Pointing out the risk of Covid was below drowning for drowning has cost me a few friends (and booted from some data analysis groups), I'll bookmark this and use your words instead of mine next time :)
While it is troubling that a physician like Jeremy Faust is risk illiterate, it isn't that surprising - it's been a known issue in healthcare, Gerd Gigerenzer writes extensively on this topic [1]. What was more surprising to me the last 2 years wasn't that physicians are innumerate (being married to a surgeon, I understand how the training can focus at times more on the mechanics than analysis), but that epidemiologists are, apparently, risk illiterate as well - which is baffling.
It could be that only a very small minority of epidemiologists are innumerate, and that lack of risk analysis leads them to produce sensationalist ideas, which in turn are more attractive to the algorithms and hysteria of social media, so they overrepresent the profession. It could be. But I'm just disappointed anyway.
I'm looking at the date of this well written piece you put out, which should be in my opinion "viral", but instead I hadn't seen it until digging through your archives, because viral pieces were going around scaring people that "omicron was the 4th leading cause of death for 5-24 year olds". More seductive to scare people I suppose. [2]
Backlog reading continues!
Pointing out the risk of Covid was below drowning for drowning has cost me a few friends (and booted from some data analysis groups), I'll bookmark this and use your words instead of mine next time :)
While it is troubling that a physician like Jeremy Faust is risk illiterate, it isn't that surprising - it's been a known issue in healthcare, Gerd Gigerenzer writes extensively on this topic [1]. What was more surprising to me the last 2 years wasn't that physicians are innumerate (being married to a surgeon, I understand how the training can focus at times more on the mechanics than analysis), but that epidemiologists are, apparently, risk illiterate as well - which is baffling.
It could be that only a very small minority of epidemiologists are innumerate, and that lack of risk analysis leads them to produce sensationalist ideas, which in turn are more attractive to the algorithms and hysteria of social media, so they overrepresent the profession. It could be. But I'm just disappointed anyway.
I'm looking at the date of this well written piece you put out, which should be in my opinion "viral", but instead I hadn't seen it until digging through your archives, because viral pieces were going around scaring people that "omicron was the 4th leading cause of death for 5-24 year olds". More seductive to scare people I suppose. [2]
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Better-Doctors-Patients-Decisions-Envisioning/dp/0262016036/ref=sr_1
[2] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/pediatric-state-of-affairs-april/comment/6293222?s=r