1/G

On other threads I criticized estimates of COVID-19's fatality. Here I'll highlight the best estimate I've seen:
0.9% from Neil Ferguson's team at Imperial College.

It's being falsely criticized again.
(h/t @thereal_truther)



tabletmag.com/sections/news/… Image
2/G

Ideologues often criticize the 0.9% estimate in order to downplay the severity of COVID-19 + evade policies they dislike. John Ioannidis resorted to that

judithcurry.com/2020/04/01/imp…
cato.org/blog/how-one-m…
freopp.org/jay-bhattachar…
reason.com/2021/06/22/the…

Image
3/G

In March 2020, Ferguson's team applied work from Verity et al. on China, to Great Britain (GB).

That led to an estimate of 0.9% of SARS-CoV-2-infected people dying of COVID-19; i.e. 0.9% infection fatality rate (IFR).



spiral.imperial.ac.uk:8443/bitstream/1004… Image
4/G

That result can be checked using antibody (seroprevalence) studies that estimate the number of infected people.

Great Britain IFR inferred from UK BioBank study is ~0.9%.

ukbiobank.ac.uk/media/x0nd5sul…
static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1…
coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths…

5/G

ONS uses the same antibody test as UK BioBank.
ONS' IFR is ~0.9% for England, + about the same or higher for the rest of GB.

(England has the largest impact on GB's IFR, since it makes up ~84% of GB's population)

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

thelancet.com/journals/lanpu… Image
6/G

The 1st round of REACT-2 gets about the same result as ONS.

(Later rounds of REACT-2 are less reliable because of the antibody test used in REACT-2; that problem doesn't apply to ONS + BioBank)




nature.com/articles/s4146… Image
7/G

The WHO + the USA's CDC relied on Levin et al.'s IFR estimate:

web.archive.org/web/2021032419…


Levin et al. estimated IFR by examining antibody studies mostly from Europe + the USA. Their results matched those of Ferguson's team:

link.springer.com/article/10.100… Image
8/G

So that's at least 4 different sources supporting Imperial College's IFR estimate.

I can't think of another estimate with that much support.

(ONS, BioBank, + REACT-2 are independent of each other. Levin et al. uses all 3, but in combination with dozens of other sources.)
9/G

On to Verity et al., which the ~0.9% was inferred from:
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
thelancet.com/journals/lanin…

Verity et al.'s reportedly assumed 12 - 13 deaths for their ~0.7% IFR estimate, when only 7 deaths happened so far.

That made contrarians mad:
judithcurry.com/2020/03/25/cov… Image
10/G

Turns out 14 people died:
science.sciencemag.org/content/368/64…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_…

And Verity et al.'s IFR of ~0.7% for China held up well:



So Imperial College's ~0.9% estimate for Great Britain was based on work that held up.
11/G

IFR estimates from Ferguson's team also did well in other European nations with decent death reporting:


So it'd be nice if ideologically-motivated deniers stopped fabricating / lying about the accuracy of the team's work. 🙄

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11… Image
12/G

And 0.15% IFR from the top of the thread fails because:

- it's a global IFR, while the Imperial College team's IFR was for Great Britain (IFR varies across populations)
- 0.15% is from a nonsensical paper by John Ioannidis


washingtonpost.com/opinions/witho… Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Atomsk's Sanakan

Atomsk's Sanakan Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @AtomsksSanakan

30 Jun
PaperOfTheDay

Contrarians should admit they were wrong about IFR in Sweden





"Multianalyte serology in home-sampled blood enables an unbiased assessment of the immune response against SARS-CoV-2"
nature.com/articles/s4146… Image
Context:

Public Health Agency of Sweden:
"Globally, it is estimated that 0.5–1 percent of those who are infected with COVID-19 die"
web.archive.org/web/2020103000…

"point estimate of the IFR [in Stockholm] is 0.6%, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.4–1.1%"
folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/…
Stockholm:
"peak [IFR] was 1.34% (95%CI[0.90, 1.89]), and would extrapolate to 0.61% (95%CI[0.41, 0.86] [...])"
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Sweden:
"IFR of 0.74 %"
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Sweden:
"estimated to 0.40; 0.40; 0.37; 0.28 and 0.27"
medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Read 4 tweets
28 Jun
1/U

Sometimes John Ioannidis just makes me laugh. 😀

In the slide below, Ioannidis discusses age-specific IFR (infection fatality rate), i.e. what proportion of SARS-CoV-2-infected people die of the disease COVID-19 at various ages.

22:23 - 23:18:
3/U

Ioannidis says his Axfors estimates mostly agree with O'Driscoll:

from 23:04


Yet experts noted for around year that his Axfors estimate is a low outlier.

So what's going on here?

publichealthontario.ca/-/media/docume…
Read 12 tweets
28 Jun
2/T

I + others argued with lab conspiracists for over a year. We saw their arguments + addressed them in detail; that's how we know they're nonsense.

I'll thus often link to threads that explain points in detail, so I don't have to rehash it all here.

3/T

You often need serology (i.e. antibody) studies to tell who's been infected, since many infections are missed otherwise.

Those studies show more prior infections with SARS-like viruses.




archive.is/hFqmR#selectio…
Read 21 tweets
27 Jun
1/F

SARS-CoV-2 lab conspiracy theorists are again misrepresenting scientific fields they have not bothered to try to understand.

This time they're applying their paranoid distortions to immunology. So that deserves a thread.



Image
2/F

When SARS-CoV-2 infects a person, the person's immune system increases production of proteins known as antibodies that bind to SARS-CoV-2.

So if SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the WIV by infecting staff, then that would show up in antibody tests.

Yet...
who.int/docs/default-s… Image
3/F

Conspiracists don't like that result, so they abuse an antibody study I discussed awhile back.

That study estimates ~4% of Wuhan had increased antibody levels; i.e. ~4% seroprevalence, so ~4% of people previously infected.



thelancet.com/journals/lanwp… Image
Read 11 tweets
8 Jun
1/Z

An annoying thing about many SARS-CoV-2 lab conspiracists is they don't learn a da*n thing, no matter how much it's explained to them.

Example from WSJ, Steven Quay, + Richard Muller:

"The science suggests a Wuhan lab leak"
wsj.com/articles/the-s…
archive.is/MfmLd Image
2/Z

Quay + Muller's 'codon usage' point is not new.

Ex: Bret Weinstein was making the point months ago, and Nicholas Wade did more recently.

It's a favorite talking among the conspiracy theorists.



https://t.co/jGJkNUBui0

thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-or… Image
Read 14 tweets
23 May
1/V

Quick thread on another reason why I don't trust Vinay Prasad.



I'm an immunologist, and one of the main reasons I first came to Twitter 4 years ago was to debunk vaccine denialism.



2/V

To be blunt, I know more about immunology and vaccines than Prasad. This is not his field of expertise.

The study he cites does not support the claim he made:
science.sciencemag.org/content/371/65…

And the John Snow memo is pretty good:



3/V

There were good reasons for thinking COVID-19 vaccines would induce a better immune response than infection.

I was not the first to point this out (h/t @drjenndowd).




Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(