Comparable statistics/risk

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dyqik
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Re: Comparable statistics/risk

Post by dyqik » Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:49 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:19 pm
If the link was real and the risk of death from a clot was 1 per million, then continuing to vaccinate the adult population would cause a few tens of deaths. (Stopping vaccinating at all would of course lead to more deaths.) Delaying vaccination until alternatives are available would presumably cause some deaths, but I wonder where the crossover point is with the suspected clotting risk.
The crossover point is pretty much given by the graphs linked above (well, for long term harm, which is as important a measure). In a low CoVID prevalence/exposure scenario, it's delaying up to about 24 weeks for those aged 20-30, and less than 16 weeks for everyone else. For medium prevalence/exposure, it's only a few weeks for even the 20-30 age group.

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Martin Y
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Re: Comparable statistics/risk

Post by Martin Y » Sat Apr 10, 2021 6:41 pm

science_fox wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 8:22 am
...
If you had the AstraZeneca vaccine today, it was possibly the safest thing you did.
It was safer than having a bath (30 people drown in baths each year)
It was safer than walking down the stairs (1,000 die falling down the stairs each year)
It was safer than eating breakfast...(over 200 people choke on food each year).
It was certainly safer than driving or biking to the shops...
... Can you meaningly compare 1 off events with annual figures?
No. Different units. He's confusing risk per bathing-year with risk per bath and risk per year's-worth-of-meals with risk per breakfast etc.

Millennie Al
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Re: Comparable statistics/risk

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Apr 11, 2021 2:11 am

Martin Y wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:19 pm
If the link was real and the risk of death from a clot was 1 per million, then continuing to vaccinate the adult population would cause a few tens of deaths. (Stopping vaccinating at all would of course lead to more deaths.) Delaying vaccination until alternatives are available would presumably cause some deaths, but I wonder where the crossover point is with the suspected clotting risk.
That depends on the alternative. The more you use a vaccine the more evidence you have of extremely rare effects. If you delay using one vaccine due to some rare effect, waiting for a better one, you cannot predict that the next vaccine is better until you have used a lot of it, at which point you might find that it is actually worse in which case any delay cannot have reduced the overal number of deaths. And if we knew in advance all about rare effects, we'd have no need to run studies testing vaccines as we could just use the same predictive magic to tell if they were suitable.

monkey
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Re: Comparable statistics/risk

Post by monkey » Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:51 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:37 pm
Chris Preston wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 10:04 am
One of our medical epidemiologists announced on television this evening that the risk was lower than getting struck by lightening.

For what it is worth, lightening is responsible for 100 injuries and between 5 and 10 deaths every year in Australia. 80% of injuries result from using landlines during thunderstorms.
"Getting struck by lightning" is often portrayed as the canonical random event, but like getting run over by a bus, it's not entirely independent of someone's behaviour. Getting hit by a meteorite, now that's more like it.
But that's so rare that if it happens, they do a memorial for it, even if it doesn't kill you. I know this because I saw one a couple of weeks ago.

It was this one

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Re: Comparable statistics/risk

Post by tom p » Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:12 am

dyqik wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 1:31 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 12:37 pm

"Getting struck by lightning" is often portrayed as the canonical random event, but like getting run over by a bus, it's not entirely independent of someone's behaviour. Getting hit by a meteorite, now that's more like it.
Well...

Someone living at the bottom of a well is a lot less likely to get hit by a meteorite and more likely to die of radon exposure than the average.

They're also very unlikely to be hit by lightning.
I'd say they were infinitesimally less likely to get hit by a meteorite, since my non-well-dwelling existence only carries an infinitesimally small risk of being hit by a meteorite.

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