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Red zone versus green zone - Printable Version

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Red zone versus green zone - BostonCard - 12-14-2020

Good Twitter thread here looking at the difference between the countries that have successfully dealt with the virus and those who didn’t.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1338120658534842368?s=21[/tweet]

BC

RE: Red zone versus green zone - DocSavage87 - 12-14-2020

(12-14-2020, 12:24 AM)BostonCard Wrote:  Good Twitter thread here looking at the difference between the countries that have successfully dealt with the virus and those who didn’t.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1338120658534842368?s=21[/tweet]

BC

Yeah, I was going to post that.  Here's a link to the web page with the points in one place:
https://www.endcoronavirus.org/papers/covid-strategies

For the US, a separate bullet point can be added that not only did leaders not "provide clear information" but the Trump administration and a political party has actively provided disinformation and promoted social resistance.  The infection rate of one party's leadership vs the other is a pretty clear indication of the problem.  It's absolutely amazing that Trump, in his "always about me" reasoning, tried to score political points by putting out there the FDA chief had to clear vaccine or resign.  For a political talking point about how you were supposedly strong in pushing the vaccine through supposed bureaucracy, he yet again hindered the public message and assurance of the safety of the vaccine.

Things are bad enough when you have your leaders on board (see most of Europe), but when they are actively undermining efforts it raises problems to a whole new level.

RE: Red zone versus green zone - g1313 - 12-14-2020

Curious what makes this person more credible than other smart, credentialed scientists who are not epidemiologists (he is a physicist) who have been roundly criticized for not sticking to their lane.  I poked around on his website and there doesn't seem to be data to back up these claims. They seem intuitively reasonable to me, but not well sourced.

RE: Red zone versus green zone - BostonCard - 12-14-2020

(12-14-2020, 02:46 PM)g1313 Wrote:  Curious what makes this person more credible than other smart, credentialed scientists who are not epidemiologists (he is a physicist) who have been roundly criticized for not sticking to their lane.  I poked around on his website and there doesn't seem to be data to back up these claims. They seem intuitively reasonable to me, but not well sourced.

This is a good point, though I think the difference is that he isn't a Johny-come-lately to pandemics.  It looks like he heads the New England Complex Systems Institute, which looks like a think tank that studies complex systems, and has been studying disease outbreaks, including Zika and Ebola before COVID was a thing.

For example, he had this white paper in 2016 (https://necsi.edu/stopping-hospital-acquired-infections-using-complex-systems-science) about stopping hospital acquired infections and this paper in PLoS on community early detection from the Ebola pandemic (https://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/beyond-contact-tracing-community-based-early-detection-for-ebola-response/)

HE also seems to be publishing on COVID-19 in reputable journals, including this piece in the Proceedings of the NAtional Academy of Sciences:
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/28/16092.long

At this point, I would consider him less of a physicist and more as someone who studies complex systems, including pandemics, who came to the field from a background in physics.

BC

RE: Red zone versus green zone - DocSavage87 - 12-14-2020

(12-14-2020, 04:01 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  
(12-14-2020, 02:46 PM)g1313 Wrote:  Curious what makes this person more credible than other smart, credentialed scientists who are not epidemiologists (he is a physicist) who have been roundly criticized for not sticking to their lane.  I poked around on his website and there doesn't seem to be data to back up these claims. They seem intuitively reasonable to me, but not well sourced.

This is a good point, though I think the difference is that he isn't a Johny-come-lately to pandemics.  It looks like he heads the New England Complex Systems Institute, which looks like a think tank that studies complex systems, and has been studying disease outbreaks, including Zika and Ebola before COVID was a thing.

For example, he had this white paper in 2016 (https://necsi.edu/stopping-hospital-acquired-infections-using-complex-systems-science) about stopping hospital acquired infections and this paper in PLoS on community early detection from the Ebola pandemic (https://currents.plos.org/outbreaks/article/beyond-contact-tracing-community-based-early-detection-for-ebola-response/)

HE also seems to be publishing on COVID-19 in reputable journals, including this piece in the Proceedings of the NAtional Academy of Sciences:
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/28/16092.long

At this point, I would consider him less of a physicist and more as someone who studies complex systems, including pandemics, who came to the field from a background in physics.

BC

That's a good way to vet people: the quality of their arguments, the supporting data, and their prior research and papers in relevant fields.  Physicists frequently cross disciplinary lines.  I worked with a former theoretical physicist who became an acknowledged leader in a subfield of biological research.  They are extremely competent in hard-core mathematics :)

RE: Red zone versus green zone - BostonCard - 12-15-2020

(12-14-2020, 02:46 PM)g1313 Wrote:  Curious what makes this person more credible than other smart, credentialed scientists who are not epidemiologists (he is a physicist) who have been roundly criticized for not sticking to their lane.  I poked around on his website and there doesn't seem to be data to back up these claims. They seem intuitively reasonable to me, but not well sourced.

By the way, your post made me think of this XKCD comic:

[Image: physicists.png]

BC