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3 May, 5 tweets, 3 min read
It's now been 2 months since this paper on stay-at-home orders was published in @SciReports, so I thought I'd do a quick update
After we put together a fairly detailed critique, @lonnibesancon, @RaphaelWimmer, @FLAHAULT and I preprinted the work online here osf.io/63efj/

At about the same time, the journal added an editor's note saying that the conclusions are subject to criticism
In the two months since, the paper has hit an Altmetric score of 10,824. It's been in the news dozens of times, and has been read by 343,000 people

Pretty huge impact!
I think it's not unfair to say that this single paper has had quite a large impact on COVID-19 interventions worldwide, despite some fairly big issues (here's the conclusion of our letter)
The fact that a paper can change worldwide policy even while scientists are debating whether the conclusions are meaningful in any way is an amazing indication of how unprepared science in general was for a global pandemic

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More from @GidMK

Health Nerd Profile picture
3 May
This is one of the reasons that I usually stay away from offering explicit policy opinions. As a scientist, I can give you a pretty good estimate of the impact of COVID-19, but it's up to us as a society to decide what to do about that
We can say from an epidemiological viewpoint which path has which benefits and costs, but ultimately the decision of which is more beneficial is not scientific
Some people have consistently argued that freedom is the most important value

This is a valid ethical viewpoint! Epidemiologically, we can perhaps place a cost on that ideation, but whether this cost is justified is not a scientific decision
Read 5 tweets
Health Nerd Profile picture
27 Apr
This is one of the larger trials of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, povidone-iodine and zinc for prevention of COVID-19

At first, it appears positive, but there are some worrying issues

Some peer-review on twitter 1/n
2/n The study is here, and it's a cluster-randomized controlled trial, where people living in dorms of Singapore were given one of the 4 treatments or a vitamin C control during large COVID-19 outbreaks in the dorms ijidonline.com/article/S1201-…
3/n The results seem to show that people who take HCQ or P-I have fewer infections than those who only have vitamin C, with a really impressive risk reduction
Read 29 tweets
Health Nerd Profile picture
24 Apr
The weirdest thing about the whole herd immunity through natural infection argument is that it's never happened ever for any disease long-term so it was always a wild idea for COVID-19
Like, sure, pandemics died out - eventually most diseases became endemic and killed only a small number of people each year

But that's definitely what's been bandied about as herd immunity
Imagine if instead of "herd immunity" the message had been "recurring outbreaks with a slowly diminishing fatality rate until after months/years the number of yearly deaths would get low enough to not bother any more"
Read 6 tweets
Health Nerd Profile picture
22 Apr
There's a silly non-COVID-19 science headline I'M SO HAPPY GUYS
The study itself is interesting - sleep duration and risk of dementia, lots of follow-up, decent sized sample (although relatively few events) nature.com/articles/s4146…
But the headline is super misleading for so many reasons. My faves:

1. absolute risk is really small (~1 case per 1,000 person-years)
2. The authors acknowledge later in the article that they don't know if this is causal or not
Read 5 tweets
Health Nerd Profile picture
21 Apr
2021 will hopefully be the year that the armchair epidemiologists stop being wrong about infectious disease, excess mortality, etc, and move on to being wrong about something else

Maybe economics?
To clarify, because of course I need to (sigh) this is a joke about the twitter randoms who have deemed themselves experts not a critique of interdisciplinary work
I'm currently working on a paper with 3 economists, an immunologist, a demographer, and 2 statisticians on COVID-19. Non-epis have great and valuable insight!
Read 4 tweets
Health Nerd Profile picture
20 Apr
One interesting point is that this article gets several facts wrong. Whether that detracts from the commentary on science or not is I suppose up to the reader
This statement, for example, isn't really true. The U.S. has had school closures much less severe than (for example) South Korea, or a dozen other places. The reference only talks about Europe!
"Studies have repeatedly concluded" - links to a tweet, and two articles on teacher's unions. There are many studies that have concluded precisely the opposite
Read 5 tweets

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