August 7, 2020
Briefly
- Newshub has a story about so-called ‘lucky’ Lotto stores. I’ll recycle a previous response.
- The Productivity Commission are arguing that the extra week in lockdown was unnecessary and very expensive. Their analysis is wrong; it does not seem to consider whether and how much the extra week reduced the risk of needing a second lockdown, which was part of the reason for doing in. I’m not saying the extra week was the right decision — you can’t tell, without modelling the extra risk, which they didn’t do. It’s like saying insurance is not cost-effective because your house didn’t burn done. Insurance may or may not be cost-effective, but that isn’t how you tell.
- Ed Yong at the Atlantic, on why there’s so much we don’t know about COVID immune response: Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die
- The Human Gene Nomenclature Committee has changed the names of a bunch of genes. Not because they’re named after unpleasant historical figures, but because Excel keeps trying to turn them into dates: SEPT1, OCT4, MARCH1. Spreadsheets are useful (and Excel is the world’s most popular statistical software), but you do need to keep a sharp eye on them
- Newshub reports on an attempt to get Pharmac to pay for a drug that costs half a million dollars per patient per year. I’ll outsource the basic statistical comparison to Matt Nippert on Twitter — the total cost would be about a quarter of Pharmac’s budget (and I’ll just note that this is slightly more than it spends on cancer.)
- If you thought our Census had problems, look at the US. The American Statistical Association and the American Association for Public Opinion Research are among the groups who want the data collection extended rather than shortened.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
The very expensive drug for cystic fibrosis has just been approved by the NHS in England, so that 7000 people can now benefit they say.
What is not said is its highly unlikely to cost the NHS the equivalent of half a mill dollars per year per patient.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/2020/06/nhs-patients-among-first-in-europe-to-benefit-from-landmark-deal-for-cystic-fibrosis-treatment/
It seems to be like a house auction where the first asked is way way too high…. to later make it seem that say 1/10 the cost is still a bargain.
4 years ago