Not sure I follow. Do you mean, if there is 'no evidence', than there cannot be evidence for something simultaniously?

No it's literally not because no absence of evidence "dead stop" is evidence of absence there is the added cause "it's absent and we know should be there" no stop which makes it not a fallacy the word "absence of evidence ""alone"" isn't evidence of absence" is implied.

Very often, absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. That's why the statement is false.

"absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' is literally false" Only if your focus is on evidence instead of absence. But the statement and its falacy is in my eyes about reality not evidence.

great list, but I think one of the main problems with "absence of evidence fallacy" is its phrasing: "absence of evid. is not the same as evidence of absence" is a true statement, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is literally false @richarddmorey

but then the "fallacy" has ZERO applicability to the statistical cases this thread started with....

you can't have any form of evidence. If you concider any form of evidence, than what is talked about than isn't anymore what the falacy sais.

But a conclusion is a from of evidence, isn't it. Without any conclusion it seems to be irellevant from where you don't draw a conclusion. When ever you draw a conclusion than thats evidence and this would contradict the premise. So to keep the premise of 'abcense of evidence'

the error here is that most inference is non-deductive, so the fact that something doesn't follow logically from something else, doesn't mean there is no evidence for it

premise (abcense of evidence) does contradict. In short if I have no evidence, than this just means that and nothing follows logically from that, especially for the absence of other things. Does this make sense?

As far as I got right now, my savest appearing argument is, that the fallacy is correct and true in its current state - abcense of evidence is no evidence of abcense - because if I conclude something from the abcense of evidence, this conclusion in itself is evidence which the

Very interesting method of testing once current concentration level ;) "We know things are true by them not being false and is proved by what would have to be true if the true thing was false." In this state I get it, but its really hard for me to follow.

this example may be to complex but in short how it follow in this conversation is we know things are true by them not being false and is proved by what would have to be true if the true thing was false.

No even in that it's proven by the contrary being false. How does a missile know where it is?

That's not what I meant, but certainly that is true. If there is evidence for something, then there literally cannot be "no evidence" for it. There is evidence. But what I meant was that if something is not true, then there is an absence of evidence for it.

Not sure I follow. Do you mean, if there is 'no evidence', than there cannot be evidence for something simultaniously?

No it's literally not because no absence of evidence "dead stop" is evidence of absence there is the added cause "it's absent and we know should be there" no stop which makes it not a fallacy the word "absence of evidence ""alone"" isn't evidence of absence" is implied.

Very often, absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. That's why the statement is false.

"absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' is literally false" Only if your focus is on evidence instead of absence. But the statement and its falacy is in my eyes about reality not evidence.

great list, but I think one of the main problems with "absence of evidence fallacy" is its phrasing: "absence of evid. is not the same as evidence of absence" is a true statement, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is literally false @richarddmorey

Looking for some tips to counter conspiracy theories and misinformation? This Communication Flyer - an idea of PhD student @kostas_exarhia during the @SciBeh Virtual Workshop in November 2020 - might help! https://sks.to/commsflyer

Finally: whenever we're dealing with complex, multi-faceted problems that don't belong to any one discipline, we might want to pay particular attention to people who've attained journeyman status in more than one relevant discipline. /8

We should probably be attentive to halo effects, in which our positive view of somebody's competence in one area bleeds over into other kinds of positive judgments. /7

It might help to stop calling people "experts" tout court, and always append the area they're an expert in. That would make it a little easier to assess their location relative to the circle of competence. /6

By all means, let's continue to rely on the judgments of experts operating within their circle of competence. But let's not assume that they have any particular expertise – or even knowledge – about stuff outside of it. /5

As Warren Buffett has emphasized, having a narrow circle of competence is not necessarily a problem. The problem appears when people don't know where the boundary is, and operate with the same confidence inside and outside of it. /4

Call me naive, but in the microenvironment where I work – in the intersection of science and the humanities – people take a certain amount of pride in being well read, even outside of their official domain of expertise. /3

Ask a professor of (say) virology about the properties of viruses and I assume you'll get a dependable answer; but ask about human behavior, public policy, causal inference, the law – or God forbid, ethics – the answer can go whichever which way. /2

One point that the pandemic has brought home to me is just how narrow people's expertise is. I'm regularly surprised by how a celebrated professor of X can exhibit a sub-college-level understanding of Y, even when X and Y are related. /1

The infamous retracted Hydroxychloroquire Lancet article? Cited.... 883 TIMES

Lord Sumption tells cancer campaigner her life is 'less valuable' https://dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-2334660/Video-Lord-Sumption-tells-cancer-sufferer-life-valuable.html… via @MailOnline 4/4

Have I got this wrong? Is U.K. law different? How could a senior judge assert this? all insight welcome. 3/4

I have always understood the premise that all lives are of equal value to be a defining feature of Western democracy. Enshrined e.g., in Art 1 of the German constitution. Conversely, I've taken it to be a defining feature of fascism that this premise is rejected. 2/4

Calling lawyers, historians, and political scientists. A thread on the value of life. I'm still stunned by Lord Sumption, ex-judge on UK's Supreme Court, now anti-lockdown campaigner, publicly stating that the life of a woman with stage 4 bowel cancer was "less valuable" 1/4

In summary: databases really bloody matter. We probably need better ones, but that project has the potential to either be utterly transformative for public services or a complete and utter car crash. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

There's also the question of digital exclusion - if everything is done via database, you're going to push citizens towards digital interactions which are nice and easy to store (and obviously a lot cheaper)

Likewise this article from @thomasforth on bin apps, which shows how local government has been bypassed on this stuff in favour of national

But there's also a big risk here of 'the map is the territory'. A big reason that HMT/HMRC haven't done as much to help the self-employed in this crisis (and are generally hostile to them) is that they aren't on the databases in the same neat way as those earning via PAYE.

For example, I'm seeing a load of people talking about vaccine passports as a civil liberties issue, and pretty much no one asking 'What database would they use?' - which is utterly essential to them actually happening, if they ever do

If there isn't a clear answer, then that policy either won't happen, shouldn't happen, or will be far more expensive to make happen than you realise.

So all of this has some really important consequences. The first is that if you are making policy, the very first question you have to ask is 'What existing database can I use, and will it do what I want it to?'

Why couldn't the Government send everyone in the UK messages about coronavirus - or councils do the same with their citizens? Databases. That's why they basically had to beg the mobile operators to send on their behalf

(But of course we have some pretty good examples of how our government can screw up attempts to mash databases together like this - UC, the NHS IT system, the Verify car crash...)

If you talk to Estonians, the reason that they are streets ahead on digital government is that everyone has a unique and mostly comprehensive digital identity, which plugs into everything else. Talking to ministers about this pre-pandemic, it was top of digital govt wishlist

To whit: Verify, Govt Gateway, HMRC/NI numbers, DWP, NHS numbers (plus separate for Scotland, Wales, NI), passports, driver's licences, learner and pupil numbers in schools, blood donors, criminal records, Disclosure and Barring, the electoral roll...

Now, I was one of those in the trenches with No2ID back in the day. I'm still instinctively hostile to ID cards. But one of the biggest problems the British state has it that it has an insane number of databases that do not really talk to each other.

In fact, UC is a really good example of this. It was a brilliant policy idea that took billions/years more than expected/budgeted because it required the HMRC and DWP databases to talk to each other, and that turned out to be very, very, very hard

Essentially, a policy is easy to do if you can adjust an existing database easily, and almost impossible to do if you can't. This of course plays into the debate over the £20 UC uplift - proposed solutions essentially divide into computer says yes and computer says no.

Now think about where things went wrong. Covid test results being lost because the data had been cobbled together using Excel? https://bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988… Track and Trace, where you were essentially trying to build a database mapping the infected's social networks from scratch?

The furlough scheme? PAYE. Expanding UC? The UC database (duh). The vaccine rollout? NHS patient records. All robust enough for use, and mostly already transferred to the cloud so could be accessed/expanded without too much stress.

Throughout the pandemic, to a rough approximation, every single UK policy success has been built on a good database. And every single policy failure has resulted from a bad/nonexistent one.

The vaccine passports debate is a perfect illustration of my new working theory: that the most important part of modern government, and its most important limitation, is database management. Please stick with me on this - it's much more interesting than it sounds. (1/?)

OK so you missed the context provided in the subsequent tweets. Could happen to anyone.

yes: took it to be data provided in support of the headline claim in the initial tweet: "in terms of outcomes, Swedish corona policy is thoroughly average in EU comparison" my point is there is a narrow reading/look at data on which this is true, but that that data is misleading

You read the entire thread?

I thought I joined the "conversation" at the top- did I miss part of a prior thread? Post I responded to seemed to be the beginning of a thread...ie. "regular reminder that..."

It seems to me that C here is either misunderstanding the nature of the conversation they joined, or else is deliberately trying to derail it.

Now here comes C: "Aha! B is misleading and morally fraudulent, because there is another runner, Bob, who's similar to Bill in relevant respects, and Bob won the race!" C may be right about Bob, but Bob and his location in the ranking are irrelevant to the disagreement.

Let me try an analogy: A, a sports journalist, writes: "Bill came in last in the race, as shown by this ranking here." B says "That's incorrect: as the ranking shows, he was in the middle of the pack." A and B are having a meaningful disagreement about a verifiable fact.

2/2 and seems misleading to the point that I personally, as someone who uses data and statistics to try and faithfully describe reality professionally, view it with real unease. I am sure I would consider it inappropriate in other data contexts. Others may disagree, of course.

Just to be clear, you're saying any comparison with EU averages is "lacking in candour or frankness, insincere, morally fraudulent"?

Erik, it's equally a bit disingenuous to directly compare, say, Germany to Sweden, given that former has 9 direct neighbours, and a population density almost 10 x greater. Sweden had a *huge* natural advantage, revealed in direct comparisons with other nordic countries.

Periodic reminder that in terms of outcomes, Swedish corona policy is thoroughly average in EU comparison – not exactly a model to be emulated by the rest of the world, nor a crime against humanity that should be prosecuted in the Hague.

So if you spend your time trolling people like me, I feel bad for you. I feel worse for others who receive it more regularly than I do due to their skin color, faith, gender, orientation, etc. End of rant.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me. I know many others who've recalibrated their efforts and resources, often to the detriment of their own mental/physicial health and career ambitions, feel likewise. I've even had death threats. That was jarring.

It's unfortunate that some on this platform have nothing better to do with their time than intentionally twist the words of scientists, physicians, public health agencies, etc. to make some kind of point. I don't get it. This pandemic not been fun for us, trust me.

It's easier to tell a person they're morons, uneducated, or consciously endangering people than it is to analyze the data and make evidence-based and practical conclusions from it. This is especially true if it doesn't comport to one's previously held views.

I could link to a bevy of research articles to support that claim, but that'll only further enrage those already looking to pick a Twitter fight. Which kind of brings me to a larger point: Public health is complex. It balances the pragmatic with the optimal.

Twitter is clearly not a place for nuanced talks on science. Rather, absolutism is favored. I stated today that if everyone wore procedure masks, then COVID-19 prevalence would plummet. That is backed up by the science. I'm sorry if that offends you.

If you'd like to see longer and more detailed items which don't fit on twitter, please join us on substack!

http://icumonitoring.ch now shows the 'ad-hoc' bed capacity as well as the bed capacity certified by the Swiss Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Data from partners the Coordinated Sanitary Service of @vbs_ddps. Thanks @nico_criscuolo @ChengZhao20, PhDs at @ETH_en

interestingly covid & MVC deaths are roughly comparable (1.35 vs 1.4 million) but this is an area where the US has taken incredible public health steps to makes cars & roads safer, whereas in much of the world, road safety is not a priority compare the covid responses

the SciBeh initiative is about bringing knowledge to policy makers and the general public, but I have to say this advert I just came across worries me: where are the preceding data integrity and data analysis classes?

Normal outdoor CO2 is approximately 430 PPM. Note how the CO2 slowly climbs over the course of the school day (and barely drops during recess breaks). The CO2 finally drops off when the monitor was able to get a breath of fresh air.

Lots of stale rebreathed air in this class. CO2 > 1000 PPM is a proxy measure for poor ventilation. This room is not getting enough fresh outdoor air. This increases risks of fatigue, headaches and COVID-19 transmission. #DontShareYourAir #OpenAWindow

Most public health bodies accept COVID-19 is “opportunistic airborne” in unique circumstances, which include poorly ventilated, crowded spaces. Sadly, there’s plenty of opportunity in our schools and communities. CO2 readings in an Ottawa classroom... @PublicHealthON #onted

David Spiegelhalter@d_spiegelCOVID deaths within 28 days of +ve test may reach 100,000 today. But ONS data https://ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales… show that over 100,000 people in the UK had died with COVID on death certificate by *Jan 7th*, nearly 3 weeks ago. 108,000 by Jan 15th, and total now will be nearly 120,000

New reports @NEJM today confirming some immune evasion of the B.1.351 variant (identified in South Africa) to both the mRNA vaccines, in vitro data @BioNTech_Group/@Pfizer and @moderna_tx. Less vaccine efficacy vs B.1.351 has been confirmed in clinical trials for 3 vaccines

vaccine wellerman let’s gooooo #seashantytok

German Twitter ablaze with a hashtag battle expressing support for a prominent scientific voice in pandemic public debate (....#TeamDrosten) ....a year ago, I thought the public role of science would be challenging, but that's not a level a saw coming...

I've been teaching face to face all school year, and I'm here to tell you: face to face instruction doesn't = better mental health for students. They're all still struggling. Because it's a pandemic.

Animerad påminnelse om utveckligen i Sverige jämfört med våra nordiska grannländer #COVID19SWEDEN

The tragedy of Sweden compared to other scandinavian country. (Deaths over time).

The global infodemic has driven trust in all news sources to record lows with social media (35%) and owned media (41% the least trusted; traditional media (53%) saw largest drop in trust at 8 points globally.

So if you work somewhere already like this maybe suggest how to really run a WFH/mobile collaboration uni, and how we re-tool the physical meeting place we then in light of that? Maybe the philosophers already know this??

I think this is also a good question for science park or campus universities, or anywhere where the offices were mostly empty in August, even pre-COVID. Imperial had a buzz once; I’m afraid that we might not get it back, and wind up like those other places...

Follow-on question: if PhDs, PDRAs and academics all semi-virtualise except for lab work, then what should the space we now use for academic cellular offices and open plan offices look like? Can we entice people to come in by changing the spaces?

Question for post-COVID: will London STEM academics commute in beyond the bare minimum required? If not, can universities function as learning communities without physical presence? If yes, how, and does institutional identity survive, or just one big science network?

Almost 1 year ago, Feb 26, 2020, authors wrote in a top journal that the coronavirus posed “limited threat outside of China” & “wearing mask in public does not prevent people from getting” #COVID19 We should have listened to the actual aerosol scientists instead on masks!

I am disturbed by the hundreds of thousands of covid deaths...and counting. But what's most disturbing to me now is the general reaction to it, the inexplicable lack of urgency or even interest in doing much to stop it in the short term. Its so far beyond what I had imagined.

Interesting initiative in Canada, could benefit from the COVID-19 vaccine handbook https://sks.to/c19vax @SciBeh @STWorg

Covid-19 misinformation? We’re over it. Pseudoscience? Over it. Conspiracies? Over it. Want to do your part to amplify scientific expertise and evidence-based health information? Join us. Follow us @ScienceUpFirst. #ScienceUpFirst https://scienceupfirst.com.

Learn more about @FirstDraft’s and @PartnershipAI’s work on misinformation labelling in our recent paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.12758

Labels won’t solve all our problems, and design is only one part of them: Just as important is what gets labelled, and why. But getting features like noticeability, language and nudges right is a critical piece of the puzzle.

Third up: nudges. Nudges have been shown to help people think critically about what they’re sharing and reduce the spread of misinformation. TikTok nudges users towards pressing ‘Cancel’ with a strong red. The alternative says ‘share anyway’, and it's gray-ed out.

Second up: language. It’s important not to alienate people. First, TikTok opts for ‘video flagged’ to downplay who flagged it. It then avoids judgemental language by opting for ‘unverified’, preferring to say what it isn't, rather than making a claim about what it is.

First up: noticeability. A tricky line to tread here: too obvious, and you’ll attract attention to misinformation; too subtle, and people won’t notice the label. TikTok is clever here: grayscale, so not attention-grabby, but up top, so if you watch the video, you’ll see it.

When misinformation is seen by millions of people, the way we label it matters. Want to understand more? Let’s take a deep dive into TikTok’s new design.

Can we gather all covid tweets from large UK accounts, anonymise them put them on a website, let the public score them true to false then rank the accounts?

It’s flattering being asked for your opinion by the media (especially if you have lots of them) but I do think it’s important to defer to others if you’re being asked on as a ‘scientific expert’ and the subject of the interview falls outside your area of research/expertise.

Today is a good day In terms of one less source of misinformation

COVID outlasts another dashboard... https://rt.live Illustrates the importance of incentivising sustainable outbreak analytics - if a tool is useful, people will come to rely on it, which creates a dilemma if it can't be maintained.

Our latest lab data for B.1.1.7 prevalence in Pillar 2 samples, as determined by SGTF. Clearly now plateauing at 80-90%. Which to me suggests there are other lineages as transmissible as B.1.1.7.........

Nice healthy jump in @indeed US job postings: +2.4% above pre-pandemic baseline as of Feb 5. Was +0.7% one week earlier, on Jan 29. Accelerating improvement! 1.7 %pt weekly gain is similar to last summer's recovery pace. (Just a chart this week, no blogpost.)

We are Members of Parliament from different parties And from different South Asian backgrounds But we have come together to share with you an important message. Please, when it is your turn, take the #COVID-19 vaccine. Watch our video

Pseudoscientific Content on YouTube: Assessing the Effects of Watch History on the Recommendation Algorithm. (arXiv:2010.11638v1 [http://cs.CY]) http://arxiv.org/abs/2010.11638

the rubric was developed in a hackathon from SciBeh's November 2020 conference (which you can revisit in videos and summaries here: https://scibeh.org/events/workshop2020/…) 2/3

new post on Scibeh's meta-science reddit describing the new rubric for peer review of preprints aimed at broadening the pool of potential 'reviewers' so that students could provide evaluations as well! https://reddit.com/r/BehSciMeta/comments/l64y1l/reviewing_peer_review_does_the_process_need_to/… please take a look and provide feedback! 1/3

When this is over, the 100,000 deaths wil be revised down, by tens of thousands.

NEW On average the rate of COVID infection is 1.9 x higher amongst primary and secondary teachers than the general population. For teaching assistants, the rate of COVID infection is three x higher in primary schools New figs @ons @MaryBoustedNEU

COVID curbed carbon emissions in 2020 — but not by much, and new data show global CO2 emissions have rebounded: https://go.nature.com/2XRpIv4

A thread on U.S. #camps and #schools that experienced #COVID19 outbreaks since opening. I'll continually add to this thread as more are reported.

We may have a vaccine in the next 12 months...And already we are seeing the rise of an anti-vaccination movement...' 'We in the public health community need to build public trust in the evidence.’ @RichardHorton1 of @TheLancet joined this morning's COVID-19 briefing 1/2

5. New report @Mehganteherani @EmoryPediatrics @jpidsociety @Abxaware

2. Front page @sdut today, the San Diego experience to date by @PaulSisson @radychildrens ~30,000 kids tests, 3.4% positive (overall here 4.8%) Kids hospitalized 5.6%, Adults 8.3%; much less ICU (7 v 25%)

1. On the rise as proportion of total infections @sdutgraphics @theheroofthyme

Erik, as people inside and outside Sweden continue to grapple with what exactly the Swedish strategy might have been, there are two aspects that have seemed potentially troubling to me (and only more so in light of the FOI email releases): 1/21RepliesReconfigBehSci@SciBeh·18 Aug 2020Replying to @SciBeh and @ErikAngner2/2 1. mandatory schooling (where there exemptions for immune-compromised parents?) 2. encouraging household members of infected individuals to go to work/school Could you provide more background here and how you see these policies in the wider context?

Sneak peek: I’m doing a Reddit #AMA on Aug 27! I’m a total Reddit newbie. What do I need to know?

25/ So yes I have worries, but the light at the end of the tunnel is increasingly bright. We just need to get there. How confident am I? First, I’ll get my shot the day I’m eligible. And I just booked a golf trip in Sept. Perhaps living dangerously, I didn’t ask about refunds.

24/ So, yes, I do have worries. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that, on November 1st, we didn’t know for sure that we would have ANY effective vaccines. Today we have at least 2-3 highly effective ones, an impressive safety track record, and millions of doses ready to go.

23/ I worry a bit about how long immunity lasts, but also not too much. We’re now pretty confident that immunity lasts for >1 yr. If it turns out that we need a booster in 2-3 years, that'll be a small price to pay to save tens of thousands of lives and a return to normal life.

22/ I do worry about keeping track of who got which vaccine. Who will remind a pt to come in for a 2nd dose, and be sure that the 2nd dose is the same brand as the first? If we had a national medical record (like the VA or the NHS), this would be easy. But in the U.S., it’s not.

21/ As I’ve said, while I do worry about uptake, I don’t worry too much. Unlike childhood vaccines, many people know friends & family who were sickened or died from Covid, & everybody wants their lives back. I’ll bet that uptake is going to be quite high, esp. in hi-risk groups.

20/ I worry about kids, since we haven’t even begun to test vaccines in them. But if we can reach herd immunity by vaccinating everybody else (incl. teachers), we may not need to obsess about reaching kids, particularly the youngest ones (who are at low risk for illness/spread).

19/ It’s going to get tougher to do placebo-controlled vaccine trials.(Is it ethical to randomize to placebo once 95% effective vaccines are available?). We may be forced to evaluate new vaccine candidates based on their similarities to ones we know work, which is a bit dicey.

8/ I worry about the impact of approved vaccines on ongoing trials. If we can get EUA’s for Pfizer, Moderna & Astra Zeneca, that’s probably a deep enough bench to vaccinate everybody in the U.S. But more would be better, particularly as we think about the vast worldwide needs.

17/ … and, while they’ve managed Operation Warp Speed well, the Trumpers seem poised to throw monkey-wrenches into the handoffs. I doubt this will screw the whole thing up, but even a few weeks’ delay will lead to millions of preventable cases & thousands of preventable deaths.

16/ Other worries: reviewing Biden’s appointees, from Covid task force to chief of staff Ron Klain, I have great confidence in their ability to pull off the logistics effectively, safely, & with minimum drama. But the first month of distribution will be done by Trump's team…

15/ I also worry about next 6 mths – will folks let their guards down because vaccines are coming? That would be a terrible mistake – while vaccines will protect the recipients, they’ll do little to protect others in the community until we reach herd immunity levels next summer.

14/ Whether it’s anti-vaxxers or Russian bots, if somebody wants to turn every post-vaccine illness into a “See, I warned you” canard, there’ll be ample fodder. We’ll need a strong campaign to combat it, ie this https://tinyurl.com/y5ym92c5 Nothing I’ve seen in 2020 reassures me here.

13/ 3rd concern: misinformation. Below: if we vaccinate 10M Americans, how many will develop a serious illness in 2 months after they got their shots. Answer: many thousands (& I’ve only included 4 illnesses, plus death). And the vaccines will have zero to do with any of them.

12/ There will also be post-vaccination issues: when somebody has a post-vaccine fever, do we assume it’s the vaccine? Test for Covid if it lasts for >2 days? Should healthcare or essential workers come to work if they feel sick after their shot? We’ll need super-clear guidance.

11/ …from getting their shots? Probably some, particularly in lower-risk groups – & we’ll need many to take shots to get to herd immunity. Analogous to the challenge of getting low-risk folks to wear masks & buy health insurance – many are too selfish to accept pain for others.

10/ Second issue that keeps me awake is the shot itself. We know that a fair # of folks will have symptoms – arm pain, fever, the blahs – that’ll last for 1-2 days. Seems a small price to pay for immunity to a terrible infection. But will this day of discomfort dissuade people…

9/ …we might not reach 70% protected until Sept., the impact of widespread vaccination will be felt before that. Also, there are tens of millions who are already immune via prior infection (and millions more each week, sadly), which will shorten the path to herd immunity a bit.

8/ Herd immunity, which we should reach at ~70% vaccination, isn’t a magic on-off switch: as we close in on it, there will be fewer cases & fewer severe cases, since there'll be fewer people vulnerable to virus & fewer who'll get very sick if they do get Covid. So, even though…

7/ We'll see how people react to the draft CDC priority list. I’m concerned these decisions will be contentious and – this being Covid – politicized, since it will raise matters of race, homelessness, incarceration, elders, healthcare workers...in other words, myriad hot buttons.

6/ As the graph shows, I estimate it’ll be ~May before we get to all 144M of the high-priority folks. This timeline could shorten if additional vaccines are approved, and lengthen if there are rollout glitches. If demand is low, I assume we’ll just broaden the eligible groups.

5/ And here’s my estimate of how many people in U.S. can be vaccinated at various times in 2021. It’s based on statements made by @Pfizer, @moderna_tx & Op Warp Speed, and assumes we have enough vaccine to vaccinate 20M by Jan 2021, 150M by June, & the entire country by December.

4/ …Namely, there won’t be enough vaccine for all these groups until spring. Thanks to @AriadneLabs, which did the legwork of removing duplicates (people who fit in multiple categories) to estimate the number of people in each of the possible Phase 1 groups. They add up to 144M.

3/ …(like food handlers, police, firefighters, & teachers); and people at high risk for bad outcomes (people over 65 and those w/ preexisting conditions). One can make an argument for all of them to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Alas, we quickly run into a math problem…

2/ First, the question of who gets the vaccine first is tricky. (Breaking news: @CDCgov panel just weighed in: https://tinyurl.com/y53atcys, and I agree.) One can make a case for many groups to be first in line: healthcare workers; people >65 in nursing homes; essential workers…

1/ Covid (@UCSF) Chronicles, Day 259 The vaccine news remains astoundingly positive. Reacting to my upbeat mood, a reporter asked me if there’s anything that keeps me up at night. Aside from the cataclysmic current state of Covid (likely to get worse, I fear), there are a few:

The Psychological Science Behind Vaccinations Featured research on http://psychologicalscience.org

#BehavioralScientists handbook on framing communications for #Vaccines https://ndownloader.figstatic.com/files/25980764 Techniques to improve vaccine communication & fight misinformation, created by a team of scientific experts @SciBeh

New in the #RRI Toolkit The #COVID19 Vaccine Communication Handbook https://rri-tools.eu/-/the-covid-19-vaccine-communication-handbook-a-practical-guide-for-improving-vaccine-communication-and-fighting-misinformation… A practical guide for improving #vaccine comm & fighting #misinformation by @SciBeh @STWorg @dlholf @stefanmherzog @johnfocook @PhilippMSchmid @dlholf @adamhfinn & more #scicomm

The handbook was faciliated by @SciBeh / http://scibeh.org is an initiative with the goal of making behavioural science crisis-ready by creating the infrastructure necessary for rapid crisis knowledge management. https://vimeo.com/453631316 #c19vaxwiki #scibeh

The handbook and wiki was created by a team of renowned scientific experts. The project was coordinated by @SciBeh’s coordinators @STWorg, @dlholf, Ulrike Hahn, @stefanmherzog & led by coordinating lead authors @STWorg @johnfocook @PhilippMSchmid @dlholf @adamhfinn #c19vaxwiki

This handbook is self-contained but additionally provides access to a “wiki” with more detailed information. Wherever you see a WIKI button in the handbook, a click will take you to in-depth information that is updated by our team as new knowledge becomes available. #c19vaxwiki

This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents & more. It’s for everyone who wants to know more about COVID-19 vaccines, how to talk to others about them & how to challenge misinformation about the vaccines. #c19vaxwiki

The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook: A practical guide for improving vaccine communication & fighting misinformation https://sks.to/c19vax Our new handbook (PDF+living wiki), which helps fighting the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. #c19vaxwiki 1/n

Impfbereitschaft nach Parteienpräferenz. Es ist noch ein weiter Weg.

Launching a new dashboard to track local news reports and state press releases on how many vaccine doses will be allocated to each state, since there seems to be no public federal effort. Browse each state's allocations and a map of doses per capita.

Some great vaccine myth busting summary images to share

As everyone's focus turns to vaccine hesitancy, we will need to take a close look not just at social media but at Amazon- the "top" recommendations I get when typing in 'vaccine' are all anti-vaxx

History. Pfizer/BioNTech press release, announcing request for FDA vaccine emergency use:

Relevant today: ever sharp @nataliexdean on Vaccine Effectiveness vs Efficacy from many moons ago (i.e. about a month). Short summary - do not compare $PFE very encouraging 90% efficacy result directly with measures of accepted vaccines (like measles) that report effectiveness.

Early viral load peak in the disease course indicates that preventing onward transmission requires immediate self-isolation with symptom onset (for a min of 5 days). Messages should prioritise isolation practices, and policies should include supported isolation. (24/n)

ur article is now published online. We argue that SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics should inform policy decisions about mitigation strategies for targeted interventions. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1442/5910315

This thread is based on our new paper with @JuliaLMarcus Caroline Buckee and @aetiology Accepted in CID - preprint version can be accessed here: (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807…)

Public health strategies will be needed to mitigate transmission in nursing homes, prisons and jails, shelters, meat-packing plants such as personal protective equipment and routine testing to identify infected individuals early in the disease course. (28/n)

Avoid crowded indoor poorly ventilated environments. Spend more time outdoors. Maintain your distance (more is better but 2 metre is not a panacea). Improve ventilation: open windows/doors. Wear a mask indoors. Wash hands. (27/n) (https://vox.com/science-and-health/2020/5/22/21265180/cdc-coronavirus-surfaces-social-distancing-guidelines-covid-19-risks…)

Policymakers and health experts can help the public differentiate between lower-risk and higher-risk activities and environments and public health messages could convey a spectrum of risk to the public to support engagement in alternatives for safer interaction (26/n

There are many things that could be done within families to decrease transmission. We need to provide clear instructions, and means of support to enable those with symptoms/positive test and their contacts to isolate. (25/n) https://abc.net.au/news/2020-09-15/coronavirus-swept-through-jos-house.-heres-how-he-dodged-it/12660218

hese include social and income protection and support to ensure low paid, non-salaried and zero-hours contract workers can afford to follow isolation and quarantine recommendations, provision of protective equipment for workplaces and community settings. (23/n)

In summary: The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on households living in poverty, and the racial and ethnic disparities observed in many countries, emphasize the need to urgently update our definition of "vulnerable" populations for COVID-19 & address these inequities. (22/n)

A real overlap in the causes of mortality and deprivation can be seen here. The age-standardised rate of deaths involving COVID-19 in the most deprived quintile was more than double (2.3 times higher) than in the least deprived quintile in Scotland. (21/n) https://nrscotland.gov.uk/files/statistics/covid19/covid-deaths-report-week-19.pdf

Covid-19 could now be endemic in some parts of England that combine severe deprivation, poor housing and large BAME communities, national lockdown in these parts of the north of England had little effect in reducing the level of infections (20/n) (https://theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/05/covid-19-could-be-endemic-in-deprived-parts-of-england//…)

Previous research suggests that although social distancing during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was effective in reducing infections, this was most pronounced in households w greater socioeconomic advantage. Similar findings are emerging for COVID-19. (19/n) (https://pnas.org/content/117/33/19658//…)

n Madrid, 37 neighbourhoods are seeing the highest incidence, 4 x the Spanish average. Common factors: these areas are poorer, denser and have a high proportion of immigrant population. (18/n) (https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-09-19/como-son-las-zonas-restringidas-en-madrid-mas-densas-con-mas-inmigrantes-y-sobre-todo-mas-pobres.html…)

PHE surveillance report shows that while the number of infections is increasing mainly in 20-29, 30-39 ages in England, SARS-CoV-2 is spreading most in highly deprived areas - where people are in poorly paid work and can't afford to isolate. (17/n) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/919676/Weekly_COVID19_Surveillance_Report_week_38_FINAL_UPDATED.pdf

Households in socioeconomically deprived areas are more likely to be overcrowded, increasing the risk of transmission within the household. These disparities also shape the strong geographic heterogeneities observed in the burden of cases and deaths. (16/n)

People in lower-paid occupations are often classified as essential workers who must work outside the home and may travel to work on public transport. These occupations often involve greater social mixing, exposure risk due to prolonged working hours and job insecurity. (15/n)

Socioeconomic factors and racial/ethnic disparities: Global figures suggest that COVID-19 pandemic is strongly shaped by structural inequities, adverse living and working conditions and structural racism that drive household and occupational risks. (14/n)

The largest clusters of cases observed in the USA have all been associated with prisons or jails. In the largest meat packing plant in Germany, while the common point of potential contact was workplace, risk was higher for a single shared apartment, bedroom and carpool. (13/n)

Much worryingly the largest outbreaks from across the world are reported in long term care facilities such as nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, and meat-packing plants where many people spend several hours working, living together, and share communal spaces. (12/n)

Replying to @mugecevikThe largest clusters of cases observed in the USA have all been associated with prisons or jails. In the largest meat packing plant in Germany, while the common point of potential contact was workplace, risk was higher for a single shared apartment, bedroom and carpool. (13/n)

Much worryingly the largest outbreaks from across the world are reported in long term care facilities such as nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, and meat-packing plants where many people spend several hours working, living together, and share communal spaces. (12/n)

Prolonged indoor contact in a crowded and poorly ventilated environment increases the risk of transmission substantially. But decreasing occupancy and improving ventilation through opening windows/doors can lower the risk. (11/n)

While asymptomatic patients can transmit the virus to others, emerging evidence suggests that asymptomatic index cases transmit to fewer secondary cases. Attack rates are highly correlated with symptom severity (8/n) (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.01.20135194v1…) and (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.25.20079103v3…)

Prolonged indoor contact in a crowded and poorly ventilated environment increases the risk of transmission substantially. But decreasing occupancy and improving ventilation through opening windows/doors can lower the risk. (11/n)

Environment: Contact pattern also depends on the setting of the encounter. Contact tracing studies suggest an almost 20x higher risk of transmission indoors compared with outdoor environments. (10/n) (https://ft.com/content/2418ff87-1d41-41b5-b638-38f5164a2e94…)

Transmission is also affected by other host factors, including host defence mechanisms and age. For instance, given the same exposure, susceptibility to infection increases with age, higher in > 60yo compared to younger or middle-aged adults. (9/n) (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.19.20157362v2…)

When we look at the viral load dynamics & contact tracing studies, those who are infected are very infectious for a short window, likely 1-2 days before and 5 days following symptom onset. No transmission documented so far after the first week of symptom onset. (7/n)

Individual factors: Many ppl either do not infect anyone or infect a single person, and a large number of secondary cases are caused by a small # of infected ppl. Although this also is related to other factors, individual variation in infectiousness plays a major role.(6/n)

For non-household contacts, engaging in group activities such as dining together or board games have been found to be high risk for transmission. So, the risk increases with longer & frequent exposure, close proximity, # of contacts, and group activities especially dining (5/n)

Even in the same household being a spouse/partner, sleeping in the same room or sharing the same sleeping space, frequent daily contact with the index case, and dining in close proximity has been associated with increased risk of transmission. (4/n)

Contact pattern: We now know that sustained close contact drives the majority of infections and clusters. For instance, close family/friend contacts and gatherings are a higher risk for transmission than market shopping or brief community encounters. (3/n)

Over the last 6 months, we've learned a lot about how SARS-CoV-2 spreads What does the evidence so far tell us about SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics, high-risk activities and environments? Thread (1/n) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3692807

More from @IAStartingLine

atest Iowa COVID case numbers, for context https://nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/iowa-coronavirus-cases.html…

I'd say it's shocking that a sitting senator would be floating the (debunked) idea that COVID actually killed less than 10,000 people, but of course the president was retweeting it so I guess it's not so shocking after all.

owa COVID numbers are spiking. Jodi Ernst says she doesn't believe them, suggests doctors may be inflating figures to get higher reimbursement. Via @wcfcourier https://wcfcourier.com/news/local/ernst-in-rural-waterloo-says-senate-race-will-be-expensive-close/article_c29ee1b6-be44-5dc7-ab11-7261353cda39.html…

sadly squares with my own impression of social media 'debate' - as someone who works on both argumentation and belief formation across social networks, this strikes me as every bit as big a problem as the spread of conspiracy

FDA Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine efficacy results are great, but aren't nearly as great as presented for severe infections. Everyone has seen fig below on cases in vaccine (blue) & placebo (red) over time. Thread.

10) The world is better, we are all better for an engaged, committed, creative USA, for your leadership, your generosity and your partnership. In recent years that has been harder, we have missed you & look forward to a new dawn.

9) I remember the Grand Challenges meeting in London Oct 2016, just before another US election. To all American friends & colleagues, think of course of USA when you vote, but also think of Americas & your role in the world.

8) Crisis has also shown what progress can be made by breaking down barriers, thru open sharing data & results, across borders & specialities. It is possible to disrupt traditional methods & not cut corners.We can speed up science,R&D, innovation & access. We can catalyse change.

Science has rarely been so in public eye for good & bad. Must acknowledge what science can do & what its limitations are. Humility is a central part of science. This will be true as we come thru current crisis & science will need to look critically at itself & be challenged

7) Science is part of political discourse and cannot be isolated from it. That can be a difficult. Pay tribute to all those who have stood up & be counted, arguing for truth, transparency, equity despite often personal cost & as some suffered threats & public vilification.