Re: Cheats FC Player Allegedly Tests Positve to Covid 19
Reply #49 –
There a lot of basic errors in those articles you link.
For example. When graphing death rates you have to stack the data to see how the total death rate is affected, COVID-19 death rate is an increase in death rate to be stacked on top of all other causes, not as an alternative or a percentage of the default death rate. Assuming it is not deliberately deceptive it's a fundamental lack of understanding by the author on how statistics work.
Further I'd question the validity of death rate as a valid measure, because it scales with the epidemiology. If two diseases have the same death rate but one has five times the infectious rate it's far more serious. Of course authors construct a circular argument by then referring back to the death rate as a percentage, but that is already based on a fundamental mistake.
Regarding Hydroxchloroquine, the Surgisphere meta-data that is continually referenced in defence of the drug is proven bogus. It was all based on a meta-study not a real double blind drugs trials. A meta-data study just looks for correlations, then requires a full double blind study to confirm or refute the correlation. Not study was conducted by Surgisphere, I won't comment on the validity of the Surgishpere meta-study as you'd have to look at gigabytes of data and dive into how it was mined, but superficially as an organisation they look like they are predatory, they are searching for correlations in the hope some are patent-able and they can do this without paying for any real research and then just file speculative patents. There are real drug trials now underway but none have shown any benefit yet, and the fact that it may not be as harmful as the withdrawn study suggested doesn't mean the inverse, it doesn't mean it is useful as a prophylactic against COVID-19.
I've heard a nice analogy that explains meta-data studies. They are a bit like being lost at sea and searching for land, then seeing birds in the distance and saying there must be land that way, but the observations do not support the conclusion!