Coronavirus Chat Zone

NautArch

00:44

@lila Just because you are a doctor, it doesn't mean you are knowledgeable about a specific area of medicine. THis is a cardiologist, not someone who is an expert in infectious disease. Yes, they're a medical professional, but they don't have the specialty expertise that is truly important here. It is those doctors we should be looking at for information, not just 'any doctor.'

lila

@NautArch Could you please point out specific points where you noticed that he is missing essential knowledge or expertise in the context, which would make him wrong or making some fallacy in reasoning? (sorry for multiple pings, I had to correct errors)

@NautArch Does he, in your opinion, touch such highly specific and specialized areas of expertise that would require professional knowledge and experience stemming exclusively from being an epidemiologist (I am not sure if my question is clear, sorry but I am not English native, please tell me if this question needs clarification).

lila

01:35

@NautArch I am asking because I think such an argument that "he is a cardiologist, not an epidemiologist" is fallacious. Per Wikipedia: "It is [...] a fallacious ad hominem argument to argue that a person presenting statements lacks authority and thus their arguments do not need to be considered". A given argument is either valid or not, regardless of whether it was said by a specialized epidemiologist or not. What is more, if according to your perception, this particular doctor is not ...

@NautArch ...competent enough in epidemiology and lacking essential knowledge, it surely should be easy for you to point out all those fallacies he should be committing as a result of the supposed lack of knowledge, shouldn't it? Any highly-enough specialized area of expertise takes a lifetime to master. There are almost no people who simultaneously posses deep knowledge and expertise in multiple domains, because there ...

@NautArch ...simply is not enough time in a human lifespan to master them all. However, there is no need to master all these areas just by oneself because one is not alone as an expert in the world and one has access to the collective knowledge of the whole community of differently-specialized experts. Per video description: "He is an internationally recognized authority on the evaluation of medical evidence in ...

@NautArch ... contemporary issues in medicine [...] [and] brings his experience into clinical focus for his patients on a daily basis." - for me, that sounds like someone who definitely knows use data and knowledge acquired by specialists whose area of expertise do not overlap with his own doesn't he?

And sorry for multiple pings again, but breaking my message into multiple smaller messages that are within the character number limit broke the formatting.

jkerian

02:03

Keep in mind the article is basically argument from authority.... and the article isn't actually quoting, just summarizing.
There are different authorities saying different things... you can evaluate them for expertise, but it really makes more sense to pick out his specific claims.

There are some points where he's basically correct. There's no particularly good reason to rush to vaccinate people who have recovered from infection. Arguments to the contrary have all been extremely far-fetched counterfactuals. (even from people who are otherwise legitimate health authorities)

But his specific claim is"4,000 vaccine-related deaths and over 10,000 hospitalizations".
For the sake of argument, let's simply grant that. Those are national (or international?) numbers... whereas Dallas county itself has had over 4000 deaths from covid.

You can quibble and point out that this merely means "deaths with covid", which is true in many cases... but the same is true of post-vaccine deaths and hospitalizations.

lila

@NautArch I am extremely interesting in seeing any source for these numbers. Risk-benefit assessment is incredibly complicated subject in the context of vaccination and your message seems to have single-handedly resolved the whole issue surrounding vaccination for this particular virus. Where do these percentages come from? According to your claimed policy of "removing misinformation", these numbers should be either backed up by reliable sources (for which you have been ...

@NautArch ...been asked for two times by two different people), or removed. Not holding up to your own standard, up to which you are holding other people, damages your credibility and sends out an extremely bad message.

@jkerian Thanks for response; just to clear my confusion, are you responding to the link rumble.com/… (I am asking because it is not an article but a video)?

jkerian

02:19

Ahh, so it is... I run noscript on everything by default, so the video player was suppressed

lila

@jkerian oh okay, I understand, thanks for clarification

jkerian

Regardless, I found a few transcript snippets. And although some things he says are quite correct, the presentation of "4,000 deaths" as a knock against the vaccine, even if true, doesn't really add up

lila

In order to avoid any potential further confusion, I modified my message to include explicit information that this is a video material, thanks again.

lila

02:47

@jkerian 4000 vaccine-related deaths is the claim about national data (just in USA). Okay let's grant that these numbers are right and also that Dallas had over 4000 deaths from covid. I think I understand what you are saying in your argument; however, I think the problem is that we are now comparing two different sets of people and these sets do not exactly overlap (some people who died from vaccine-related effects already had covid, and some people who died from covid were vaccinated).

@jkerian Let's consider an extreme hypothetical example: in a given community of people, 10000 died from disease X and 1000 died from vaccine against disease X. If I understand your argument correctly, then in such a case this argument would advocate for getting vaccinated against the disease. However, this argument would be omitting the important detail about the efficiency of the vaccine there. And also, chance of ...

@jkerian ...getting infected with covid for a given individual is taken into account there (and it is not 100%), and the amount of people vaccinated is also not known there (again, it is not 100%). Please tell me whether I correctly understand your argument. I am going to bed now because it is late, good night and see you tomorrow.

jkerian

05:42

@lila Sure, but comparing the populations just makes the pro-vaccine side much stronger. The US is sitting at currently 150 million full_vaccination cases. Dallas county was sitting at a few hundred thousand total covid cases.

LаngLаngС

09:11

BMJ Best Practice: How to calculate risk, Rapid Response: Covid-19 vaccine candidate is unimpressive: NNTV is around 256, Moderna vaccine is nearly 95% effective, but NNTV = 176 to 1370

Relative risk rather than absolute risk reduction should be preferred to sensitise the public to preventive actions, Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—let’s be cautious and first see the full data

The big problems here are numerous. The chance of getting in contact with the virus is moderate, the risk from the virus of getting the disease in bad form is highly age stratified. The chance of getting into contact with the vaccine is (still) a choice, and advocated by many.

But that means that from an ethics view: contact with virus and falling ill are coming from nature (as in circulation, nothing on lab origin or not) & fate, things you may try to prevent (with various options available of differing efficacies, ranging from good to bad, with quite a bit of soandso/don't-know in between).

But every single adverse event after vaccination that turns out to be causally linked is iatrogenic harm. The hippocratic oath shold come to mind: first, do no harm.

The benefit/risk calculation therefore isn't finished with comparing absolute numbers of deaths.

It isn't even finished when also using cases reported and doses administered to both sides.

Looking at the age distribution of victims turns the result around for young people without known risk factors: against any covid vaccination at the current time. It is simply really mad ethics to expect that young people go get an AstraZenica shot when the chance for them dying from the vaccine is greater than from the disease.

> "Since there are few people who die from COVID-19 in Norway, the risk of dying after vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine would be higher than the risk of dying from the disease, particularly for younger people,"

From: Norwegian Institute of Public Health's recommendation about AstraZeneca vaccine

The above calculation isn't fixed in stone. Those are subject to change.

NautArch

11:57

The purpose of this room was to create a space for RPG.SE users to talk about their fears and problems we were experiencing during the start of the pandemic. This is not a place to spread misinformation or discuss conspiracy theories.

5

If you'd like to do that, please do it elsewhere.

4

This is also not up for discussion or debate.

4

LаngLаngС

13:40

@NautArch What exactly would the 'misinformation' you claim to have seen here be then? Directly: Given that this message appears below what I posted, is that directed at my latest messages?

NautArch

room mode changed to Gallery: anyone may enter, but only approved users can talk

lila

No, the real purpose of this room, according
to your actions visible for all of us to see, was to create an echo chamber. It does not look like you are self-aware about your own behavior. After providing **false data** and presenting it as true in your message here: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/57699980#57699980, you have been repeatedly asked to provide source or remove it, according to your own policy, as misinformation. Look, I know these numbers are completely bogus and you are not going to provide any sources, because no source claims those numbers. It is obviously…

NautArch

Please do not abuse your mod powers to give yourself access.

Someone_Evil

14:24

Ok, let me try to cover a few points. Firstly, moderators have access to all gallery rooms, just as a function of site mechanics.

Second, conversation here seems to have rather broken down on some level. I'll trust both sides to take a small step away and reassess how a lot of this as been conducted.

As for the specific message by @NautArch, I would have thought it pretty obvious that those are assumed/hypothetical (arguably Fermi approximations), but agree that explicitly noting that would be good (and would be willing to do that fix if desired). Assumptions are dangerous.

Transcript for

♦ Coronavirus Chat Zone