Health Nerd Profile picture
13 Oct, 6 tweets, 1 min read
Imagine if someone was to say "COVID-19 hasn't caused most businesses to close, they were all doing badly anyway"
"Lots of businesses close every year, how do we know that they didn't just close WITH COVID-19 rather than FROM it?"
"All this economic impact is overblown. My friend's cousin's third ex-wife lost her business, but it was in the red anyway"
"The median length of time that businesses stay open is 2 years, most of the businesses that have closed in 2020 did so after 2 years so have we really lost anything?"
"Only 5% of the businesses that closed were debt-free, therefore it's probably just debt that's causing all these COVID-19 economic problems, not the disease"

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More from @GidMK

14 Oct
John Ioannidis, of "Most Published Research Findings Are False" fame, has now had his paper on IFR published

Let's do one, final, twitter peer-review on the study 1/n Image
3/n I should say at the outset here - the only personal comment I would like to make about Professor Ioannidis is that he is a very smart man who I respect tremendously

I will, however, examine the paper, because I think that is what science is all about
Read 37 tweets
12 Oct
Have lockdowns been bad for the economy?

A new report from the International Monetary Fund has a very interesting answer to the question 1/n
2/n The report is here, and well worth reading. At the outset I should say that ALL OF THIS EVIDENCE IS UNCERTAIN

The IMF is great, and has tried very hard to be accurate, but it is important to take care when reading these findings imf.org/en/Publication…
3/n The basic summation is simple:

- lockdowns probably cause economic harm
- large outbreaks of COVID-19 also cause harm
- it is hard to disentangle this complexity
- there are almost certainly situations in which lockdowns are beneficial to the economy
Read 18 tweets
12 Oct
Recently, John Ioannidis, of "Most Published Research Findings Are False" fame, published a commentary piece on COVID-19 and global action

I thought it would be good to do a bit of peer-review on twitter 1/n
2/n You can find the paper here - it is a classic commentary piece, which means it is mostly the perspective of the author: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ec…
3/n Given the author's very strong public stance since early March, it is perhaps unsurprising that the main message of the piece appears to be that COVID-19 is not very bad but government actions are
Read 39 tweets
10 Oct
It's fascinating what turns out to work in terms of helping people if you ignore empty moralizations about what we should and shouldn't do

This is but one example
For example, there's good evidence that an effective treatment for heroin abuse disorder is prescription (safe) heroin

bmj.com/content/327/74…
Safe injecting spaces - while counter-intuitive because you're assisting people in taking drugs - are arguably the most effective way to reduce the harms of some illegal drugs

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Read 6 tweets
8 Oct
Apparently, there is a fly on Pence's head

I am not watching the debate
Every person in the U.S. simultaneously googles "Is fly on head a sign of COVID-19?"
Oh hey look
Read 4 tweets
7 Oct
Men* with deep voices more likely** to be unfaithful***, research**** claims

*Chinese university students
**p=0.018
***to score higher on a self-report tool rating attitudes towards infidelity (r² = 0.22)
****single correlational study, n=234

FIXED IT
Honestly, this is a hilarious example of somewhat meaningless research being touted far and wide in the media
Read 11 tweets

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