Friday, May 22, 2020
I usually scan the interwebs for articles before bed. Last night, I fell asleep with the Latin phrase "reductio ad nausem" in my head. The great Google tells me it is not a real Latin phrase, yet it feels oddly accurate. It is a bastardization of other pithy Latin phrases about reductionist arguments. I believe I mean "arguing endlessly to the point of nausea." There is now a blossoming in the debate over data integrity. To the exclusion of other articles, it seems. Concepts like "a positive test" and "COVID-related death" carry a political dimension that color any resulting work. There is high variability as to how these terms are defined. As a result, to read an article and to understand events, one must have a sustained intensity around reviewing source data and considering the author's assumptions and potential bias. It is exhausting, infuriating, and confers the possibility of harm. I am frustrated by the issues around transparency, the underappreciation of nuance, and the failure to communicate risk as a continuous (and imprecise) variable related to potential options. All this makes me appreciate the simplicity of (attempts at) growing things and feeding birds (even the angry ones). The red-wing blackbirds have a clear agenda.
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Data Visualization Update
State comparisons:
https://public.tableau.com/views/Coronavirus-ChangeovertimeintheUSA/2_Corona?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link
Rt data
https://public.tableau.com/shared/7FH637YGW?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link
FT data is still the best visualization I have found for country comparisons.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=0&values=deaths
The tableau data is from The COVID Tracking Project, which compiles and rates state-reported data. Please review https://covidtracking.com/ to understand the quality of the data.
----------
A loyal reader sent a thoughtfully written blog from a Dartmouth professor of Epidemiology. It is a good read and something to send to family and friends to remind them of the risks associated with various reopening activities.
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (a CDC publication on trends in population health) offers a case study of risk from a religious gathering in March.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6920e2.htm?s_cid=mm6920e2_x
Here is a Twitter thread started by a biology professor from UW commenting on the potential bias introduced into predictive models when overly conservative or overly optimistic assumptions are used at the start of the calculations.
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1263605696844623873
Here is a non-US source of modeling the epidemic at the US state level. It offers some wider and more variable assumptions leading, as one would expect, to a broader range of predictions.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-23-united-states/
Wired has a very readable article on the politics of counting things.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-politics-of-counting-things-is-about-to-explode/
FiveThirtyEight is an ABC news website offering some additional commentary on misinformation in the time of COVID.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-bad-is-the-covid-19-misinformation-epidemic/
The epidemic has lead Comp-Sci engineering folks at Carnegie Mellon to using AI as a means of analyzing Twitter for bot activity. Having AI tools identify Twitter bots feels like paying to have lawyers talk to each other (just kidding my JLD friends).
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-%E2%80%98reopening-america%E2%80%99-may-be-bots
And, as I have clinic today, it is essential to keep objectivity and empathy high. I found this thoughtful commentary about maintaining compassion in a world of misinformation.
https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/05/empathy-in-the-age-of-misinformation.html
Infographic of the day #1 - This is not particularly novel (nor a perfect analogy), but I think it connotes several themes: COVID, nephrology, and frustration.
https://twitter.com/b_rad85/status/1263053932957446144/photo/1
And, to counterbalance it all - Infographics of the day - an entire gallery of uplifting and positive news:
https://informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnews/
------Bonus Round - Epistemology edition.
I am running late today. I will fudge on a good bonus round by offering a comprehensive visual guide to philosophy. It is a solid one hour read and a pretty good guide to the evolution of human thought through time. But, I leave you with this idea: homo sapiens have been around for 150,000-200,000 years. The infographic covers about 5000 years of human history. What did the other 195,000 years of humans think about this stuff?
https://visual.ly/community/infographic/education/comprehensive-history-philosophy
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
I usually scan the interwebs for articles before bed. Last night, I fell asleep with the Latin phrase "reductio ad nausem" in my head. The great Google tells me it is not a real Latin phrase, yet it feels oddly accurate. It is a bastardization of other pithy Latin phrases about reductionist arguments. I believe I mean "arguing endlessly to the point of nausea." There is now a blossoming in the debate over data integrity. To the exclusion of other articles, it seems. Concepts like "a positive test" and "COVID-related death" carry a political dimension that color any resulting work. There is high variability as to how these terms are defined. As a result, to read an article and to understand events, one must have a sustained intensity around reviewing source data and considering the author's assumptions and potential bias. It is exhausting, infuriating, and confers the possibility of harm. I am frustrated by the issues around transparency, the underappreciation of nuance, and the failure to communicate risk as a continuous (and imprecise) variable related to potential options. All this makes me appreciate the simplicity of (attempts at) growing things and feeding birds (even the angry ones). The red-wing blackbirds have a clear agenda.
----------------
Data Visualization Update
State comparisons:
https://public.tableau.com/views/Coronavirus-ChangeovertimeintheUSA/2_Corona?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link
Rt data
https://public.tableau.com/shared/7FH637YGW?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link
FT data is still the best visualization I have found for country comparisons.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=0&values=deaths
The tableau data is from The COVID Tracking Project, which compiles and rates state-reported data. Please review https://covidtracking.com/ to understand the quality of the data.
----------
A loyal reader sent a thoughtfully written blog from a Dartmouth professor of Epidemiology. It is a good read and something to send to family and friends to remind them of the risks associated with various reopening activities.
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (a CDC publication on trends in population health) offers a case study of risk from a religious gathering in March.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6920e2.htm?s_cid=mm6920e2_x
Here is a Twitter thread started by a biology professor from UW commenting on the potential bias introduced into predictive models when overly conservative or overly optimistic assumptions are used at the start of the calculations.
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1263605696844623873
Here is a non-US source of modeling the epidemic at the US state level. It offers some wider and more variable assumptions leading, as one would expect, to a broader range of predictions.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-23-united-states/
Wired has a very readable article on the politics of counting things.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-politics-of-counting-things-is-about-to-explode/
FiveThirtyEight is an ABC news website offering some additional commentary on misinformation in the time of COVID.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-bad-is-the-covid-19-misinformation-epidemic/
The epidemic has lead Comp-Sci engineering folks at Carnegie Mellon to using AI as a means of analyzing Twitter for bot activity. Having AI tools identify Twitter bots feels like paying to have lawyers talk to each other (just kidding my JLD friends).
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/nearly-half-twitter-accounts-discussing-%E2%80%98reopening-america%E2%80%99-may-be-bots
And, as I have clinic today, it is essential to keep objectivity and empathy high. I found this thoughtful commentary about maintaining compassion in a world of misinformation.
https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/05/empathy-in-the-age-of-misinformation.html
Infographic of the day #1 - This is not particularly novel (nor a perfect analogy), but I think it connotes several themes: COVID, nephrology, and frustration.
https://twitter.com/b_rad85/status/1263053932957446144/photo/1
And, to counterbalance it all - Infographics of the day - an entire gallery of uplifting and positive news:
https://informationisbeautiful.net/beautifulnews/
------Bonus Round - Epistemology edition.
I am running late today. I will fudge on a good bonus round by offering a comprehensive visual guide to philosophy. It is a solid one hour read and a pretty good guide to the evolution of human thought through time. But, I leave you with this idea: homo sapiens have been around for 150,000-200,000 years. The infographic covers about 5000 years of human history. What did the other 195,000 years of humans think about this stuff?
https://visual.ly/community/infographic/education/comprehensive-history-philosophy
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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