2020 US Election

  On 10/4/2022 at 8:18 AM, ignatius said:

Anyway. I think the point is there’s 600,000 fewer republicans in Florida and Ohio. 

Congrats.

More importantly though, do the potential (excess) democratic voters actually vote or are they going to reason themselves out of voting? The potential dem voters seem particularly good at that, don't you think? There's always a reason not to vote....

  On 10/4/2022 at 8:18 AM, Satans Little Helper said:

Thanks! Here's the abstract:

Evidence of "a link" means there's a correlation. And that doesn't mean there's evidence of a causal relation.

In terms of stuff worth mentioning, here's a couple:

- (again) correlation is not causation (tiresome I know, but needs to be repeated at nauseam. apparently. this was an obvious example. should be able to spot it from a mile) 

- journalists are not scientists

- some journalists have a particularly poor record with fact finding and interpreting said facts. especially when it comes to science. 

- nuance and modern day journalism seem mutually exclusive. 

- twitter is a form of social media. does the term "social media" still need any explanation at this point in time?

- a journalist posting stuff on twitter is not journalism but a form of personal diarrhoea 

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Not sure anyone ever said there's a causal relation, even your hated journalist.  I don't see any issue with the language he's using; he's quoting facts from the paper and using language like "suggests", not "proves".  Please correct me if I'm wrong.  You don't need to be a scientist to be able to read and understand a scientific paper (if it's written well), and then report some facts and conjecture about what the data suggests as long as you use the appropriate language which I think he did here.

We'd never be able to find a true causal relation here because nobody would ever be allowed to run an experiment with control and experiment groups who were kept from and exposed to COVID, respectively.  This was about the best kind of "natural experiment" as you're going to get with this sort of thing.

  On 10/4/2022 at 7:50 AM, ignatius said:

here's the paper he got the info from. it's the link in the first tweet. 

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30512/w30512.pdf

one thing worth pointing out is that in the discussion section of the paper at the very end, the authors state:

  Quote

Second, because we did not have information on an individual’s vaccination status, analyses of the association between vaccination rates and excess deaths relied on county-level vaccination rates.

 and:

  Quote

Lack of individual-level vaccination status limits our ability to draw broad conclusions, but the results suggest that the well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republicans and Democrats [10, 7, 8, 13] have already had serious consequences for the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the United States.

so it seems they were able to get individual level data on mortality rates + political affiliation, but they weren't able to get individual data as to whether the person was vaccinated or not. they did get vax data on a county wide level, but I'm wondering if maybe Hippa laws prevent handing over individual level vax data...I'm not sure.

but yeah, the overall message being relayed is that registered republicans have higher death rates than dems in these states, and that dems have a higher vax rate than republicans. therefore safe to say that being vaccinated means you have a better chance at living longer, especially during the time period they assessed...but this shit is like a no brainer to most people that think logically on things. it still will do nothing to convince the "other half" of the population, that believes in the la-la land fox news version of reality, think that donnie is the savior, all that crap.

  On 10/4/2022 at 4:45 PM, zero said:

Hippa laws prevent handing over individual level vax data...I'm not sure.

pretty sure that's correct. vax status is subject to hippa. 

for me this is all kinda the punctuation on the well reported trend of segments of the right not getting vax'd for whatever reason.. often conspiracy.. often "but muh freedoms".

it's been reported a few times that people around trump were telling him to start talking positively about the vaccines because "all your base are dying" from covid. there are some deeply red places w/very high death rates.. or there were as the pandemic got going. 

  On 10/4/2022 at 4:45 PM, zero said:

one thing worth pointing out is that in the discussion section of the paper at the very end, the authors state:

 and:

so it seems they were able to get individual level data on mortality rates + political affiliation, but they weren't able to get individual data as to whether the person was vaccinated or not. they did get vax data on a county wide level, but I'm wondering if maybe Hippa laws prevent handing over individual level vax data...I'm not sure.

but yeah, the overall message being relayed is that registered republicans have higher death rates than dems in these states, and that dems have a higher vax rate than republicans. therefore safe to say that being vaccinated means you have a better chance at living longer, especially during the time period they assessed...but this shit is like a no brainer to most people that think logically on things. it still will do nothing to convince the "other half" of the population, that believes in the la-la land fox news version of reality, think that donnie is the savior, all that crap.

 

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Fair enough. It's just the message of this so-called scientific article. (doesn't look peer reviewed, btw. may well be a couple of students) It's basically some primitive Dems vs. Reps argument with a faint veneer of science. Which  - i believe - doesn't help at all. But whatever though. Twitter-fight this pseudo political battle all you want, I guess. Looks like a waste of time to me. Don't expect any anti-vaxxers to think differently. And with respect to this paper, well I just think it's shoddy work to create some stats based on political preference and push the results into some paper as if it has a meaningful message. Again, not helpful by the slightest. But by all means though, if you like the message of the article: enjoy.

  Quote

therefore safe to say that being vaccinated means you have a better chance at living longer,

that's actually not safe to say based on these results. at least, as long as there's no causal relationship. again, the outcomes could be explained by multiple factors (corr. is not causation etc)

  On 10/4/2022 at 7:08 PM, Satans Little Helper said:

(doesn't look peer reviewed, btw. may well be a couple of students) 

Says right on the second page "NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications".

Hopefully a peer-reviewed publication will come from this data.

  On 10/4/2022 at 12:53 PM, randomsummer said:

Not sure anyone ever said there's a causal relation, even your hated journalist.  I don't see any issue with the language he's using; he's quoting facts from the paper and using language like "suggests", not "proves".  Please correct me if I'm wrong.  You don't need to be a scientist to be able to read and understand a scientific paper (if it's written well), and then report some facts and conjecture about what the data suggests as long as you use the appropriate language which I think he did here.

We'd never be able to find a true causal relation here because nobody would ever be allowed to run an experiment with control and experiment groups who were kept from and exposed to COVID, respectively.  This was about the best kind of "natural experiment" as you're going to get with this sort of thing.

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The difficulty I have with what is happening here, is that a lay person will interpret this in whatever way they want. Without him explicitly spelling out what it doesn't mean, the naive reader can read into this what he or she wants. (call it confirmation bias if you will) Imo, good journalism is about knowing your readers and actively trying to avoid leaving stuff open like this. Or more specifically, he basically leaves the door open for people to use it for some inane dems=good and reps=bad type of argument. Which is frankly a misuse of these results.

BTW, I have no problem with people having opinions about dems/reps and whatnot. But I do have a problem with people using bs-arguments to push their opinions as if they are factual. Which is just rubbish.

  On 10/4/2022 at 8:06 PM, randomsummer said:

Says right on the second page "NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications".

Hopefully a peer-reviewed publication will come from this data.

Thanks. I don't expect one though. Have you seen many peer reviewed articles like this? I haven't! (and for good reasons probably)

O, and this is another problem when it comes to presenting results like this (on twitter). Again, it's really bs what is happening here. And it flies past most peoples heads why that is the case. Said journalist should know better.

  On 10/4/2022 at 9:14 PM, Satans Little Helper said:

Thanks. I don't expect one though. Have you seen many peer reviewed articles like this? I haven't! (and for good reasons probably)

O, and this is another problem when it comes to presenting results like this (on twitter). Again, it's really bs what is happening here. And it flies past most peoples heads why that is the case. Said journalist should know better.

 

I'm pretty sure this paper is from people who are peripheral to the field of epidemiology.  The author affiliations are from the Yale public health school, and school of management.  This reads more like an economic paper to me; in fact, it's exactly the type of natural experiment that economists love to analyze.  It's possible that some researchers in a more appropriate field will ask for their data and do their own analyses.

Regarding the dude on twitter, to borrow from behavioral economics, look at his incentives.  He's incentivized to get clicks and retweets, not to necessarily be glaringly accurate and provide a rundown of the merits and demerits of the work.  This system isn't going to change, so instead of hating on journalists and social media (not aimed at you in particular) we need to teach people to think critically about where information is coming from, who is providing that information, what potential motives they may have.  If we can do that, we have a chance to at least create a culture where journalistic entities act more responsibly.

In the end, I don't think there's anything wrong with this paper.  It seems well-formulated, and it's up to the reader to read it with all the caveats of non-peer-review and make their own conclusions.

  On 10/4/2022 at 7:08 PM, Satans Little Helper said:

Don't expect any anti-vaxxers to think differently. 

that's it right there. if the purpose of this paper/discussion was to (again) point out that getting vaccinated during a pandemic (1) makes sense and (2) doesn't lead to an early death/growing a tail/producing green colored babies, then it succeeds in pointing this out IMO. but it will not do shit to convince anyone otherwise at this point, I'm afraid. you could throw all the scientific data you want at the maga crowd, and they'll come back with krakens and other fantasy land excuses for their lies and unintelligent behavior.

and I do get your point about social media easily feeding either political group with evidence that backs up their arguments, using limited numbers of characters on twitter or what not. then this info gets used in forming an opinion on something from a skewed viewpoint. it takes looking at things from all sides to make a solid determination on something, not always looking at it from one side or the other. social media is super convenient for providing a convincing one-sided take on things, with not as much thought given to the alternative.

but if a social media post DOES lead to someone going down the path of questioning or considering the other side, then more power to it. it's just that I'm honestly not sure how much of the time this happens. it seems to me there are a ton of people out there that take a twitter post as absolute gospel, which is wrong...

https://truthsocial.com/embed/109089793652113562

ted cruz finally has a good reason why he never did anything when trump dissed his wife. mitch didn't do anything either. so there.

bet you both those bozos george lincoln and abraham washington wouldn't even know how to fight for free speech like our boy big T

Dems are funding xtreme Republicans

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/

  On 10/6/2022 at 1:12 AM, marf said:

Dems are funding xtreme Republicans

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/

yeah.. in some districts. a real gamble imo. i get what they're trying to do but that shit could go all wrong. 

there was some bits of reporting about this for a while but it never really got traction. 

  On 10/6/2022 at 12:59 AM, Nebraska said:

bet you both those bozos george lincoln and abraham washington wouldn't even know how to fight for free speech like our boy big T

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why does he say "lincoln" that way? why anything. 

first shot in the civil war is a beer thrown at a comedian. 

the club is pressing charges. i think the dude got arrested. he was apparently the husband of the female heckler. this is pretty funny exchange. 

she picks up the beer and chugs what's left like a boss. 

  On 10/10/2022 at 12:21 AM, ignatius said:

first shot in the civil war is a beer thrown at a comedian. 

the club is pressing charges. i think the dude got arrested. he was apparently the husband of the female heckler. this is pretty funny exchange. 

she picks up the beer and chugs what's left like a boss. 

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i saw someone throw a glass pitcher at dana ghould at helium a few years back. it missed and broke against the wall. unfortunately this isn’t that uncommon

Classic zinger:“I can tell from the fact that you’re still talking when nobody wants you to that you voted for trump”.

?

politics are yucky, mainly because people believe in them.

  On 10/7/2022 at 8:51 PM, Nebraska said:

 

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  On 10/10/2022 at 1:37 AM, exitonly said:

i saw someone throw a glass pitcher at dana ghould at helium a few years back. it missed and broke against the wall. unfortunately this isn’t that uncommon

shots fired! biden better lace up or catch that fade like a sucker

  On 10/18/2022 at 2:22 AM, Nebraska said:

shots fired! biden better lace up or catch that fade like a sucker

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wish we had some carl sagans running things.