Are all those people you are talking about outside of the rationality community? One thing that I would see plausible is that people, who are generally psychologically suggestible and who believe the vaccine is dangerous, have their bodies overreact when they are faced with the more normal vaccine side-effects. Such a dynamic might produce more vaccine side-effects in people you know from a spiritual context than appear in the rationalist community.
One step that could be taken to verify an existing pattern of a lot of vaccine side-effects would be to simply hire a SurveyMonkey audience and see what people report when asked through that channel.
But how in the bajeezus can anyone possibly extrapolate from there to how long it takes to become symptomatic? In need of hospitalization, sure, but how is anyone getting not-heavily-biased data on symptom strength below the hospitalization threshold?
We have people we pay to do contact tracing. There are likely cases where that comes with both asking for symptoms and doing testing.
There was, best as I could tell, active (if unintentional) data destruction quite early on in the pandemic. Maybe it’s still going on? Hospitals had financial incentives to find reasons why people who died had died of Covid. Lots of bodies got cremated before autopsies could happen.
From a conversation I had with a doctor, it seems that our medical system generally does a lot fewer autopsies than we did 20 years ago. There seems to be a general culture change here. The question of how much resources our medical system should invest into doing more autopsies however isn’t trivial. It would raise health care costs if we give hospitals more money if they do more autopsies.
Maybe hospitals do have special genetic tests and reliably do those? But then isn’t there going to be a pretty strong bias based on the fact that these are only for people who are getting hospitalized?
Hospitals aren’t the only places that run tests besides at-home tests. The labs that do PCR testing retest some of the positive tests with variant-specific tests. Different countries have different policies about that.
Are all those people you are talking about outside of the rationality community?
Yep. As far as I know, but I’d be pretty surprised if any of them were here.
We have people we pay to do contact tracing.
Would you be willing to point at more details about this? I recall seeing a lot about how we weren’t doing adequate contact tracing, but not much on how we have been.
From a conversation I had with a doctor, it seems that our medical system generally does a lot fewer autopsies than we did 20 years ago.
Mmm. Good to know.
Although that basically means the problem with data collection I was describing is actually a step farther up the chain. That cremation isn’t where the data are getting destroyed. If they’re not even bothering to verify the causes of death via autopsies and there was (is?) financial incentive to conclude “Covid”… well, I believe in incentive landscapes.
The labs that do PCR testing retest some of the positive tests with variant-specific tests. Different countries have different policies about that.
Ah. And some people go through the different countries’ policies and numbers and do some data crunching to extrapolate something? Okay. Who are these data crunchers then? All this is an opaque screen from where I’m standing. I just see final numbers asserted in public.
(Thank you, by the way. Gratitude for the energy you’ve put into answering this.)
I think they are basically doing a COVID-19 test and then making the claim about the cause of death based on clinical history.
From my doctor friend, the main concern was that not doing the autopsies leads to not having good statistical data about which organs get damaged in patients dying with COVID and how that differs with new varients. That would be traditionally information that’s useful for doctors who want to prevent patients from dying but it’s not structured the way the modern EBM thinking about treatment goes.
Ah. And some people go through the different countries’ policies and numbers and do some data crunching to extrapolate something?
There’s a reason Zvi was focusing on Denmark’s data. They have the best data.
At this point in time, I think most countries are doing samples. You don’t need to test everyone to have statistically significant data.
Would you be willing to point at more details about this? I recall seeing a lot about how we weren’t doing adequate contact tracing, but not much on how we have been.
Contact tracing is often getting to people to late and it’s not done in an amount that you would need to track all the cases but those contact tracers are still around. (but I haven’t looked into detail into the system; it’s not something like the autopsy topics that I discussed with a doctor who has a good understanding of what’s happening)
I’m curious how that coincides with no such person reporting their experiences at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XnRTP4dq3dkdwwtdS/which-rationalists-faced-significant-side-effects-from-covid. For me this thread was a test about whether I should look more into vaccine site-effects and the lack of reporting suggests that they aren’t very common.
Are all those people you are talking about outside of the rationality community? One thing that I would see plausible is that people, who are generally psychologically suggestible and who believe the vaccine is dangerous, have their bodies overreact when they are faced with the more normal vaccine side-effects. Such a dynamic might produce more vaccine side-effects in people you know from a spiritual context than appear in the rationalist community.
One step that could be taken to verify an existing pattern of a lot of vaccine side-effects would be to simply hire a SurveyMonkey audience and see what people report when asked through that channel.
We have people we pay to do contact tracing. There are likely cases where that comes with both asking for symptoms and doing testing.
From a conversation I had with a doctor, it seems that our medical system generally does a lot fewer autopsies than we did 20 years ago. There seems to be a general culture change here. The question of how much resources our medical system should invest into doing more autopsies however isn’t trivial. It would raise health care costs if we give hospitals more money if they do more autopsies.
Hospitals aren’t the only places that run tests besides at-home tests. The labs that do PCR testing retest some of the positive tests with variant-specific tests. Different countries have different policies about that.
Yep. As far as I know, but I’d be pretty surprised if any of them were here.
Would you be willing to point at more details about this? I recall seeing a lot about how we weren’t doing adequate contact tracing, but not much on how we have been.
Mmm. Good to know.
Although that basically means the problem with data collection I was describing is actually a step farther up the chain. That cremation isn’t where the data are getting destroyed. If they’re not even bothering to verify the causes of death via autopsies and there was (is?) financial incentive to conclude “Covid”… well, I believe in incentive landscapes.
Ah. And some people go through the different countries’ policies and numbers and do some data crunching to extrapolate something? Okay. Who are these data crunchers then? All this is an opaque screen from where I’m standing. I just see final numbers asserted in public.
(Thank you, by the way. Gratitude for the energy you’ve put into answering this.)
I think they are basically doing a COVID-19 test and then making the claim about the cause of death based on clinical history.
From my doctor friend, the main concern was that not doing the autopsies leads to not having good statistical data about which organs get damaged in patients dying with COVID and how that differs with new varients. That would be traditionally information that’s useful for doctors who want to prevent patients from dying but it’s not structured the way the modern EBM thinking about treatment goes.
There’s a reason Zvi was focusing on Denmark’s data. They have the best data.
At this point in time, I think most countries are doing samples. You don’t need to test everyone to have statistically significant data.
Contact tracing is often getting to people to late and it’s not done in an amount that you would need to track all the cases but those contact tracers are still around. (but I haven’t looked into detail into the system; it’s not something like the autopsy topics that I discussed with a doctor who has a good understanding of what’s happening)