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Someone just shared this w me. It seems to be going viral globally because we are all desperate for hopeful predictions but it& #39;s based on completely unsound epidemiology and is totally totally wrong. If you see people sharing it please let them know.
1/ http://ddi.sutd.edu.sg"> http://ddi.sutd.edu.sg
1/ http://ddi.sutd.edu.sg"> http://ddi.sutd.edu.sg
Basically it assumes that the reason infections are now going down in many countries is that covid has spread through the whole pop so they are approaching herd immunity - this is how the bell-shaped curve produced by SIR models works.
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This is not what& #39;s happening w covid - cases are ARTIFICIALLY going down in many countries because distancing policies have suppressed the disease BEFORE a large portion of the population gets infected.
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This means their proposed epidemic end dates are totally meaningless because at those points huge numbers of any population that suppressed covid successfully are still & #39;yet to be infected& #39;.
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The way they& #39;ve used the SIR model here is completely inappropriate and wrong and it& #39;s clear that no epidemiologist had any input into this analysis.
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But bad science happens all the time - the reason this worries me so much is that they& #39;ve had 1 million unique visitors to the site in its first 7 days of running.
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I worry that many of these million people will make bad decisions (personal or policy) as a result of trusting this misinformation because it& #39;s misleadingly framed as well-informed and sciency.
This. Will. Cost. Lives.
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This. Will. Cost. Lives.
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Information is our most powerful tool against coronavirus and we all have a responsibility to use it wisely. Dangerous things happen when we decide our science degree in one area qualifies us to speak as experts in a field we know nothing about.
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I can& #39;t express strongly enough how epidemiologically illiterate these methods are. Please debunk them if you see them. If you want proper covid predictions, look at @JohnsHopkinsEPI where they actually know what they are doing.
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I realise this thread comes across as v scathing. I don& #39;t mean for one second to fault the intentions of the team who worked on this and I understand why they are taking the tools they know and applying them to this unprecedented global situation to see if they will help.
I& #39;m just really worried about misinformation like this influencing a huge audience.
There& #39;s a lot of Maslow& #39;s Hammer research going on atm by people who are not epidemiologists (data scientists are particularly susceptible) and we need to be careful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_...
There& #39;s a lot of Maslow& #39;s Hammer research going on atm by people who are not epidemiologists (data scientists are particularly susceptible) and we need to be careful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_...
