
nomadscientist wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 3:21 pm
The UK system (""death panel""/socialised medicine) already judges efficacy of medical interventions generally by the DALY measure (cost per Disability Adjusted Life Year saved) on a national basis, so I don't see any cultural or other difficulties in judging corona interventions by the DALY measure either. It's the standard measure and there would have to be an extraordinary reason to not use it*.
I do not see any DALY calculations justifying the current measures. It seems likely that they would not justify the current measures even given a large range of uncertainty**.
I also do not see any attempt to quantitatively limit the uncertainty in either the "DALYs saved" or the "cost" components of the calculation.
Instead I see curation of facts to justify the current measures endlessly (even, increasingly, attempts to justify them past the end of the pandemic). Chris Witty does not talk like a narrow specialist who refuses to answer non-technical questions outside a narrow range. He talks like a politician intending to make a bundled package of decisions sound appealing to the audience.
The reality is we do not hear anything from working scientists. We hear from science administrators who have been filtered by multiple promotion gateways for political outlook and aptitude.
**for example, it's far gone beyond a simple tradeoff of "health vs economy", a dichotomy that both imposes ideological factions on each view and also paints one as the bad guy; it's disrupting all sorts of non-monetary functions like family formation that are ultimately far more important to most people than either monetary or health considerations.
1) We don't use DALYs we use QUALYs. Which are similar but different.
2) He isn't a 'narrow specialist' and has worked extensively in other epidemics and also
isn't the only person calling the shots SAGE includes come economists too and there has been a recognition they were initially underrepresented.
3) I have no idea what you mean by hearing form working scientists because we do in the form of publications and increasingly pre prints.
4) He literally says it isn't a tradeoff between health/economy and both are intertwined. There has also been mentions on mental health and long term impacts of closing schools from the beginning to. It might not be perfectly balanced but these are things that are hard/impossible to measure and haven't needed to be measured in a situation like this before, ever.
nomadscientist wrote: ↑Tue Nov 17, 2020 3:36 pm
If that happens what is the merit of anything we are doing? As I understand it the idea of the current policies in Western countries is to minimise deaths before a vaccine. A mutation eliminating immunity would be just as devastating to that strategy, rendering current vaccines worthless.
If your idea is to preserve these measures forever, then my position is that it is preferable to accept the life expectancy loss from the disease. I expect this is consistent with ordinary public health calculations carried out without political pressure to overweight this particular risk.
I don't see any evidence that outcomes are significantly altered by intensive medical interventions. If we were faced with say 1% survival without ICU, 99% survival with ICU, then I could see a case for this (but it would also be a case for artificially
increasing spread during the troughs, which we didn't do). I expect it's more like 10% vs 12%.
The current polices are to stop healthcare overwhelm and yes to avoid excess deaths, but that isn't
just COVID deaths. The exit strategy being vaccine currently, but decent drugs/therapies would be another.
In terms of medical interventions we now know in those on Oxygen Dexamethasone drops mortality by 30% so, no healthcare now is ATLEAST that lethal in terms of survivability odds. That doesn't include O2 itself or any ICU stuff.
jacob wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 6:28 pm
I wonder how much of the SNAFU is due to humans not wanting to have that uncomfortable conversations that nature is increasingly forcing us to have. I happen to think that drives most of the conversation.
Oh absolutely. It happens in health all the time too.
jacob wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:42 pm
Unconsciously incompetent and consciously incompetent used to describe 99% of humanity. The previous arranged was to defer to experts. However, now it has been replaced with "doing me research on teh google" which many think is better because they prefer to "make up their own mind" (another word for the dopamine rush of confirmation bias
).
But it works so Well!