That is absolutely fucking horrifying and I am ashamed that someone of my profession would treat a human being, any human being, in this fashion. This is a physician who needs to be reported to the medical board for unprofessional conduct. Thank god she had advocates to stand up for her! But of course, most do not. Damn…
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And here we go with “It’s the coloreds” again
Throw in “The Mark of The Beast” and we have the makings of a horror movie!
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I have to come back to this. First, because you mentioned belief again. I told you before what my scepticism is based on. It is based in knowledge, not belief. It is not expert knowledge in this particular field of virology or clinical research, but based on my scientific training. I am sceptical of myself as well, but when I look at the available data and something contradicts this data, I question both the old and the new data. In this case, as posted above, the old data wins my trust.
As a statistician, you will know that priors are sometimes referred to as ‘statistical belief’. You could also say a priori assumptions which are based on previous observation. Sorry, but I have to hammer that point, because belief is also used to refer to religions dogma: I don’t trust this research based on my prior knowledge, as imperfect as it may be.
I guess we are on the same page, and this is just semantics (plus some language barrier since English is not my first language), but we have a public discussion here regarding important findings during the worst crisis since WWII. Some people might read our discussion. I hope it helps someone.
I am sceptical about much data right now, but I am also putting my trust - not a belief - in science. And if I sense something fishy about scientific findings, I highlight that. Your post, however, said:
This seems to close to being sceptical of the expert opinion. I do trust some data more than others. It is difficult to choose which data to trust, but I hopefully made clear above why I don’t trust the short communication that they have ID’d a Covid-19 case in France in December. I implicitly mentioned it above, and I assume you are aware of it, but for everyone else I want to emphasise: it is not a full research paper, but a short communication - this means it still should be good science, but is a quicker way of publishing some results which, while usually of high standard, sometimes also puts something in the research community to be torn apart later.
This is possibly such a case.
I apparently was even to moderate in my scepticism above.
- they should have presented results of confirmation testing on other PCR sequences
- if they can detect the virus with the rPCR, they should also be able to sequence the full genome, hence addressing which clade the virus is from
- their test results might even be a false positive because they used a very high concentration of genetic material in their positive control samples, which elevates the probabilities of spillover
Add the lack of sero-conversion testing (antigene tests) and we end up with a paper the person who leads the workgroup which developed the test they used is very sceptical about. He’s rather friendly, still, but firm in his doubtfulness.
Bottom line: if we do not see additional well-checked evidence, it stays unlikely that the virus was already active in France in December, let alone in November.
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The Sun has betrayed me!
The astrologer João Bidu who predicted 2020 ‘lighter’ says that ‘nobody expected a coronavirus’.
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Who wants to bet the Trump admin would give him a job offer for doing a stunt like this?
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“I’ve talked to a lot of people who had the flu at some time or another and not ONE of them ever told me that they died of it.”
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It gets harder everyday not to actively hope that 45 gets infected (if he already isn’t.)
The irony of him dying from a disease that he failed to contain would be most fitting for this twisted timeline
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FYI, for you USAians out there who have an interest in epidemiology or just feel called upon to do something to help the situation, Johns Hopkins has a course on Contact Tracing online that is free (at least for now) through the Bloomberg Foundation:
Warning: I’m partway through the course and it’s no joke. It’s doable, but there’s Math.
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Yes, exactly.
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This is true only to the extent that doesn’t mean I prefer something in place of that expert opinion. Right now we have experts who disagree with one another – Drosten in your country, Ferguson in the UK, Giesecke in Sweden, many others – some virologists, some epidemiologists, and to me this is all good, I think until we need lots of different scientific eyes looking on this pandemic, as we are right at the beginning of an understanding of the disease.
I agree with you that if this one French sample remains the only evidence of the virus in Europe before January then it is very weak and probably reflects something else, a testing error or similar. Where I disagree with you is in whether we should ban consideration of the possibility, or even linking to articles considering the possibililty, as you seemed to want to do. Upthread you called for this at first based on the fact that one popular article wasn’t based on a real scientific paper but then continued when the scientific paper was identified. You called reporting about the finding a “fucking nightmare of a PR disaster”, and said “bloody media circus around it is creating a lot of uncertainty”. I don’t think this is creating uncertainty among responsible scientists, even if some of them do give more credence to the possibility than others. If you mean it is confusing the general population, I would say the general population is already plenty confused, but I don’t think that is the fault of conflicting ideas of when the virus entered Europe.
Bottom line: if we do not see additional well-checked evidence, it stays unlikely that the virus was already active in France in December, let alone in November.
Yeah, I don’t have an issue with this either.
My bottom line is I don’t think BoingBoing should be in the business of banning links to articles which report on peer-reviewed science. If there is science that seems to be better and contradicts the linked article, that’s great, link to that too. If the result turns out to be wrong, point that out too and at that point stop reporting the original story. If the worry is that articles linked on BoingBoing will have some kind of distorting effect on national or international policy, I think this is an overstimate of the influence of this website.
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Reminds me of a study (in the 80s?): Child psychiatrists were more likely to engage with and help their young patients based on their physical attractiveness (read: “looks” like me).
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The problem is that the fatality rate, while quite high by infectious disease standards, is low enough (when you have early testing and great medical facilities, ie are not the average American) that he would probably survive. And we’d never hear the end of how he singlehandedly defeated it. That would probably help his chances in November.
My campus will also be doing short courses in contact tracing (very short for people with a suitable college degree, several months for people without, which I think is a great opportunity for transferable vocational training). This is probably happening in most blue state flagship universities, so worth checking out.
the Bloomberg Foundation
You mean that guy that was just as bad as Trump? 
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No, he’s the competent fascist-wanna-be, which makes him very different than Trump. 
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Not that competent; he only lasted one primary round. But I would have voted for him in a heartbeat over Trump. At least when he was NYC Mayor he didn’t rob it blind. ANd he seems to believe in science.
Christ, what a soggy-ass asshole.
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An interview about the underlying socio-political issues regarding the upcoming beef supply chain issues due to the pandemic:
Yes, of course beef eating was about being successful, but also in a way, about being a successful man . You see it across the socioeconomic spectrum. So, the labor movement was producing pamphlets advocating for Chinese exclusion, basically saying that American manhood is threatened by bringing in workers who—in their racist terms—could survive on rice. [The title of the 1902 pamphlet by Samuel Gompers and Herman Gutstadt: Meat vs. Rice: American Manhood Vs. Asiatic Coolieism, Which Shall Survive? ]
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Unfortunately, though less immediate life or death, the elements of that story are very, very familiar to many of us.
I have had my own doctor flip out on me a couple of times when I have questioned his authority. I have stopped discussing my ADHD issues with my doctor because the last time I did he said that I didn’t have a problem because I did well in school, and basically accused me (without outright saying it) of drug seeking (though he’ll hand out antidepressants easily enough, which don’t work for me). This despite me being able to check every symptom not just with a “Yes” but an “Oh, hell yes”, including the ones nobody’s ever heard of.
And he has flat out said that he doesn’t think I should be allowed to assess my own risks when it comes to medication and side-effects. I don’t mean that I am self-prescribing, but with a list of benefits (the energy to do, well, anything) versus the possibility that something may happen down the road. In other words, I am too smart for a learning disorder, but not smart enough to understand what a 10% increased risk means. Why? Because asking those questions means that I am not accepting his GP word on my specific ailments as gospel.
And I have got it easy. My only barrier to changing doctors is finding one that will take new patients. I don’t have to worry about networks and insurance. And most times he’s fine. (Though I am worried about my next refill, because I missed the deadline before my standing order on tests ran out, and then we got a pandemic and I didn’t go into the office to get new papers or the lab… for obvious reasons. Whether he’ll agree they’re obvious…)
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I have seen similar studies, in fact this was taught in my ethics class in med school. The thing is to not pretend this tendency does not exist, but to recognise that it does and consciously monitor your own reactions, and to control them. It’s not hard with a little practice, the hardest part (for me, at least) was admitting that it was there at all. Once you have done that, the rest is just being aware. I bet you the doc in this case would deny any trace of racism, sexism, pick-your-ism. And that is always wrong. Isms are like assholes. We all have them, they all stink, but part of maturity is learning to control them. Call it “cultural continence.”
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Don’t get me wrong, I do not question that these kind of things happen. I know they do, I have seen them happen. I am saying they should not, and there is no excuse for this kind of behavior. It is easier to deal with a patient who does not ask questions or challege my statements, but that does not make it better. While i complain about dealing with antivaxxers, some of them are actually kind of fun. The ones who will engage respectfully and civilly without a bunch of conspiracy theory craziness anyway.
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