Coronavirus

[Norbert]

Karl Friston is a neurologist and widely considered to be the smartest human on the planet.

Regarding CoronaVirus, the most intelligent people seem prone to saying stupid things. Including T brain.

 

[EinSV]

Covid-19 study on hydroxychloroquine use questioned by 120 researchers and medical professionals

Looks like the Lancet article that rang alarm bells about hydroxychloroquine potentially has some serious flaws. Over 120 researchers and doctors are now questioning the study.

@Papafox, Lancet has now issued an "Expression of Concern" about this article due to the "serious scientific questions" raised in the letter you posted. I look forward to seeing properly done, randomized clinical trials.

I'm not sure what to say about all the personal attacks and ridicule you were subjected to for posting the letter. I doubt any apologies will be forthcoming, but they should be.

https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S0140673620312903.pdf

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I'm not sure what to say about all the personal attacks and ridicule you were subjected to for posting the letter. I doubt any apologies will be forthcoming, but they should be.

This was already posted! As much as possible, we try to post the relevant info, though it's probably the case that HCQ is not a revolutionary treatment, at this point. Perhaps incremental assistance in some cases when combined with zinc - but whether it outweighs the risks is TBD. We'll see what the follow up shows. I'd like to see RCTs as well, just so we can stop talking about it.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

(though these large protests seem like they'll certainly test some theories about outdoor spread).

I think it will be nearly impossible to test that theory easily. Maybe months later they'll be able to figure out what happened. Definitely thousands of people together even outside is a possible factor for accelerating the spread. But it's going to be confounded by arrests, followed by close confinement of many protesters, and it's also confounded by the general loosening of the rules and increased mobility. In any case, we won't know much for a couple weeks, and anything we see in the next week or two at least we can chalk up to other factors, for the time being.

I think the increased mobility preceded the protests by enough time that it may be possible to make some guesses about that. But if the increased mobility has a large enough effect, I would expect it to swamp the effects of the protests seen in a couple weeks.

 

[dgatwood]

Clearly something is happening. Wisconsin has been completely open for a couple of weeks, very low death rate. As other states are opening death rates are not going up or are just slightly higher. This hit like a hurricane and now it's barely a tropical storm. Warmer weather? Or it's burning itself out. Most European countries right now have a lower rate of deaths than same time period a year ago. https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1267584006486401027?s=19

Infections lag 1–2 weeks. Deaths lag 3–4.

"Macrolide" = antibiotic like azithromycin. (I had to look that up.) From the huge firehose of HCQ articles and studies I've seen, it seems that HCQ + zinc taken early on may be the most promising combination left to investigate, but still needs a lot more study (i.e. a proper double-blind trial) to confirm/refute. Similarly with Vitamin D; the correlations between Vitamin D levels and symptom severity are striking, but causation has yet to be shown, to my knowledge.

It seems likely that deficiencies of zinc or vitamin D are likely to result in a more serious course of illness. It's a literal coin toss whether HCQ would make the zinc more effective or less effective. The only way we'll really know if HCQ is useful is if they do a three-arm study, with a control arm, an arm that adds just zinc, and an arm that adds CQ or HCQ. But even then, given how many contradictory studies we've seen about zinc over the years, the results will probably be similarly contradictory unless they also control for zinc deficiency. We might, optimistically speaking, know the answer in five or ten years.

 

[EinSV]

This was already posted! As much as possible, we try to post the relevant info

When @Papafox posted the letter from scientists and doctors questioning the Lancet HCQ study, it was immediately dismissed by this thread.

Then, as is typical whenever information is posted that challenges the groupthink here, the personal attacks started, including questioning his intelligence repeatedly.

There has been a ton of interesting information on covid-19 that has come out in the past few weeks that isn't finding its way into this thread because anyone who posts information that disturbs the echo chamber is personally attacked.

I haven't seen anything this bad in the TMC investor forum, ever.

This is (supposedly) an investor thread. Good investors welcome information, especially information that challenges their beliefs. This thread is just the opposite.

No wonder the consensus view here was to short the market at the bottom, and miss out on 80-100+% gains in TSLA in the past couple months. Have to say I'm glad I did my own research and bought heavily in the low 500s while the doom and gloom squad here was recommending shorting the bottom.

 

[golfcart]

Clearly something is happening. Wisconsin has been completely open for a couple of weeks, very low death rate. As other states are opening death rates are not going up or are just slightly higher. This hit like a hurricane and now it's barely a tropical storm. Warmer weather? Or it's burning itself out. Most European countries right now have a lower rate of deaths than same time period a year ago. https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1267584006486401027?s=19

I can't speak to Wisconsin specifically or the questions about changes in the danger of the virus over time... but would it be surprising if most of the places hit hard by the virus have lower than typical death rates in the coming months (and maybe years) for things like heart attacks, strokes, flu, etc...? It seems that the people who died from COVID-19 were also the people most likely to die from other things in the near future. Since COVID-19 killed them already, the other things that would have killed them (in the near future) won't.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

When @Papafox posted the letter from scientists and doctors questioning the Lancet HCQ study, it was immediately dismissed by this thread. Then, as is typical whenever information is posted that challenges the groupthink here, the personal attacks started, including questioning his intelligence repeatedly.

Not sure what there was to disagree with on my post. I did not say that there had not been attacks that were unnecessary.
I agree that some of the things that have been said to @Papafox have been over the top. They have not come from me.

There has been a ton of interesting information on covid-19 that has come out in the past few weeks that isn't finding its way into this thread because anyone who posts information that disturbs the echo chamber is personally attacked.

Please post it. I don’t think there should be personal attacks on anyone (and while you have said that I have personally attacked you, I have not; I have only asked you to try to be less credulous when you post). It’s reasonable to ask people to back up their posts and provide some commentary on why they think what they have posted is true/legitimate.

Regarding investing and shorting the bottom:
I am also glad I did not take my own advice on the market (except in my 401k, partially, sadly)! As I’ve said, in Tesla I am currently down to my long term position only (though I’ve cycled out some very long term gains now from 2014 and 2018). I am still concerned about a factory outbreak. Honestly I am a bit surprised it has not happened yet (I said by mid-June something would likely happen) - it is just so difficult to control this virus, without a lot of molecular testing. But, I hope that I end up being completely wrong, and there is never an outbreak there.
The 4/30 purchase is small relative to the rest as you can see from the average cost (1/7th of the position):
Current position:

Closed positions:

Regardless of what happens, I have relearned that it is impossible to predict the market; I find it really surprising that the market has done so well, especially with the medium term prospects as they are. I guess we’ll see what happens over the summer.

 

[JRP3]

No wonder the consensus view here was to short the market at the bottom

It was?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

... but would it be surprising if most of the places hit hard by the virus have lower than typical death rates in the coming months (and maybe years) for things like heart attacks, strokes, flu, etc...? It seems that the people who died from COVID-19 were also the people most likely to die from other things in the near future. Since COVID-19 killed them already, the other things that would have killed them (in the near future) won't.

Average years of life lost has been about 11 years - see earlier chart (with a very wide distribution, but have not seen that distribution shape, which would be relevant here - but I don’t believe it is strongly bimodal or anything like that, though the mode is likely less than 11 years), so I’d expect this effect to be fairly small (it’s going to be difficult to see 130k fewer deaths spread over an average of 11 years - spanning ~1 year to 30+ years, so likely less than 2k per month nationwide peak - but depends on the distribution characteristics).

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It was?

He’s referring to my comments (which I agree were not the consensus), and thus far have proven to be spectacularly wrong - and I would say will likely permanently remain spectacularly wrong, at this point.

 

[madodel]

When @Papafox posted the letter from scientists and doctors questioning the Lancet HCQ study, it was immediately dismissed by this thread.

Then, as is typical whenever information is posted that challenges the groupthink here, the personal attacks started, including questioning his intelligence repeatedly.

There has been a ton of interesting information on covid-19 that has come out in the past few weeks that isn't finding its way into this thread because anyone who posts information that disturbs the echo chamber is personally attacked.

I haven't seen anything this bad in the TMC investor forum, ever.

This is (supposedly) an investor thread. Good investors welcome information, especially information that challenges their beliefs. This thread is just the opposite.

No wonder the consensus view here was to short the market at the bottom, and miss out on 80-100+% gains in TSLA in the past couple months. Have to say I'm glad I did my own research and bought heavily in the low 500s while the doom and gloom squad here was recommending shorting the bottom.

View attachment 547566

It is the beating a dead horse that attracts the negative responses. If there is new information that changes that status then sure it is welcome. For now HCQ is a dead end. Throwing out ideas about what may be possible is fine, but constant repetition of something you can't possibly make happen is just useless noise. If you can get an actual accredited research study of HCQ and Zinc, done using whoever's criteria that proves HCQ doesn't kill more people than it helps then you can come back and say you told us so, then great. It's no different than people trolling on the main thread about things no one can actually change, like Elon's Twitter posts, except here it is people that actually are experienced physicians who actually have a good idea of what is feasible and what the risks are. And even they disagree at times. I read this thread to see the professional's opinions which I find fascinating and informative.

 

[bkp_duke]

When @Papafox posted the letter from scientists and doctors questioning the Lancet HCQ study, it was immediately dismissed by this thread.

Then, as is typical whenever information is posted that challenges the groupthink here, the personal attacks started, including questioning his intelligence repeatedly.

There has been a ton of interesting information on covid-19 that has come out in the past few weeks that isn't finding its way into this thread because anyone who posts information that disturbs the echo chamber is personally attacked.

I haven't seen anything this bad in the TMC investor forum, ever.

You treat that as a retraction, it's not a retraction. It's not uncommon for scientists to disagree about the finer points, and ESPECIALLY how the statistics were done, and that is what is going on there: they are disagreeing about the metanalysis and concern for "individual sites" not using the same protocols as the larger sites. This kind of disagreement SHOULD have happened during the peer-review process and been sorted out then. This speaks more to the Lancet's piss-poor peer review of this specific article. This should have not have been public, but it is public because these things were not addressed during peer review. Good reviewers would have pointed these concerns out, the editors would have required the authors to address them, and a BETTER version of the article addressing these concerns would have been published from the get go.

Instead now, we have a rushed article, and loss of faith in science by the general lay community. Just what we needed in a pandemic.

Also, like others, people here on TMC want to CLING to LITTLE BITS of info and IGNORE the LARGER BODY of evidence.

The whole of the data for HCQ is pretty clear:
1) it doesn't help the sickest of patients - these are those that NEED the help, not those with less acute symptoms
2) it has a BAD side effect profile - significant enough that a not-small number of people will die from the drug if put on it
3) it MIGHT have a small protective effect in those patients that are not critically ill, but the risk of side effects makes that it will not be widely prescribed as a preventivite. As previously pointed out, the NNH and NNT numbers just are not very good.

Sorry if the science gets in the way of people's WANTS and WISHES.


There is a large enough dataset in this paper that what I expect to happen is that the authors will address the problem, with the reviewers, by pruning out those institutions who's procedures were poor on data collection, etc. and a smaller, more robust dataset will be published. With 96,000 starting points, 15,000 of them on HCQ, you can do a lot of pruning and still maintain your statistical significance. Unfortunately, the damage is now done and those people that cloud science with emotion now have something to "cling" to. It's the antivaxer problem all over again.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Nice thread about what we can do to try to figure out population susceptibility going forward...need to start testing some hypotheses to figure out what might be happening, if anything (the cross-reactive immunity testing seems most relevant to me, though even if it exists, I think the likelihood of being able to test accurately enough for it to be useful/reassuring info for people is low):
https://twitter.com/adamjkucharski/status/1268185168386428929?s=21

 

[dfwatt]

A retrospective cohort study (preprint and therefore not yet peer reviewed) found Vit D insufficiency/deficiency high in COVID 19 ICU patients. This doesn't establish causality, but it adds to the existing body of evidence that Vit D is a moderating variable in severe viral illnesses. My money is one the idea that Vit D at 40+ is moderating of severe illness. Won't prevent illness, but may buffer severity significantly.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Average years of life lost has been about 11 years ...

Probably quite a bit less if you adjust for co-morbidities. These people were not all at death's door, as the just-a-flu crowd likes to pretend, but quite a few of them had conditions which reduced their life expectancy vs. the averages.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Probably quite a bit less if you adjust for co-morbidities. These people were not all at death's door, as the just-a-flu crowd likes to pretend, but quite a few of them had conditions which reduced their life expectancy vs. the averages.

The 11 years number is corrected for co-morbidities. I agree that the real number is probably a little bit lower since quantifying health is imprecise.
COVID-19 – exploring the... | Wellcome Open Research

 

[N5329K]

Then, as is typical whenever information is posted that challenges the groupthink here, the personal attacks started, including questioning his intelligence repeatedly.

True. When I posted that asymptomatic transmission was happening back in March, it got zorched by some pretty knowledgeable folks here as "just not possible."
Well.
Robin

 

[Norbert]

It was?

Not that I would be aware of.

We are pointing out potential dangers, but personally I see that as a way to help prevent them from happening, not as a prediction that they will happen.

However, for example, at a point in time when I felt that official predictions were too much sweet talking the situation, I said the then-current trend would be toward 120K deaths. This was shown to be plain reality (we are now at 108K per worldometers, and obviously not at the end yet).

Generally speaking, we did not discuss the question of how bad it has to get for the market to dive again, with some exceptions perhaps. The market direction is always a result of many components. This is just one.

 

[Daniel in SD]

True. When I posted that asymptomatic transmission was happening back in March, it got zorched by some pretty knowledgeable folks here as "just not possible."
Well.
Robin

Are you sure that was this thread? My impression of the "groupthink" here, even back in March, is that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission is a major driver of the pandemic.
EDIT:
I'd like to say that I am 100% in favor of accountability on this thread and acknowledging and correcting my errors when they are pointed out (or when I find the errors myself).
Also, the search feature is great. If found a post from you in mid March (Coronavirus) mentioning asymptomatic transmission but I didn't find any responses to it at all.