1/Y

Thread on a fallacy I& #39;ve seen a lot since the pandemic& #39;s beginning. Someone may have named it before, but if so, I can& #39;t find it.

So I& #39;m calling it:
the ebola fallacy, or the ebolavirus fallacy

You& #39;ve likely seen it before, without realizing it. https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1390251104940797954">https://twitter.com/AtomsksSa...
2/Y

Background:
The infection fatality rate, or IFR, represents the proportion of infected people who died of the disease caused by that infection.

So assume IFR is much lower for SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) than it is for ebolaviruses (Ebola).

https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-public/analyses/first_adjusted_mortality_estimates_and_risk_assessment/2019-nCoV-preliminary_age_and_time_adjusted_mortality_rates_and_pandemic_risk_assessment.html">https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV-publ...
5/Y

The Ebola fallacy, or ebolavirus fallacy, is:

Emphasizing a lower IFR for SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 to make it look less dangerous than it actually is, while ignoring the other factors that make it dangerous (such as SARS-CoV-2 infecting many people to cause millions of deaths)
6/Y

The fallacy appears pretty often.

For example, one main aim of measles vaccination was preventing hundreds of kids from dying of measles per year.
Similarly, COVID-19 killed hundreds of kids in the USA, and we have COVID-19 vaccines for that.

https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1390879816782684167">https://twitter.com/AtomsksSa...
10/Y

So feel free to be on the look-out for "the ebolavirus fallacy" in discussions of COVID-19 and other diseases. And feel free to cite this thread in response to instances of the fallacy.

Hopefully if enough people point this fallacy out, contrarians will stop exploiting it.
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