September 9, 2021
Briefly
- Good Herald piece on the Covid network contagion model
- Andrew Chen organised a bunch of people to write a letter about privacy for Covid location data. He’s also been saying the same things to journalists. It’s not that we think the government has any intention of misusing the data or letting the private sector misuse it, but the protections aren’t all that strong, the data collection is not voluntary, and having high-quality data is very important.
- There’s an interesting poll on US vaccine attitudes from the Washington Post and ABC News. Highlights: 82% of unvaccinated people said the FDA full approval for the Pfizer vaccine won’t make any difference to their decision. Crosstabulations (don’t you love polls with actual detail) showed 18% of unvaccinated respondents were in favour of requiring vaccination for school teachers and staff, and 15% requiring vaccination for students when a vaccine is approved at their age. 72% of those employed by someone else and not vaccinated said they would resign if required by their employer to be vaccinated. Politics site The Hill headlined this as Over 70 percent of unvaccinated Americans in survey would quit their job if vaccines are mandated, which is unlikely to be true — it’s a lot easier to claim to a poller you’d quit than to actually do it.
- Derek Lowe writes about bad clinical trials in Covid “I’m all for trying out new ideas – that’s essential, in fact. But try them out for real. … If you’re going to do research on human beings, you owe it to the subjects of your trial and to the rest of the medical community – and to the rest of the world, in this case – to do it right. To ask solid questions and get solid data on them that will allow you to make a real decision at the end of it.”
- Animation of vaccination progress in NZ (from Jonathan Marshall)
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Did you see the other good news? That Siouxsie Wiles has developed a new funding model for female academics. The thing is to participate in the media with intelligence and grace while fending off hateful attacks from social media. Then when the misogynists have become so blatant and vile, there is a backlash and people decide to donate to her research.
You know, once again, men have got such a raw deal – it’s just so unfair that they can’t tap into this funding stream.
I guess there will be some lively discussions in the university boardrooms next week, as they decide which female academic they should get out into the media so they can also grab a share of that funding before Auckland Uni gets it all.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126354327/covid19-donations-fly-in-for-dr-siouxsie-wiles-research-after-judith-collins-calls-her-a-hypocrite
I guess I have to add /sarc to be totally clear.
3 years ago
Ragefunding is an old model, especially for the US right wing — Siouxsie (or her supporters) maybe should get credit for using it for Good rather than Evil, though
3 years ago