Marc Bevand Profile picture
Sep 20, 2020 5 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Some studies are inconclusive:

Eg. people often incorrectly quote the abstract of thelancet.com/journals/eclin… but the authors write the results are in fact inconclusive. See my comment at

3/n
Some studies are flawed:

Eg. the single-author non-peer-reviewed preprint arxiv.org/pdf/2005.02090… uses the wrong mean infection-to-death time. Correcting for this error reveals that infections peaked in the UK exactly on lockdown day:

4/n
By far the biggest testament of the success of lockdowns and other NPIs is that they incidentally managed to keep flu activity at record low this season, in both the southern and northern hemisphere:

5/n

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More from @zorinaq

May 3, 2022
Alex Berenson argues in alexberenson.substack.com/p/one-covid-ch… that Sweden had the best Covid strategy

Let's point out numerous obvious flaws in his analysis, shall we?

1/n
Firstly, Berenson chooses to ignore Asian countries. Why? Because geography is "the most important factor in how hard Covid hits a country"

In other words: "countries who did better than Sweden don't count, because, well, I sAy So"

Such well-reasoned logic. Much wow 🤣

2/n
Secondly, he claims geography is the most important factor, but IGNORES ALL the countries geographically close to Sweden: Finland, Norway, Denmark (none of them are charted)

This self-inconsistency is 100% expected from The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

3/n
Read 9 tweets
Mar 8, 2022
I modeled excess deaths per capita by age group, for each US state, since the beginning of the pandemic.

I believe this is the first time an analysis of this type has been done BY AGE GROUP for each state. This removes the need to do "age-adjustment" to compare states.

1/n
Methodology, data, and source code are available on GitHub: github.com/mbevand/excess…

The raw numerical output, with excess deaths per age group are in this CSV file: github.com/mbevand/excess…

Charts follow:

2/n
Excess deaths per capita for ages 85+

3/n
Read 13 tweets
Mar 1, 2022
Mask usage correlates with lower deaths

Based on NYT's mask survey across United States counties, plot deaths/capita recorded during the survey & up to 30 days later, along with each county's mask wearing score

Result:
Linear regression (Y log-transformed) R²=0.144 in red:
There are hundreds of factors affecting the dependent variable (deaths). Ignoring ALL of these factors, looking at mask usage only, and still finding R²=0.144 is pretty cool/unexpected

Confounders abound!: people who wear masks often are likely doing more social-distancing. Etc.
Methodology behind the chart:

Two data sources:
- mask wearing survey github.com/nytimes/covid-…
- COVID deaths (and population) by US county as per JHU CSSE
Read 6 tweets
Feb 8, 2022
A little thread on the Great Disinformer @ianmSC

Why Real Science™ isn't done with MSPaint charts.

His charts seem to claim that nothing works. Locking down doesn't work, masking doesn't work, vaccination doesn't work, your printer doesn't wo—wait scratch that one

1/n
One iota of critical thinking is all you need to expose numerous errors in his charts:

Error #1 — Case ascertainment rate bias:

A country may detect 1 in 2 cases, while another 1 in 4. We say the case ascertainment rate is respectively 50%, and 25%.
This variance in case ascertainment rate alone is enough to put half of @ianmSC's charts where they belong: in the trash🗑️

Real Science™ looks at covid deaths—not cases—to compare the severity of the pandemic across different regions. This avoids case ascertainment rate bias.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 7, 2022
I compiled a list—as exhaustive as possible—of all peer-reviewed & published research articles that evaluate the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions, specifically lockdowns on COVID-19

➡️Papers finding NPIs effective outnumber, by 8 to 1, those finding the opposite
Criteria for inclusion in the list:

1-Be a RESEARCH ARTICLE (data, methods, results). Commentaries, opinion pieces, etc, do not qualify

2-Be PEER-REVIEWED & PUBLISHED among the 26,000 titles in Scopus

3-Be EXPLICIT. No secondhand interpretation of the data
Regarding criterion #3: the authors must explicitly state in the text whether their results suggest NPIs are effective or not

Their exact words have been peer-reviewed & published. Your interpretation of figures or data tables has not.
Read 61 tweets
Jan 24, 2022
Heads of government who have died of COVID-19

Confirmed:
1. Prime Minister of Eswatini, Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini

Suspected:
2. President of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza
3. President of Tanzania, John Magufuli
4. Prime Minister of Ivory Coast, Hamed Bakayoko
1. Prime Minister of Eswatini tested positive on 15 Nov 2020, was hospitalized 8 days later, and died on 13 Dec.

bnonews.com/index.php/2020…
2. President of Burundi died on 8 June 2020. The cause of death was given officially as "cardiac arrest" by the Burundian government, but is suspected to be COVID: economist.com/middle-east-an…

His wife was flown to Kenya and hospitalized for COVID a week before his death.
Read 5 tweets

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