@churchface The idea that lockdowns did more damage is bonkers, and based on no empirical evidence, especially given how uneven “lockdowns” were. In many cases they were, maximum, a couple months. By like May/June 2020 it seemed like most of the US was back to normal.
Children can get long covid, can get myocarditis from covid, can develop type 1 diabetes after covid, and can spread covid to newborn babies and grandparents with cancer.
How the heck is covid not a danger to children and their communities?
I understand that there were a lot of varied ramifications from lockdowns, and the pandemic has kind of traumatized everyone on some level, but it never made any sense to assume kids were unaffected by covid. Kids spread germs as a default.
@011235813 My understanding is that economists have calculated the years of life lost from the loss of public education and that was higher than the years of life gained from lockdowns.
@churchface But they’re not contrasting that with years of life lost via long term health conditions developed as a result of covid, or from family members dying or having lifelong health complication from covid infections. Like, what do you want to bet the kid with one dead parent and the other with long covid is going to have worse outcomes than being a year behind?
It’s one angle to look at it, but it’s not the whole truth or an absolute truth by any means, and her way of viewing things is highly individualistic and self-centred.
@churchface As a child dev Phd / professor, I personally like Emily Oster a lot (and she’s friends with many of my friends / dev PhD colleagues). Mostly she actually doesn’t offer advice - she offers numbers and relative risks and says “make your own decisions based on your personal comfort with these risks”. I haven’t seen her horribly misconstrue any of the data she’s analyzed, and she just recently talked about how her books are constantly updated to reflect current science.
@churchface You’re taking your life (at least, your Reddit karma) into your own hands by posting about Emily Oster here! So many on here hate her. I don’t get it—I don’t take anyone’s advice verbatim, and I treat her suggestions as just that and then supplement with my own research. I think she’s imperfect, but I appreciate what she does for motherhood and making data more accessible.
@thiago Haha I knew I’d definitely aggravate people!
The point of this post tho, is to share an opportunity for people that write and enjoy data to apply for this position that seems like a good fit for many of the thinkers in this group.
Who knows, maybe even an Oster critic would enjoy the job.
@thiago I really don't get the Emily Oster hate. It seems like people think just because she doesn't work in obstetrics, she has no qualifications to write about what she does. Interpreting data is a whole skill set on its own and many doctors/health professionals don't have the time or ability to analyze every detail of these studies yet guidelines are created based on them. I appreciate the nuances she goes into and how to balance the data and real life.
@sendmelord You don't think Drs know how to analyze a study? I have a paltry (relative to Dr or PhD) BA in Speech Pathology and I had three courses on data/study interpretations for my degree.
There are whole boards created to create guidelines. Whose members have the benefit of whatever skills of data interpretation that Emily Oster has, as well as the requisite medical knowledge to better understand those very same studies/data.
@moriarty777 One thing that is pretty apparent about boards though is that they are not just taking the science into account - they are also accounting for things like politics, harm minimization, and how the guidelines will be understood by uneducated laypeople. And that's especially true for the alcohol consumption during pregnancy guidelines - the science is fairly clear that low levels of alcohol consumption are safe, yet the US guidelines remain as "no safe level" because the powers-that-be do not want to be responsible for someone misinterpreting that and drinking three drinks a night.
For what it's worth, I have quite a few doctors in my family who have had kids, and pretty much all of them regularly drank a small glass of wine a couple times a week while pregnant
@moriarty777 I would love for a doctor to comment on their training on statistics and research methods. This is kinda cheeky, but without looking it up, describe to me what a p-value or a confidence interval tells you.
That aside, appealing to authority usually works if you are not trained to evaluate the research, but boards are not magical science truth makers, they can and frequently are subject to social biases and political influences. Having worked in tobacco prevention research, there is actually a lot of social pressure to downplay the benefits of vaping in smoking cessation despite the evidence it could be helpful (harm reduction as well). I've even seen a respected expert in the field get dressed down by health officials for even mentioning research about it.
@jdthcstl If a doctor didn't know what a p-value is, then they really need to go back to school. Don't get me wrong, I in no way conflate doctors with statisticians, but that's pretty basic stuff.
Ask them the gist of Pearson's normalcy test if you wanna see if they have an in-depth understanding.
@cathon Well, most people get the practical definition right, but understanding the true statistical definition is important too. It shows they can assess the body of science and not blindly accept the latest p-hacked study.
@jdthcstl I think you said it right when you mentioned assessing the body of research. It can be quite challenging to identify when there's statistical fuckery afoot in any individual study. Individual studies should be taken as informative, but not actionable. That should be reserved for bodies of research.
I certainly couldn't tell if a paper was p-hacked without either being a subject matter expert or attempting to reproduce, but I could definitely tell it an individual finding flies in the face of other conclusions from the field.
@thepaintedbeat I just listened to the whole TED talk and NOWHERE does she even suggest not giving HIV drugs to Africa. I think you should take more responsibility for spreading misinformation. How embarrassing for you
