Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[mission27]

6 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I think most of the time I've probably been more annoyed with how it's been described second-hand. Like I saw one this morning that was something like "mission is just calculating statistical trends" or something like that, when in reality they're posting a picture of a series of scores with less transparency than a Russian Olympic judge that has as much COVID-19 data in it as an actual picture of Taylor Swift. Then one question later the response is "but it's just a football website".

And every 100 pages we have this conversation where people say "no we aren't taking this seriously", followed by 90 pages of the same people taking it seriously. So now we're here again, it's groundhog day, I'm bored and I have e-mails to attend to. See you all in 100 pages.

Here's the issue though, its a lose lose with these kind of complaints... 

You say we don't explain our methodology.  Then we repeatedly explain it (trailing n day average of new cases divided by active cases n days ago, we even told everyone when we decided to move N from 5 days to 7 days because we wanted to be transparent, we tell everyone the websites we used to get our data every single day).  But that's not enough because "its buried in 100 pages of other stuff."  And yet if we posted this explanation every day we'd be accused of monopolizing the thread.  So to address what I think is a pretty remote concern that someone will misconstrue our rankings, we actually have added very similar language at the top of our post every day explaining our methodology in simplified terms, and have repeatedly explained this to anyone who asked.  And yet its still apparently not enough and people act like we are out there selling snake oil and telling people to jump off a bridge.  

What do you honestly want us to do?

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 minutes ago, theJ said:

The stocks thread is way more dangerous in that regard.

That's where I would disagree with you. You can't be infected with bad financial advice.

[mistakey]

2 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Here's the issue though, its a lose lose with these kind of complaints... 

You say we don't explain our methodology.  Then we repeatedly explain it (trailing n day average of new cases divided by active cases n days ago, we even told everyone when we decided to move N from 5 days to 7 days because we wanted to be transparent, we tell everyone the websites we used to get our data every single day).  But that's not enough because "its buried in 100 pages of other stuff."  And yet if we posted this explanation every day we'd be accused of monopolizing the thread.  So to address what I think is a pretty remote concern that someone will misconstrue our rankings, we actually have added very similar language at the top of our post every day explaining our methodology in simplified terms, and have repeatedly explained this to anyone who asked.  And yet its still apparently not enough and people act like we are out there selling snake oil and telling people to jump off a bridge.  

What do you honestly want us to do?

Stop posting the mols would be great

[skywindO2]

I'm really looking forward to not having to step off the pavement and on to the grass to maintain 6 foot distance between myself and other runners/walkers, especially because most never extend the same courtesy to me. 

And I'm not sure why anyone takes the MOL seriously. They don't even correctly recognize Style as Taylor Swift's best song. 

[mission27]

2 minutes ago, mistakey said:

Its literally the same person having the same convo in both of them based off a joke shtick

When was the last time I posted about remdesivir in either thread, other than the day it was literally approved by the FDA for emergency use?  It has not generally been a theme of our MoLs or something we are trying to promote.  Whenever there has been news about it we've participated in the discussion and, as rams suggested, we have disclosed our 'conflict of interest' each time its been brought up.  And in fact basically everything we've said about it being promising was seconded by rams and others and has turned out to be accurate based on the studies.  And the stock has been between $75 and $80 for most of the last 3 months so I'm not sure how anyone lost their life savings because the stock they chose to buy went down 6%.  You're being way over the top tbh.

[mission27]

6 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

That's where I would disagree with you. You can't be infected with bad financial advice.

Which is it? 

MoL are hucksters trying to pump Gilead stock by saying literally the same exact thing rams is saying about remdesivir, that turned out to be true based on the NIH study. 

Or we are giving bad medical advice... like you know, follow public health guidelines and wear masks and such.

Decide what your narrative is going to be before you come at us especially if your two options are that weak.

Edited May 18, 2020 by mission27

[mistakey]

2 minutes ago, mission27 said:

When was the last time I posted about remdesivir in either thread, other than the day it was literally approved by the FDA for emergency use?  It has not generally been a theme of our MoLs or something we are trying to promote.  Whenever there has been news about it we've participated in the discussion and, as rams suggested, we have disclosed our 'conflict of interest' each time its been brought up.  And in fact basically everything we've said about it being promising was seconded by rams and others and has turned out to be accurate based on the studies.  And the stock has been between $75 and $80 for most of the last 3 months so I'm not sure how anyone lost their life savings because the stock they chose to buy went down 6%.  You're being way over the top tbh.

I may be over the top, but you cant fathom the possibility that you two are being irresponsible

[ramssuperbowl99]

Just now, mission27 said:

Which is it? 

MoL are hucksters trying to pump Gilead stock by saying literally the same exact thing rams is saying about remdesivir, that turned out to be true based on the NIH study. 

Or we are giving bad medical advice... like you know, follow public health guidelines and wear masks and such.

Decide what your narrative is going to be before you come at us especially if your two options are that weak.

I haven't accused you of either. 

[mission27]

1 minute ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I haven't accused you of either. 

Well, thank you.  mbtl has repeatedly with zero evidence and its getting kind of old tbh

[mistakey]

2 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I haven't accused you of either. 

For the record i havent either.  I have accused you of being irresponsible, acting flippantly, and misleading people even if unintentionally.  

[ramssuperbowl99]

16 minutes ago, mission27 said:

What do you honestly want us to do?

This is a fair question. 

There isn't an answer that appeases everyone. The easy thing to do is stop posting the MoLs, because there are people who take them seriously. But okay, that doesn't work. 

I would say that if the "MoL" metric is intended to be a way to measure past growth and there is no future-looking component, then when you discuss the MoL it should all be past tense. That means you would avoid statements like these:

Quote

Tier 1: Outbreak under control, safe to begin relaxing social distancing measures

 

Because the statement in your disclaimer:

Quote

MoL score is a simple metric for measuring rate of spread of the novel coronavirus within communities.

doesn't allude to any future projections or public policy decisions, but that's how your results are being grouped together. So your description of your metric in your disclaimer doesn't match how you've been reporting or contextualizing the results from your metric.

Edited May 18, 2020 by ramssuperbowl99

[mission27]

1 minute ago, mistakey said:

For the record i havent either.  I have accused you of being irresponsible, acting flippantly, and misleading people even if unintentionally.  

Irresponsible how?  Your suggestion was that what we are posting could somehow be construed by a reasonable person as advice to do something reckless like stop social distancing or dump their life savings into a single stock based on something they read on a football forum.  I've asked you to point me to something we've said that a reasonable person would interpret that way or an example of anyone who has done that and you can't.  

Misleading people how?  We are posting a trailing average rate of case growth.  If you want to calculate it yourself you can literally verify our numbers every day.  That's not misinformation.  If you want to propose or post a different metric you find more useful you can.  We are just posting one metric we have found to be helpful in understanding where various geographies are on the epidemic curve, that by the way is a metric used by a lot of epidemiologists in one form or another and the results of which have aligned very closely with mainstreams narratives about which areas are doing better / worse, second waves, etc. 

Finally... flippant?  Perhaps and I think this is ultimately your main issue with us.  Because you are having a very hard time with this whole situation as most people are and your personal style of responding to this tends towards commiserating with others about how awful and hopeless it is.  Whereas TLO and myself are generally more optimistic about the situation gradually improving and choose to emphasize the progress we are collectively making.  Its fine for you to disagree or even be offended by our tone, or by us trying to keep the conversation light, but if that's your issue there's no need to pretend you honestly think someone is going to do something crazy because of what TLO and I have posted, the content of which has consistently been reasonable and advocated responsible actions.

[theJ]

26 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

That's where I would disagree with you. You can't be infected with bad financial advice.

No i'm saying the advice given in the stock thread in general is way more dangerous than MOL posting about some random company stock in here.

There's some serious advice given in there by people who may or may not know what they're doing (some obviously don't).  Like i said before, i want to take some people by the throat in that thread.  But we're not making a big deal of that why exactly?

[mistakey]

6 minutes ago, mission27 said:

Irresponsible how?  Your suggestion was that what we are posting could somehow be construed by a reasonable person as advice to do something reckless like stop social distancing or dump their life savings into a single stock based on something they read on a football forum.  I've asked you to point me to something we've said that a reasonable person would interpret that way or an example of anyone who has done that and you can't.  

Misleading people how?  We are posting a trailing average rate of case growth.  If you want to calculate it yourself you can literally verify our numbers every day.  That's not misinformation.  If you want to propose or post a different metric you find more useful you can.  We are just posting one metric we have found to be helpful in understanding where various geographies are on the epidemic curve, that by the way is a metric used by a lot of epidemiologists in one form or another and the results of which have aligned very closely with mainstreams narratives about which areas are doing better / worse, second waves, etc. 

Finally... flippant?  Perhaps and I think this is ultimately your main issue with us.  Because you are having a very hard time with this whole situation as most people are and your personal style of responding to this tends towards commiserating with others about how awful and hopeless it is.  Whereas TLO and myself are generally more optimistic about the situation gradually improving and choose to emphasize the progress we are collectively making.  Its fine for you to disagree or even be offended by our tone, or by us trying to keep the conversation light, but if that's your issue there's no need to pretend you honestly think someone is going to do something crazy because of what TLO and I have posted, the content of which has consistently been reasonable and advocated responsible actions.

Because you know its a shtick and people have demonstrably said they take you seriously.  it literally has happened. 
 

and im doin good.  I celebrate the successes, of which modernas news today is massive.  
 

 

[mission27]

5 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

This is a fair question. 

There isn't an answer that appeases everyone. The easy thing to do is stop posting the MoLs, because there are people who take them seriously. But okay, that doesn't work. 

I would say that if the "MoL" metric is intended to be a way to measure past growth and there is no future-looking component, then when you discuss the MoL it should all be past tense. That means you would avoid statements like these:

 

Because the statement in your disclaimer:

doesn't allude to any future projections or public policy decisions, but that's how your results are being grouped together. So your description of your metric in your disclaimer doesn't match how you've been reporting or contextualizing the results from your metric.

But the way we are measuring the outbreak (case growth % basically) is the way most public health officials look at this and make decisions about next steps.  Yes it is backward looking.  But essentially: once new case growth is low enough, generally as measured using trailing 7 day averages, you start to relax distancing measures and if you see new case growth start to spike you press pause again.  That's how Birx, CDC, state departments of health, etc. are looking at this and describing this and its pretty standard practice.  Relying on forward looking projection models is difficult given the huge amount of uncertainty and error bars there and we saw that with the disaster that was the White House's trumpeting of IHME. 

I'm happy to add language to the effect of "the MoL is not a forward looking model" but at the end of the day I think backward looking data is the most important component of making decisions about the future.