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Tim Skellett Profile picture
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24 Dec, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Today in really thorny #ethics, in the Time of Omicron
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6/n Nope, I'ave no easy answers for y'all. In such triage situations, I know what I would do; but the medical staff on the ground are the ones who will be forced into choices; demanding that they violate their own consciences is bad. Welcome to the Time Of All Choices Are Bad

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Tim Skellett Profile picture
24 Dec
1/n And now, the kicker. Want to reduce polio death rates by up to 90% WITH THIS EASY TRICK?
Just make sure your children drink water contaminated with sewage from the minute they're born. Eventually, polio will become endemic again, everyone exposed.

2/n This thread follows on from my old thread, linked below. And it's true; if children drink water contaminated with sewage, in a place where polio exists, death rates will fall by up to 90%, because they'll all have polio before they're 5 years of age

3/n That must appeal to all antivaxxers out there, & those who worship the economy to the point of refusing taxes for new sewage systems.
Just a small drawback: typhoid, typhus, cholera, shigella, amoebiasis, E. coli O157:H7 will all kill FAR more children
Read 11 tweets
Tim Skellett Profile picture
24 Dec
1/n In London, the Great Stink happened. The entire sewer system, such as it was, emptied directly without treatment into the open sewer that was the river Thames. In 1858, for 2 months, the odor became so unbearable that everyone who could remotely afford it fled central London.
2/n Just before the Great Stink, cholera — then a very *new* disease for 99% of the world — also happened in 1854 in London. And so did John Snow (as in the famous John Snow Memorandum johnsnowmemo.com/john-snow-memo…), who just removed a pump handle, & thereby slashed cholera right down.
3/n *Amazingly*, sense happened. Everyone said, we must build better sewers, maybe even better drinking water. And Joseph Bazalgette happened, & got the job of building a new sewer system. Astonishingly, he said "Bugger small limits", & built a system for >10x the then population
Read 11 tweets
Tim Skellett Profile picture
24 Dec
New thread, continuing on from old thread. Next:
just how dangerous IS #polio? And I'm going to give y'all two separate, different answers. First off, we need the difference between CFR & IFR. Because especially with polio, people confuse these.

2/n ➡️ CFR: Case Fatality Ratio.
Out of all the people you document with an infection by a particular bug, how many of them die, the %.

I.e., CFR only measures the percentage of those who die among the infections you *noticed & documented*.
3/n ➡️ IFR: Infection Fatality Ratio
Out of ALL the people who get infected by that particular bug, including ALL the ones you didn't notice or document, what percentage of them cark it?
Read 9 tweets
Tim Skellett Profile picture
24 Dec
Apparently @umairh, who's a rather nasty nutcase, wrote the below snippet, in a blog post (eand.co/the-lesson-of-…) that he's now deleted, after virologists laughed at him
2/n Not @umairh's first time of idiocy.
With thanks to @wanderer_jasnah.

Read 4 tweets
Tim Skellett Profile picture
23 Dec
*sigh*
you can have either:
a/ Toby Young really doesn't understand statistics and causality, Example no.# 958,689,
or
b/ Toby Young actively peddles misinformation.
Whichever you prefer. But you must pick one.
oh, I see. At this time, 175 replies under that tweet of Toby Young's, every single reply (not kidding) telling him he's completely misread or wilfully dishonestly misrepresented the stats. He hasn't taken any notice, of course.
Actual report is written by Will Jones "Dr Will Jones is a writer currently focused on countering misinformation around the COVID-19 crisis. He has a PhD in political philosophy & a BSc in mathematics, ... an MA in ethics .. a diploma in theology."
At least 3 degrees wasted.
Read 5 tweets
Tim Skellett Profile picture
23 Dec
1/ New thread, from the old thread (below). What do you think the average denialist or antivaxxer would have made of polio today, if it came in a 'new' epidemic form (like it did from @ 1890)? The excuses to do absolutely nothing would come thick & fast.
2/ Taxes for a big global eradication? You know as well as I do what the usual denialists & antivaxxers would say.
"But it's always been around! It's everywhere! It's *endemic*!"
And you know what? They would have been right, even though wrong as excuse
3/ Universal vaccinations? Every denialist would scream, "But #polio only kills very few!"
And that was absolutely right, especially before 1920. Polio killed very very few. It crippled many more, but still "only a few".
Do you think the denialists really care about children?
Read 9 tweets

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