December 27, 2021

Briefly

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  • Arithmetic fail by Bloomberg Australia: 126 cases over two days is not ‘more than double’ 62 cases in one day.

    They’ve since edited to “N.Z. Adds 126 Cases in 2 Days…New Zealand’s daily toll of new local infections has risen from the 62 reported on Dec. 24.”, which is at least arithmetically correct, since 2×62 is 124, and 126 is larger than 124.  Interestingly, the story now says “(Updates with state case numbers in third paragraph)” but doesn’t mention the correction to the maths

  • The Washington Post reports on using convalescent plasma — antibodies from people who’ve recovered — to treat Covid. A new trial has positive results, but the story seriously underplays the previous trials with negative results. The story emphasizes that we’re short of treatments for Omicron so a new treatment would be more valuable, but that’s only true if it works, which is what’s in doubt
  • Cruise ships are getting Covid outbreaks. Ok, yes, I’m shocked too.  More seriously, the problem is numbers. There were 3500 people on the ship. If each one is 99.95% sure to be Covid-free, that still comes to more than one expected case. At the sort of Covid prevalences the US has now, symptom screens and pre-departure tests aren’t good enough to get a high probability of a safe cruise.
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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 »

Comments

  • avatar
    Peter Davis

    Thanks Thomas. And while supposedly on holiday. It is absolutely shocking the amount of half-pie misleading information that the media is happy with, particularly if it provides a catchy headline. The next issue that it would be nice to tackle is the way the Herald is playing up gun violence. I find it hard to believe that crime and gun violence has risen after the new legislation, particularly as the long-term in most developed countries is downwards, particularly OZ.

    3 years ago