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Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
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15 Nov, 7 tweets, 3 min read
This study relied on a crude approximation because we only have data on deaths by age buckets and it used life expectancy conditional on age without taking into account comorbidities or race. I would be amazed if the actual figure were more than half of this estimate. Image
And yes, I know that he shared another study for the UK that claims to take into account comorbidities and found an even higher estimate, but have you actually checked this paper? The authors lack data about so many things that they have to make wild guesses all over the place.
Even if we had individual data on age, race, sex and comorbidities, I think it would be problematic to use this methodology, because if you ask me the fact that someone died of COVID-19 indicates that his life expectancy was lower than people with the same age, comorbities, etc.
About that study, just consider that the median age of people who died of COVID-19 in the UK was 83. If you believe those people would on average have gone on to live another 13 years for women and 11 years for men, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
The thing is that, if you go by life expectancy conditional on age, you *always* die before what you "expected". Look, I agree that old people's lives are not worthless and that we shouldn't treat them casually, but this stuff is basically propaganda.
Yes, this is a fair point based on @tutkersson's observation, but the results of their simulation still implies that the median YLL among people in their 70's who died of COVID-19 was well over 10 years and I don't believe that for a second.
Like, the life expectancy of a 75 years old man in the UK is 12 years, which seems to be about the same as the YLL for a victim of COVID-19 in the 70-79 age bracket according to that study. I'm just not buying that and neither should you 🤷‍♂️ ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

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More from @phl43

Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
18 Nov
Wow, I hadn't actually read the Nature paper that allegedly showed that lockdowns had saved more than 3 million lives in Europe last Spring, but now that I have I'm utterly shocked this worthless piece of garbage was published. nature.com/articles/s4158…
Also, something didn't make sense about the results and the only explanation I could think of implied that the conclusion people drew from that study was totally unwarranted, but it was impossible to tell from their description of the results whether my hypothesis was correct.
So I downloaded the code and ran the analysis myself so I could take a closer look at the results and, surprise, it confirmed that my hypothesis was right, which presumably is why they neglected to describe this particular result in the paper or the supplementary materials...
Read 4 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
17 Nov
Je suis contre le confinement, mais la baisse du nombre de morts en Suède est un artefact du délai d'enregistrement des morts. Compte tenu de l'évolution du nombre de cas, ça va inévitablement augmenter rapidement dans les jours qui viennent, il n'y a pas de magie. 1/n Image
D'ailleurs, quand on fait un simple ajustement pour tenir compte du délai dans l'enregistrement des morts, on voit très clairement qu'en réalité ça augmente rapidement. Encore une fois, je suis contre le confinement, mais il ne faut pas se raconter d'histoire. 2/n Image
De la même façon, le nombre de morts par million peut sembler faible, mais c'est le nombre par jour. En France, si on prend le nombre de morts cumulés sur l'année, ça va représenter au moins 10% de la mortalité normale à la fin de l'année. Ce n'est quand même pas rien. 3/n
Read 5 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
16 Nov
The curve shows the daily number of cases, the dashed green line shows the start of the curfew in Paris and 8 other cities, the dashed purple line the extension of that curfew to 54 departments and the orange dashed line the start of the lockdown. Image
It's pretty clear that incidence started to fall before the lockdown was implemented, so while it may have accelerated the process, it would most likely have happened without it. It's even clearer when you look at what happened in Paris. The curfew may have played a role though. Image
The curfew made it illegal to leave your home between 9pm and 6am, but if it was responsible for the fall in incidence (which in my opinion it likely was at least to some extent), it's probably because bars and restaurants were closed, not because people couldn't go out per se.
Read 4 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
15 Nov
I haven't even read that paper, I just had a quick look at the tables, but I don't buy it for a second. They found that 14% of samples collected in September on participants to a lung cancer screening trial had antibodies for SARS-CoV-2. Of course, it's not a random sample, 1/n
but that's still huge. There has been many studies based on that kind of samples since the pandemic started and seroprevalence was usually lower even in places where hospitals were totally overwhelmed. So we'd have to believe that, by September of last year, 14% of people in 2/n
such a sample had already been infected by SARS-CoV-2 in Italy but no one noticed anything. Not only hospitals weren't full of people with pneumonia of unknown etiology, but the Italian health authorities didn't detect any clusters of pneumonia whose cause they couldn't 3/n
Read 9 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
15 Nov
Here are some true claims:
1) The bet on which Sweden originally sold its strategy, that it would reach herd immunity quickly, has failed.
2) It doesn't follow that it was the wrong strategy.
3) The predictions of people who oppose Sweden's strategy were also completely wrong.
It's interesting how everyone keeps talking about 1, but systematically forgets about 3. According to the predictions opponents of Sweden's strategy made last Spring, there should have been more than 65,000 deaths by now, but this has been memory holed.
The truth is that, if you had told them back in April that there would only be 6,000 deaths in Sweden right now, they would never have called that a "failure", because they had predicted something far worse. It was only labeled a "failure" and usually far worse later 🤷‍♂️
Read 6 tweets
Philippe Lemoine Profile picture
14 Nov
Whatever explains the differences between Sweden and the other Nordic countries during the past few weeks, I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't have much to do with policy.
Some of you point out that mobility data don't necessarily capture everything that's affected by policy, which is fair enough, but the reality is that policy has been very similar across Nordic countries for a while and if anything has even been more stringent in Sweden recently.
If you want to claim that it's policy, you should be able to pinpoint some specific things other Nordic countries are doing that Sweden isn't and which could plausibly explain the difference, but I don't think you can.
Read 6 tweets

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