Loretta Torrago Profile picture
Jul 8, 2021 8 tweets 4 min read Read on X
A truly laughable attempt by @TracyBethHoeg to pretend the divisions this Nature article points to aren't between her and every other expert quoted. 🧵
Hoeg is first quoted saying the rates in schools aren't higher than rates in the communities a point the article is quick to distinguish from what actually matters: whether transmission is occurring in schools.
In a familiar move, Hoeg goes on to pretend the 2 *confirmed* transmission cases reported in a soon-to-be-published study, represent all of the cases that occurred in the schools. The article again is quick to call her bluff by bringing up the importance of surveillence testing.
Hoeg's bold claim that "American media" is perpetuating the falsehood that "Covid is dangerous", is quickly shot down by an entire paragraph devoted to Covid's dangers including how many kids it has killed, the possibility of MIS-C and Long Covid.
When Hoeg brings up her WaPo Op-Ed co-authored with @MonicaGandhi9, the article is quick to introduce us to an epidemiologist at the University of Texas "who found the op-ed unconvincing" because it "doesn’t give the full story”.
Even when the article does find someone for Hoeg to agree with, unsurprisingly @MonicaGandhi9, the article is nonetheless quick to point out the possibility that they are both wrong given the evidence out of the UK.
It would be nice to think Hoeg recognizes this "very well done article" is well done because it doesn't just point out Hoeg's cherry-picking, but demonstrates how not to do that: by presenting both the limitations of the data Hoeg relies on as well as the full body of evidence.
The Nature article is here.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

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More from @Loretta_Torrago

Dec 30, 2023
.@ShiraDoronMD et al argue against universal masking in healthcare based on 2 claims:
1) transmission risk from HCWs w/out symptoms is low
2) vaccination is sufficienly protective against hospital-acquired infection.
These claims are both knowably, provably wrong.
@AnnalsofIM
🧵
Universal masking initially was adopted to target 2 potential risks. The first was transmission by asymptomatic but infectious persons. Killingley and colleagues (3) recently found minimal presymptomatic shedding after closely monitoring the trajectory of early infection among immune-naive human volunteers who were directly inoculated with SARS-CoV-2. Tayyar and colleagues (4) found that among asymptomatic hospitalized patients with positive results for SARS-CoV-2 on polymerase chain reaction testing, only 9% had potentially infectious virus. The second risk was mitigating poor health outco...
To establish their first claim, that the risk of transmission from HCWs without symptoms is low, the authors cite two sources: a) Killingley and b) Tayyar. Image
But a) Killingley does NOT show presymptomatic transmission risk is small. What Killingley actually shows is that, what the authors pass off as "minimal presymptomatic shedding," is consistent with **44% of transmission occuring presymptomatically**.
Read 8 tweets
Jul 28, 2023
In honor of @TracyBethHoeg’s new anti-mask propaganda/preprint, I compiled her Tweets on mask studies into a textbook I’m calling, “Confounders: A Matter of Convenience.” It’s an expose of Hoeg’s bad faith hypocrisy. 🧵 Hoeg Tweet announcing her new preprint.
Here’s the title page with a table of contents. CONFOUNDERS: A MATTER OF CONVENIENCE! A Pseudoscience Textbook by @TracyBethHoeg  CHAPTER I: HOW TO PROTEST PRO-MASK STUDIES USING CONFOUNDERS CHAPTER 2: HOW TO TURN A PRO-MASK STUDY INTO AN ANTI-MASK STUDY USING CONFOUNDERS
CHAPTER I:
HOW TO PROTEST PRO-MASK STUDIES
It's easy! Just complain the conclusion doesn’t hold because the data is confounded!
1. Eg. The Boston Mask Study Hoeg complaining the study "didn't consider confounders."
Read 14 tweets
Jul 20, 2023
The moral panic over school closures has left us with problems more intractable than they were pre-pandemic because now, to solve those problems, we first have to dispel lies. That school is a preventative to suicide is a reprehensible distortion, but it is not the only one. 🧵
There is the hysteria over how closures hurt minorities the most which obscures that, for minorities, school is the source of a problem: the school-to-prison pipeline. nytimes.com/2020/10/28/opi…
There is the hysteria that closures are causing obesity which obscures the problem of fatty, nutritionally bankrupt cafeteria food.
nypost.com/2019/11/16/the…
Read 7 tweets
May 27, 2023
Following a lead in @mehdirhasan's receipt-riddled expose, I looked into FL's deadly summers but in terms of excess deaths (Hasan uses C0VID deaths) in the 10 US states with the highest percentage of seniors. Tl;dr: DeSantis won't be using these stats on the campaign trail. 🧵
Using June to end September (to account for reporting delays), here is how FL's summer of 2020 ranks in terms of the 10 oldest states. 💀 Florida is 2nd highest behi...
Summer 2021. Florida has the highest exc...
Read 7 tweets
May 26, 2023
The long list of concerns downplayers coopted for the sake of opening schools and then quickly abandoned: learning loss that didn't carry over to C0VID related cognitive declines,
newsinfo.inquirer.net/1639956/omicro…
School absences that didn't carry over to absences due to illness. edweek.org/leadership/res…
Read 6 tweets
Apr 22, 2023
Shenoy et al urge abandoning universal masking on the grounds masks have little benefit & some harm. Yesterday I showed they're wrong about benefits. Today I show they're wrong about harms. Their strongest evidence favors masks. The rest has little relation to their ambitions. 🧵 Title: "Universal Mask...
In making the case that masks harm, the authors use three sources.  Lee E, Cormier K, Sharma A...
In Cormier et al patients & providers rate their masked & unmasked encounters in terms of communication difficulties. Using scales from 1-5 (patients) or from 1-6 (providers) participants are asked about eg. listening effort, ability to connect, understand & recall. Face mask use in healthcare...
Read 16 tweets

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