
Introduction to Epidemiology - wglass
https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section11.html
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agumonkey
I also got emails from MOOC Platforms notifying about epidemiology classes

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DrNuke
One single concept is needed to the general public to try and understand why
all the fuss from governments worldwide: the Basic Reproduction Number must be
lowered to < 1 to contain the disease and the Covid-19 Number is estimated at
about 2.5 right now, which poses a risk because no vaccine still exists and
health services may collapse under the strain of increasing people requesting
intensive care. More about the Number here:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number)

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ethbro
I believe the point of this submission, and it's a good one, is that a little
bit of knowledge does not make one an epidemiologist.

I see folks who couldn't define PCR tossing around R0 with the confidence of
someone who's been working in wet labs their entire career.

Most people are ignorant, true. But that doesn't mean a little knowledge is
all it takes to be an expert.

~~~
reureu
100% agree. I’m trained as an epidemiologist, and this coronavirus talk gets
so frustrating. The problem doesn’t just boil down to R0 and CFR, but also
considerations like how reliable is the data you’re receiving.

In grad school, our professors often commented that the unfortunate aspect of
public health is that everyone views themselves as an expert (since we are all
alive and have been sick at some point). This leads to a lot of overconfidence
and incorrect statements/beliefs propagating.

I’m glad folks are interested in this - I just wish that interest would
translate to academic pursuit and not armchair experts that have read a few
blog posts.

~~~
ptx
Part of it might be that when the experts try to lay it out for us laypeople,
their explanations are sometimes simplified to a point where they clearly make
no sense, which creates concern. When an expert says that "it is the case that
A because of B" but we already know that B is false or impossible, what are we
supposed to believe?

For example, when China changed the definition of a confirmed case, the new
definition caused a big spike in the numbers. Later they changed back to the
old definition (lower numbers) and the new number of old-definition cases was
still higher than the new-definition peak, but with a lower rate of growth.
The WHO called this an "encouraging trend", which was very confusing. The
trend would look encouraging if you didn't know about the change in
definition, but with the change in definition in mind it didn't look
encouraging at all. Were they operating on a level beyond that where it _does_
look encouraging again?

It would put many people's minds at rest, I think, if the experts would
explain their reasoning better. "It looks encouraging. Now, I'm not talking
about the superficial encouraging look of this graph here, which is just an
illusion because ..., but if you look _deeper still_ it surprisingly turns out
to be encouraging nevertheless because ...".

~~~
FooHentai
That's predicated on things actually looking encouraging if you scratch the
layers deeper than what the graph is indicating.

There are few actually-qualified folks talking openly about this kind of stuff
(See
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF9IOB2TExg3QIBupFtBDxg))
which is as close as I've been able to find to an unbiased, qualified
interpreter for the information coming out.

The overall impression I get is 'this thing is pretty bad, there are prudent
measures that can and should be taken to limit spread and slow rates of
infection to prevent services becoming overwhelmed. So far measures have been
inadequate leaving us facing into a worse situation than could have been'.

