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26 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Worth noting the truly spectacular achievement of the Australian state of Victoria, which went from 500 daily COVID-19 cases in mid-July to NO cases and NO deaths today

In the same time period, France went from 500 daily cases to 50,000 cases and 100s of deaths today
Well done Victorians! 👏👏👏👏
And, uh, not so well done France 😕
Obviously France and Victoria are not directly comparable, but I still think the numbers speak to the fantastic achievement of Victoria

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More from @GidMK

Spooky Health Nerd Profile picture
27 Oct
Monthly data from the Victorian Suicides Register shows that until the start of September 2020, there had been no increase in suicides in the state compared to previous years
coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/… Image
Of course, this does not preclude a large increase in September/October, but at least using the best current evidence there does not appear to be evidence to support the claim that policy has driven a direct increase in suicides
I have just found the more recent Coroners report showing that this trend persisted in September - again, it is possible that there was a large increase in Oct, but currently no evidence of an increase in suicide rates in Victoria in 2020 coronerscourt.vic.gov.au/sites/default/… Image
Read 6 tweets
Spooky Health Nerd Profile picture
27 Oct
I always think that abortion policy is the place where feelings trump facts most, because we know that

a) banning abortions DOESN'T reduce abortions
b) contraception DOES reduce abortions
c) abortion bans are very harmful

And yet people still advocate for bans
None of this is controversial in the slightest, and indeed is very well-demonstrated. The problem is that inducing an abortion isn't necessarily hard, it's inducing one SAFELY that is the problem
I always find this abbreviated list of abortion techniques from the WHO enlightening on the topic. These are things that women try in the absence of safe abortion provision

Examples include inserting knives into the uterus, drinking turpentine, and jumping off a roof Image
Read 6 tweets
Spooky Health Nerd Profile picture
23 Oct
So, this is doing the rounds, and an 8.5-point drop in IQ does seem terrifying post-COVID, but I think there are a few things about the study that are worth pointing out
You can find the study here. It's a fairly simple examination of a very large database of people doing psychometric tests online in Britain

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
The researchers recruited 84,000 people starting in December 2019, and mostly in the months of January and May 2020, to do a series of tests that measure cognitive ability (not IQ per se, but similar in nature)
Read 9 tweets
Spooky Health Nerd Profile picture
22 Oct
Worth noting that this represents 607,559 COVID-19 tests with 226 positives, giving a positive rate of 0.0372%

Even if EVERY TEST was a false positive, that gives a specificity of ~99.96%
But, because positive people are almost always retested here we can actually examine this question more robustly. Of the 226 positive results, one was later retested and found to be a false positive!
To calculate test specificity, we take TN/(TN+FP) = 607333/(607333+1) = 99.99984%

To put it another way, very roughly 1 false positive test per million tests done
Read 5 tweets
Spooky Health Nerd Profile picture
21 Oct
Interesting new preprint on #LongCovid. Some take-homes:

- ~14% of people
- can last months
- associated with +symptoms, previous respiratory disease, gender, age
- not associated with metabolic disease (mostly)
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
To me, this is the most interesting table. You can look through and see what is and isn't associated with PCR-positive Long COVID
Not unsurprising that people who experience worse symptoms in their initial COVID-19 infection are more likely to suffer from #LongCovid
Read 8 tweets
Spooky Health Nerd Profile picture
21 Oct
This article raises some interesting points. Have death rates from COVID-19 gone done since March?

npr.org/sections/healt…
Now, I think it's reasonable to assume that the proportion of people who die after being infected by COVID-19 will fall over time. It's probably true that being infected today is less deadly than earlier this year
That being said, I'm quite skeptical of the evidence presented. This story seems to claim that death rates have dropped ENORMOUSLY, while I would expect something more in the range of a relative 10-20% drop (say from 25% to 20%)
Read 13 tweets

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