Thank you, will do!

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Hi again Millard,

My blog post covers how media can sometimes ovestate scientific findings and why this happens. It might be best for you to read over A/ Prof Kilpatrick’s original thread on Twitter to understand the limitations of the study. The point here is how to pick up when media may be misrepresenting results, and what readers can do to learn more. If you’d like to better understand the science of COVID-19 transmission more broadly, A/ Prof Kilpatrick and the other researchers I’ve cited here are good starting points. These epidemiologists and other disease experts who are on social media are working hard to make the science highly accessible. Take a look at their work. Good luck and enjoy!

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Hi Millard,

There’s extensive literature that discusses your questions. Have a read of academic journals such as Current Biology, Immunity, Viruses, Cell & Bioscience, the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, The Lancet, and many other works. The WHO has some accessible publications for a lay audience. Professor Vincent Racaniello runs a podcast that covers extensive issues on the origins and virology of COVID-19 and other diseases.

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All in all, excellent info, help, and advice for folks like me who are trying to make heads or tails of all this.

I’ve been reading scientific studies since I was a teenager working for my dad at City of Hope doing genetics research in the 70s (Atascadero Study, chimeric mice, chromosome injection into nuclei). I certainly don’t understand all I read, but I do know what I do and don’t understand, and I can decipher the language well enough to know whether or not they support a claim I’m interested in, and usually how strong that support is or is not.

I especially benefited from what you said about the impact of preprints on discourse and policy. I’d been noticing many of the COVID-19 papers I saw were preprints, far more than I’ve seen when looking into other questions.

And your explanation of the role of theory in designing, conducting, and interpreting studies was awesome.

So I did want to point out one thing that initially put me off a bit, and after reading through it seems like a nit now, but still maybe worth mentioning:

//
The abstract claims that younger people in Lombardy, Italy, have a lower probability of developing COVID-19 symptoms.
//

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… the study did not have data to back up these claims. Instead, the data suggest people of all age groups are equally likely to become infected.
//

Of course that’s apples vs. oranges, leaves the impression that the probability of *developing symptoms on infection* in youngsters is similar to that in older people, which is what Poletti et al’s study showed is not the case — and I’ve yet to find work that shows otherwise, but I’m just a lay guy.

How is Kilpatrick’s “… all age groups are equally likely to become infected” even *relevant* to the question of *developing symptoms*?

But like I said, in context of the value of the post as a whole, it was just an example and doesn’t detract from the rest.

I’m still hoping to hear from you on my other questions about SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID-19 in the first place. 😊

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I’m a seriously (some would say “severely”) critical thinker. I felt like kicking myself last week when I realized that it not once yet had occurred to me to ask the most basic question in the whole COVID-19 affair:

Where are the studies that show anything remotely resembling a causal relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19?

I’m sure that you’re aware that there is very little scientific consensus whether the COVID-19 diagnosis itself concerns a disease, a syndrome, a symptom cluster, or even a single medical condition.

And yeah I’m a layperson, so I’m not claiming that I understand the situation clearly (who does?), but that’s exactly why I’m putting out the challenge: Where is the science that DOES make it clear?

I’ve started asking around: Where are the studies which support the claim that SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19?

I’ve gotten next to zero joy.

Only one person linked me to one study that was relevant to the question, and it actually weakens the claim that SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19. See https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.08471.

Where are the studies that *support* the claim?

I’m not asking you to list them especially for me, but I am asking you:

a. Are you aware of studies that make the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 clear?

b. If you know of such studies and have mentioned them in a post(s) I overlooked, could you point me in the right direction and I’ll read more carefully this time?

c. If you haven’t already made a list of studies that would clearly convince any unbiased, rational, critical thinker, could you please?

Thanks!

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