Science

WHO’s Shotgun Statistics

by

Instapundit links to a story on a WHO report on Swine-Flu. This bit caught my eye:

Ferguson and his collaborators, part of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Rapid Pandemic Potential Assessment Collaboration, determined that 6,00032,000 individuals had been infected in Mexico by late April.  

Translating from media speak, 6,000-32,000 actually means a 95% confidence level of 19,000 plus/minus 13,000! That’s not a statistic, it’s a shotgun blast of  mathematical  pellets. At long range.

All the rest of the calculations seem to descend from this dubious guess. Why do they even bother? As I’ve written before, bad data are worse than no data at all.  

[Note to grammar nazis: Technically, data is a plural. Datum is the singular.]

All-Natural Seizures

by

All-natural doesn’t mean safe:

Inappropriate use of camphor-containing products may be a common and underappreciated cause of seizures in young children, according to a new study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

Camphor has been used for centuries as a medicine,  antiseptic, insect repellant, spice and incense. I noticed the last time I was in Whole Foods that a lot camphor  preparations  were available, so  apparently  it’s come back into fashion.  

The current all-natural craze is based on the quasi-mystical belief that the safety of a chemical depends on where it came from. This is nonsense.  Anything that is strong enough to have some kind of positive effect is strong enough to have negative effects. The only safe all-natural chemicals are ones that don’t actually do anything.  

Advertising Human Biohazards

by

James Randerson,  whose 11-month-old Daughter caught the  measles because idiots refused vaccinations [h/t Instapundit] observes:

The decision by many of my neighbours not to vaccinate their children is on a par with the drunk who decides to get into his car to drive home. It is a personally reckless action that also endangers the lives of everyone else on the road. Society should view the MMR refuseniks with the same degree of scorn.

My libertarian leanings make me hesitant to force people to medicate themselves, but on the other hand Randerson is absolutely correct when he states that unvaccinated people are an active danger to innocent bystanders.  

How do we resolve this conflict of rights? With clothing!

Read more

Statistical Fuzz

by

So the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy does a study saying that universal health insurance, i.e., socialized medicine, would save 18,000 lives a year. A former Clinton health care advisor says that it would save at most 9,000 lives a year and probably none. Who’s right and how could we tell?

Well, we can’t. The U.S. total annual death rate is 8.28/1000 which comes to 2,484,000 deaths a year. 18,000 is 0.72% of 2,484,000. That means a change in the death rate from 8.28 to 8.34. That means that both estimates of lives saved are so minor compared to the overall death rate that the differences are completely lost in statistical fuzz. Both parties are wildly irresponsible to even pretend that they can estimate such an impact.  

Read more

Swine Flu Shows How We Live In Good Times

by

BBC via Instapundit:

Readers in Mexico have been emailing the BBC describing the sense of fear gripping the country as a result of a flu virus outbreak, which has so far claimed more than 80 lives.

Well, that’s from Mexico so the number might be anything from 8 to 800 but still isn’t it a marvel that we live in age when we even deign to notice a mere 80 deaths in a place a couple of thousand miles away?  

Being able to fret about just one serious communicable disease is a luxury beyond price.  

Scientific and technological history is a passion of mine, so I’ve read a lot about medical history. Well up until WWII and the development of antibiotics and mass  vaccinations, our  forbearers  suffered through plague after plague of such scale that they make even AIDS look trivial by comparison.  

Read more