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16 Dec, 15 tweets, 7 min read
I think that this article by @PeteJamison looks at professor John Ioannidis and his statements during the pandemic, but leaves a few of them out

So I thought I'd just tweet out some things said in papers that prof Ioannidis has written this year 1/n
2/n Note: these are all from published or preprinted research, and I'm directly screenshotting so you can read the words for yourself
3/n Back in May, from the original preprint of the IFR paper
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
"the worldwide IFR of COVID-19...may be in the same ballpark as...influenza (0.1%, 0.2% in a bad year)"

This was a mistake (the IFR of flu is not 0.1-0.2%) Image
4/n From the same paper, the idea that COVID-19 may have infected 200 million people by May 12th, and the updated versions with the exact same claim (although the date changes) ImageImageImage
5/n Also from the same paper, the idea that the herd immunity threshold is probably far lower than traditional models, a conjecture that has since been proven false Image
6/n From this published paper onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ec…

The myth that t-cell cross-reactivity meant that herd immunity could be much lower than estimations (this was always wrong) Image
7/n This delightful insult of me and my co-author in the same published paper Image
8/n From the 7th of October "about 10% of the global population is probably already infected", so ~750 million Image
9/n Still from the same paper, the idea that the pandemic is largely over in some places in the world (although these are not identified) Image
10/n Some amazing statements in this preprint:
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Firstly, in these locations (Europe/US), that "it is likely...that the peak daily deaths have already been reached" ImageImage
11/n From the same paper "the risk of death [from COVID-19] is in the same level roughly as dying from a car accident during daily commute" ImageImage
12/n From this paper: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Something of a prescient statement Image
13/n From this paper: jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

The idea that the high death rate in Italy earlier this year was because of a low death rate in 2019 Image
14/n Back to the IFR preprint for this great statement about COVID-19 vs seasonal influenza that was removed from the published version: Image
15/n This is hardly an exhaustive list, but I do think it's noteworthy that various myths that have plagued public communication during COVID-19 - that it's just a flu, that we're all already immune etc - appear in published work by prof Ioannidis

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More from @GidMK

17 Dec
The authors of the Great Barrington nonsense have produced a website called "collateral global", claiming to document the collateral effects of COVID-19 lockdowns

I thought I'd have a look at the scholarship on display 1/n ImageImage
2/n First up - suicide. I have actually looked into this subject a fair bit, and as someone with mental health issues I take a fairly personal interest in the statistics

What does this global repository say? Image
3/n There are currently 4 studies listed. One found no change in suicide rates, one is an opinion piece by a psychiatrist, and the other two are cross-sectional studies of suicidal ideation Image
Read 15 tweets
17 Dec
This is a massive step by Twitter. If implemented across the board, it could largely shut down many denialist accounts Image
Some generic responses for all the people replying:

- Twitter is a private company. They do not owe you the right to their platform to spread misinformation
- This is preventing lies about one, specific thing, you can still lie about other things
- if this makes you want to leave Twitter, it makes no sense to reply to this tweet - deleting your account is a much more logical step
Read 5 tweets
15 Dec
*distant screams of statisticians*
*more screaming, definite pain*
*screaming intensifies*
Read 7 tweets
14 Dec
Some thoughts on scientific retractions. I think we can fairly say that there are far fewer than we'd expect if science was working well
There have been in the range of 100,000 scientific papers published on COVID-19 this year. PubMed shows 78,000, and if we include journals not indexed by that resource I'd imagine we'd break 100k easily
Now, let's think about this scientifically. What's the serious error/fraud rate for published research? The rate at which a retraction-worthy paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal
Read 13 tweets
14 Dec
So, I have had a proper read of this document, and I thought it might be worthwhile to actually go through and carefully analyze the document

Let's do some peer-review on twitter 1/n
2/n The document is a brief essay by the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which I've screenshotted here for later reference, because it comes up in the essay:
3/n The essay discusses what the authors call "focused protection", so I think it's worth noting at the outset that the GBD explicitly argues against closures/restrictions of any kind, so that we can build up herd immunity
Read 28 tweets
14 Dec
Would be interesting to see the child's perspective here, because of nothing else there are many signs that the author is not a very reliable narrator
For example, the author says they are totally accepting but look at the language here

Both a bit offensive and some definite red flags
The author claims to want to support their child in making the right decision for themselves, but given that the child apparently identifies as a trans boy, but they've consistently identified them as a cis girl, it seems clear what decision the author considers the best choice
Read 4 tweets

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