Tom Whipple Profile picture
Feb 3, 2022 11 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I'm going through this paper by Johns Hopkins economists, that assesses the efficacy of lockdown in the US and Europe - and concludes it was essentially useless.

I'd love thoughts on something I've found, which may well be my misinterpretation 1/x sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022…
The study is a meta-analysis, combining other previous between-country comparisons. To produce the combined estimate, they take 18,000 studies, exclude all but a handful and then pool their findings. Image
Looking at the weighting, it actually seems to be based almost entirely on one study. So rather than being a meta-analysis it is really a recapitulation of that study, by Chisadza et al Image
The other odd thing is that study itself comes to a very different conclusion about the efficacy of lockdown.

mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/6… Image
The JH study does mention they have a difference of opinion. But, it does seem odd - if indeed this study is the sole basis for their study - that they differ so widely. Image
It also struck me as strange to exclude the other data from other regions that is in the chisadza paper. If your meta analysis includes other papers, then obviously you have to take the relevant bit of each. But if the meta analysis is just a reanalysis, why lose info?
(unless I've misunderstood in particular what the weighting means which - again - I may well have. This thread is me thinking aloud, hoping for answers!)
I spoke to the author of the paper on whose research this entire meta-analysis was based. She said: "They already had their hypothesis. They think that lockdown had no effect on mortality, and that’s what they set out to show in their paper."
A couple of studies from high impact journals that somehow didn’t make the cut, when the authors decided of 18,000 papers effectively just one met their exacting standards:
From Nature Human Behaviour

"The social distancing and movement-restriction measures discussed above can therefore be seen as the ‘nuclear option’ of NPIs: highly effective but causing substantial collateral damage"

nature.com/articles/s4156…
From Science

Limiting gatherings to fewer than 10 people, closing high-exposure businesses, and closing schools and universities were each more effective than stay-at-home orders, which were of modest effect in slowing transmission.

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

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More from @whippletom

Jul 23
I am now going to begin a periodic thread of castles on rightmove I would like to buy that I consider underpriced. I reserve the right to include non-castles if they, say, have their own chapel with frescoes, or several suits of armour. 1/
11th Century "farmhouse" with "small church"

£900k

rightmove.co.uk/properties/147…
Image
Paduan castle. Benefits from access to golf courses, and reasonable views.

£830k
rightmove.co.uk/properties/145…
Image
Read 17 tweets
Jun 27
This is the story of one of the greatest intelligence coups in history. It begins in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Oslo, one wintry night in 1939.

A middle aged man went to reception and asked, could he borrow a typewriter? 🧵

amazon.co.uk/Battle-Beams-s…
Image
The man was Hans Ferdinand Mayer, a German businessman with the sort of boringly-corporate job that rarely invited further questions. He had arranged his work trip here, in the months before the invasion of Norway, especially.

He put on gloves, went upstairs, and began to type. Image
It seems unlikely that any of those in the lobby that night noticed him. Less likely still that they realised they had witnessed perhaps the most significant act of treachery of the war.

Mayer was head of the Siemens research laboratory, and he hated the Nazis. Image
Read 24 tweets
Jun 22
On the longest night of the year, I'm thinking of a mad Dane called Thomas Sneum, 83 years ago, 1,000ft up above the North Sea, climbing out onto the wing of his antique biplane.

In a war notable for daring escapes, his strikes me as among the most daring - and consequential 1/ Image
Sneum was a Danish air force pilot. And he was not a sensible man.

When war broke out, he ran to his plane and was furious to find Denmark had surrendered. His plane, a biplane, had already been disabled.

This saved his life - it was no match for an Me109. But he was cross Image
His first scheme was to kill Himmler with a longbow. He spent days practicing shooting birds out of the sky in preparation for a visit by the SS chief.

But the visit was cancelled. Image
Read 19 tweets
Jun 6
80 years ago, a great armada left Britain for France. In the sky, swarms of planes took off in the gloaming, bound for the Reich.

Both were the result of months of planning, carrying technology years in development.

And they're not what you are thinking of. 1/x Image
The boats weren't going to Normandy. The planes were not dropping paratroopers behind the beaches. In fact, they were dropping scarecrows.

Churchill famously said "In wartime, truth should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies"

This was the final bodyguard. Image
Over the preceding months, 1,668 sorties had been launched against coastal radar. The cost had been eye-watering, and the bravery humbling. On one occasion, a doomed plane rammed the radar: Image
Read 12 tweets
May 7
38 years ago a woman in Coventry sent a letter to some scientists. That letter went on to be the most important in Alzheimer's research. Last year, I met Carol Jennings, who wrote it. 1/

thetimes.co.uk/article/e78c47…
Image
Carol's letter was prompted by her dad. He had got Alzheimer's, far too early. So had some of his siblings. So, in fact, had a lot of people in her family. She was told Alzheimer's wasn't genetic; she didn't believe it. "Please contact me, if you think we should be of help.”
The scientists, at Imperial, did contact her. “Really big families are helpful,” Alison Goate, who was part of that team, told me. “It was pretty clear, even from the nuclear family, there was something going on.”

They analysed genetic samples. This was laborious Image
Read 17 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
October 25, 2020, from Vallance diary: "PM meeting - begins to argue for letting it rip. Saying yes there will be more casualties but so be it - 'they have had a good innings'" Image
It's important to note, says Vallance, "the next day he might have asked for no deaths at all"
Indeed, a bit later, PM in a different mood.

"Says, 'We need local lockdowns fast' 'Foot to the throttle' 'accelerate' He is SO inconsistent" Image
Read 6 tweets

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