A Covid Comparison of Popular Media Reporting to Scientific Literature Reporting.

[NNadir]

Here's two titles from two different sources reporting on the Omicron status in Denmark:

Title One, from the Washington Post: Highly vaccinated countries thought they were over the worst. Denmark says the pandemic’s toughest month is just beginning.

Title Two, from the scientific literature: Epidemiological characterisation of the first 785 SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant cases in Denmark, December 2021.

The first is behind a firewall, the second, since all major scientific publishers have made Covid reporting open source, isn't.

I commented on the second over in the Science forum: Epidemiological Classification of Omicron in Denmark, the first 785 cases, with outcomes.

The first headline comes with the implication we're all going to die, vaccinated or not.

The second reports data.

The second reports (Table 2) among 785 confirmed Omicron cases that vaccinated cases of Omicron of people having received two doses of the vaccine is 599, and 56 cases occurred in people who have had booster shots. 111 cases occurred in people who had not been vaccinated at all.

However, the majority of Danes have been vaccinated, close to 80%, 78.2% exactly according to a website maintained by Johns Hopkins University: Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center (Accessed 12/29/21, scroll over the map to get a popup with data for a country.) The number of fully vaccinated Danes is 4,549,739. This implies that the population represented by the Johns Hopkins data is roughly 5,818,000 of whom 1,238,000 are not fully vaccinated.

When someone engages in "percent talk" - something against which I often rale in the context of the "success" of so called "renewable energy," which is no success at all at addressing climate change - it is time to turn on one's critical thinking muscles. For example, we do not know whether the 785 cases represent all cases of omicron in Denmark, or whether it is a sample of the total cases. Nevertheless we can get a crude sense of probability using "percent talk" if we assume that the data holds throughout a sampled population. 599 cases represents 0.013% of the vaccinated (total) of vaccinated Danes, 111 cases represent 0.009% of unvaccinated Danes. It would seem on the surface vaccinated people are slightly more likely to have been infected with omicron, but a little critical thinking would note that this calculation ignores behavior. I do not know what restrictions on Danes exist for attending public events but on multiple occasions, both for scientific meetings and for entertainment, I have had to prove vaccination status to attend. I would have been excluded if I wasn't vaccinated. Thus their is a potential behavioral weight not recorded.

The question really revolves, however, over the use in the Washington Post headline of the word "dire."

Hospitalization in the scientific report is not broken down by vaccination status, but of the 785 omicron cases recorded 9 required hospitalization, 1 was admitted to ICU and nobody died. One may compare in Table 2 similar data related to the Delta variant in Denmark, where there is very distinct difference, in "percent talk" and, in fact, in reality between vaccinated and unvaccinated Danes.

No omicron patient died. Zero. Nine were hospitalized. How "dire" is that really?

The quality of the media in this country is devolving faster than the corona virus is evolving. For instance, our media reports both on climate change and on coronavirus overt and obvious lies as if they were part of a legitimate debate. They report insanity as "news."

It thrives on sensationalism and fear and selective attention: "But her emails..."

The Washington Post article, which I did not read beyond the headline, is, again, behind a pay firewall. If you pay for it, you're paying for entertainment, not news.

Here's where we're going with our media:



Critical thinking has never been required more than it is today.

[PSPS]

1. Depends on where you're moving the goal posts

The real goal is to avoid infection. If you reject that and, instead, decide you want to move the goal post to "avoid severe illness/hospitalization/death," then that changes one's perspective even though it really amounts to "I've decided that we're all going to get it anyway, so I'll just give up and pretend it's over and selfishly put everyone around me in jeopardy." If we had done the same thing 80 years ago, all of these comments would be in German. Nevertheless, that seems to be the direction society is taking.

[NNadir]

2. This is really about the use of the word "dire," and not about addressing disease "goal posts."

The Danes, a highly vaccinated country, are doing comparatively well at addressing the disease.

The Washington Post is representing that they are not doing well.

[PSPS]

3. Read your own post

"No omicron patient died. Zero. Nine were hospitalized. How 'dire' is that really?"

You, yourself, declared the goal post to be the number of deaths and hospitalizations.

[Elessar Zappa]

4. That is the goal.

We didn’t shut down to prevent people from getting ill. We shut down because it overrun the hospitals and filled the morgues. If we can prevent that, then we can go back to normal and understand that COVID will be endemic like the flu. We’re not there yet but that’s the goal.

[NNadir]

5. Yes, but I was referring to the use of the word "dire" on reporting on what is happening in Denmark.

I was not talking about "goal posts." Context matters.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Oddly, "dire" doesn't appear in their headline.

Though it does appear once in the article. Which you say you haven't read. Is it that use of "dire" inside you don't like, or that you read it into the headline, despite it not being there?

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Since Oct 10th, Danish Covid hospital admissions have gone up about 8 times

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=desc&pickerMetric=new_cases_per_million&Metric=Hospital+admissions&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~GBR~DEU~DNK

At 147 per million, not yet up to their peak of 185 a year ago, but it's still climbing.

From the WP article, which you haven't read:

“The next month will be the hardest period of the pandemic,” said Tyra Grove Krause, the chief epidemiologist at Denmark’s State Serum Institute
...
“This will overwhelm hospitals,” Grove Krause said. “I don’t have any doubt about it.”

In her office building, where she works with a six-person modeling team, she tried to explain why omicron amounts to such a setback in the fight against the pandemic. She likened the virus to a flood, and she described how vaccines, under earlier variants, had acted like two barrier walls safeguarding the health system. One barrier resulted from the vaccines’ ability to reduce the probability of infection, keeping spread low. The other barrier stemmed from the diminished likelihood of severe sickness and death. Both barriers had some holes, but together, they ensured that the floodwaters never got too high.

But now, she said, the first barrier has been largely removed. Denmark’s data shows people with two doses to be just as vulnerable to omicron infection as the unvaccinated. Those who’ve received boosters have better protection — a sign of hope — but meanwhile, about 3 in 4 Danes have yet to receive a third dose, making the majority of the country vulnerable.

It's a reliable source the WP went to.

[NNadir]

8. I'm sure that Tyra Grove Krause is a smart woman, and has a strong opinion.

On the other hand, I don't think her opinion is the only opinion.

It's one that would appeal to a reporter from the Washington Post to be sure, since it will sell newspapers, but does the data support that omicron is the cause for accelerating rates of hospitalization.

I am merely comparing data to opinion. The data is this: For omicron, in the cited scientific publication indicates that of 785 cases, nine were hospitalized an none of them died. I have no idea whether Tyra Grove Kraus is aware of this publication or not.

Now, the scientific publication reports (again, in Table 2) that in Denmark in December, there were over 19,000 cases of the Delta variant. In the table, they overwhelming account for hospitalizations, and infinitely more deaths, since the limit of approaching zero (the number of omicron deaths) as a divisor is zero.

Denmark by my calculation in the OP has over 1,200,000 people who have not been vaccinated at all. It's winter in Denmark, and the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike are indoors. This is a well known effect for increasing infectiousness and transmission. Thus the rise in hospitalization from the data presented cannot be laid on the emergence of omicron.

While I am disinterested in science reporting in the major media, and am certainly not going to pay to read an article with the hysterical headline put forth by the same people whose reporting on scientific issues in particular, and many social issues in general is suspect in my view.

I'm glad you read the article and shared a portion here. It doesn't convince me even remotely to change my mind about the quality of the reporting:

To me, reliable sources are broad, not singular.

I stand by my comments.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. She's one of the authors of the work you linked to

7 publications on Covid since September: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Tyra-Grove-Krause-2107879509

Most of the authors of your work are affiliated with the State Serum Institute.

[NNadir]

10. Ok. Good. Nevertheless, the data in her paper does not suggest omicron is causing the surge.

Quite the opposite.

It is not my work, but a work I cited. As people who are familiar with scientific publications, often listed authors are remote from the work in publications for which they are listed authors.

Does the data to your mind suggest that omicron is driving the surge or are you just dicking around?

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Which surge are you talking about - cases, or hospitalization? (nt)

[NNadir]

12. Hospitalizations.

You referred to hospitalizations early in your quibbles.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. The quibbles are what the Danish state institution for epidemiology is concerned about

Somehow, I think you're not that interested in Denmark - dismissing their rate of hospitalization 8 times what it was a couple of months ago, and the highest for 11 months (back when most people were unvaccinated), and wondering if I'm dicking around by telling you what the article that you hate before reading it is about and giving you data on hospitalization. This seems to be more about your hatred for American reporters.

But, no, I'm not dicking around. Neither are the Danes. Given the start of the surge, some of it will have been down to the Delta variant, but some now is probably from Omicron. The paper you linked to was about the period 22nd Nov-7th Dec; for comparison, the Omicron variant was first reported to the WHO on the 24th Nov. So, no, it's not surprising that there weren't that many hospitalizations from Omicron in that period. The paper's conclusion was

We show a rapid increase and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in Denmark, a European country with high testing capacity, high vaccination coverage and limited natural immunity through SARS-CoV-2 infection. The introduction and spread occurred despite an early and comprehensive public health response. Spread was catalysed by superspreading events and challenges further epidemic control. Information from the earlier travel-related cases, with no travel history to Africa, suggests that community transmission is more widespread than reported. The high proportion of fully vaccinated Omicron cases is a concern, the implications are still being described. It is too early to draw conclusions on the severity of Omicron compared to previous SARS-CoV-2 variants, analyses on this are ongoing.

And the WP article is based on the comments, informed by working on that paper, from the country's top epidemiologists.

[NNadir]

14. Again, the DATA suggests that hospitalizations are driven by Delta.

But you're right, I don't care about Denmark. I actually don't like that country very much; I object to many policies there. However they put out a report with data.

What my post is about is news reporting. You are free, of course, to believe the Washington Post's objectivity. I clearly disagree. Of course, my objection to their reporting is not limited to the case where zero people with omicron in a sample size of 599 omicron cases died from the disease in Demark, but it about the full body of reporting by the media, going back beyond, but not limited to, "but her emails..."

Would I be dicking around if I asked you whether 19,000 new cases of Delta infections in Denmark might be related to the fact that apparently there are over a million people in that country who are not vaccinated according to the data available at the Johns Hopkins website that I linked?

You keep coming back to "8 times as many hospitalizations." Does your faith in the Washington Post demonstrate that you, or they, know the cause of the increase in hospitalizations?

Is there not, in your quibbling mind, the possibility that vaccinations are effective at preventing severe disease including omicron?

In the United States, are most Covid cases from Delta or, for that matter, omicron, in vaccinated or unvaccinated people? Hospitals in the US are also seeing high number of cases. Can we attribute this rise equally among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, or does vaccination status matter?

Now, assuredly, someone will publish papers in the world - probably lots of them - scientific publications indicating the rates of omicron infections among vaxxed and non vaxxed, boosted and non boosted, but there is absolutely nothing, nothing at all, zero, to indicate that Denmark is proof that highly vaccinated countries face the same risk as where vaccination rates are low?

(I read scientific publications every damned day, including many about Covid, and there are thousands published, some better than others, but one can pick up a serious consensus better in them than in the pages of the Washington Post, or for that matter, the New York Times.)

My point is that this particular media account implies to my mind that vaccinated countries are doing just as bad as unvaccinated countries. That's inaccurate. Now I'm sure you'll have lots of quibbles with this remark, since, in my opinion you wish to dick around, but none of your quibbles have raised in my mind any evidence that the media is improving in accuracy or honesty in their reporting.

Quite to the contrary. I think you're dicking around.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. You didn't even bother to read the article that you came here to denounce

Your objection to their reporting is based on your prejudice. You are simply not qualified to give an opinion on it.

"My point is that this particular media account implies to my mind that vaccinated countries are doing just as bad as unvaccinated countries. "

QED. There is nothing in the headline that triggered you that says that. You just presume the article says it. The problem is in your attitude.

"The first headline comes with the implication we're all going to die, vaccinated or not."

Now that was a fucking stupid thing to say.

[NNadir]

16. You're absolutely right, I didn't.

Maybe you think I've lived in a little box my entire life, and my opinion is based on this one article.

Apparently, you've quibbled your way into suggesting that I read everything in the Washington Post before condemning it.

For the record, I normally spend about five to six hours a day reading. I've been doing so for probably 40 or 50 years. Much of my reading consists of using speed reading techniques, wherein one can evaluate how much of an article is worth reading based on excerpts.

In this case I would have to pay to read an article with a title that strikes me as offensive.

I interpret the headline as implying that highly vaccinated countries were stupid in thinking the worst was over. "The worst was over for whom?" is the critical thinking question I ask when I look at the headline before deciding to pay to read what may well be drivel.

The preliminary data as reported in the scientific literature is that omicron is more transmissible, but it simply isn't true that vaccines are entirely ineffective at ameliorating disease severity.

Here is a report, no firewall as the world's scientific publishers have made all Covid papers open sourced and any quibbler or non-quibbler can read them, from the British Journal of Medicine:

Does omicron escape the vaccines?
Findings from a very small study involving just 12 people in South Africa, which have been released through a preprint, indicate that the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine could be significantly reduced against omicron, with a 41-fold lower level of neutralising antibodies when compared with a variant of the virus that was widespread in the early stages of the pandemic (characterised by spike protein substitution D614G).7

Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology at the University of Nottingham, said, “Whilst the amount of virus killing observed in the lab is reduced markedly—up to 40-times reduction—there is still measurable virus neutralisation, especially in those who were vaccinated and previously infected. This group effectively mimics what we would expect in people who have had two doses of vaccine plus a boost . . . That’s why we still need to get the message across: get vaccinated, get boosted, even if you have been infected before.”


Pfizer said its research indicated that a third dose of vaccine provided similar levels of neutralising antibodies against omicron as seen after two doses against the original virus (wildtype).8 In its statement the company said that people who had had two vaccine doses exhibited “more than a 25-fold reduction in neutralisation titers” against omicron when compared with wildtype, suggesting that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine “may not be sufficient to protect against infection with the omicron variant.” The company said “additional studies indicate that a booster with the current covid-19 vaccine increases the antibody titers by 25-fold.”

I added the bold.

This is not a research paper, but a news item: Covid-19: Do vaccines work against omicron—and other questions answered. (Elisabeth Mahase, BMJ 2021; 375 ]doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n3062 (Published 10 December 2021))

You of course seem to be more interested in proving that I am a hysterical idiot for attacking a pop media source, than in the actual data in the scientific publication linked in the OP, or for that matter, this news item from a reputable scientific journal.

This news item in BMJ suggests that there is a weaker antibody response to omicron in vaccinated people, but that it is still efficacious, not as efficacious for omicron as for the wild type, but still efficacious.

As it happens, Google Scholar has over 1,200 publications available in seconds using the following search terms: omicron covid severity vaccinations.

I am only suggesting that these publications, which are not behind firewalls, are a better read, as they are open sourced and written by people involved in scientific publishing and writing as opposed to what's written in the Washington Post.

In general, when I read scientific publications that are behind firewalls on multiple subjects of interest, from engineering, to physics, to biology, to chemistry and beyond, I find that the reports on them in the pop media generally border on garbage.

If you would like to quibble that I am compelled to actually read the Washington Post as a source of information because you think I'm being unfair, I couldn't care less.

I'm satisfied with where I get my information, and sorry, it's not from the Washington Post.

I'm sure that you feel I'm being dishonest, and that you are smarter and more honest than I could ever be, but in spite of your representations of this nature, I stand by my remarks.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. "Critical thinking has never been required more than it is today" - the only thing in your OP

that is worth reading. Because critical thinking starts with actually reading what you want to criticise. You really need to take your own advice before you spout off an uninformed opinion.

Since your earlier motivation was all about what you imagined the WP said:

'The question really revolves, however, over the use in the Washington Post headline of the word "dire."'
'The quality of the media in this country is devolving faster than the corona virus is evolving.'
'It thrives on sensationalism and fear and selective attention'
(A comparison of the WP to the Weekly World News and Alien Baby stories)
' This is really about the use of the word "dire,"'
'What my post is about is news reporting. '

then for you to now complain:

"You of course seem to be more interested in proving that I am a hysterical idiot for attacking a pop media source, than in the actual data in the scientific publication linked in the OP, or for that matter, this news item from a reputable scientific journal"

is ridiculous. If you were interested in data (remembering you said "I don't care about Denmark&quot , then you'd just make an OP about that article. You've said time after time that you're here to attack the WP. Of course replies to you will be about your attacks.

[NNadir]

18. Whatever. Thanks for all your "critical thinking" here, with emphasis on "critical..."

Last edited Thu Dec 30, 2021, 03:13 AM - Edit history (1)

and your spectacular defense of the science "news" in the Washington post.

You are invited to continue to get your "science" there, but I'll continue to read the primary scientific literature because I can.

Most people - and this is regrettable I think - do not have the same access to the scientific literature that I do but I fully concede your impassioned lawyerly nitpicking is memorable even if, as I suspect, you don't read the primary scientific literature and therefore are not in a position to compare its quality with so called "Mainstream news."

I don't feel that I am required to actually read the Washington Post to have an opinion of it, since I'm an old man who used to take it and other "papers of record" seriously but now feel as if, particularly in recent years, they have the quality of the World Weekly News, especially when it comes to say, Hillary Clinton.

Personally I have a hard time choosing between this: The FBI found 15,000 emails Hillary Clinton didn’t turn over. Uh oh.

The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains the latest on Hillary Clinton's private email server. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

By Chris Cillizza August 22, 2016

If you scrape away all of the spin and the political positioning that Hillary Clinton's decision to use a private email server has spawned, you are left with these facts:

1. Clinton is the first secretary of state to exclusively use a private email account for official business.

2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysis

2. She is also the first secretary of state to have a private email server housed at her home.

...and this...



"The fix" indeed.

You have carefully read what you say is not worth reading, my post, passionately picking at the flaws, and I have declined to read what I say is not worth reading, the Washington Post's story about how terrifying omicron is, and you rightly critically thought to criticize me.

It was certainly a waste of time for both of us, though wasn't it? I could have carefully read at least five or six papers from the primary scientific literature in the time I spent being annoyed by your nitpicking over the particulars of this case.

You would however, make a good defense lawyer, I think. If you are one or become one, I would advise you, if you are hired by Mark Meadows to defend his private email accounts, I bet you won't find them described with the same "oh oh" that the Washington Post offered us in 2016. This said, I can't know, because I decline to read what is not worth reading and you do read what you think not worth reading. If you take the Meadows case make sure the Trump people pay you up front. I hear they skip paying bills a lot.

Since I don't read it, I won't further speculate whether the Washington Post included a big "uh oh" when describing Meadows email like the one they employed for Secretary Clinton, but the fact of the "uh oh," in 2016 may be one reason that I consider the paper a rag not worth reading, in addition to the current case about Denmark; my impression might have involved that history.

Let's review: I think the paper, the Washington Post is a rag, not worth reading and you think I'm being unfair and I'm not worth reading even though you waste time reading and nitpicking through what I write.

Good for you. Feel free to read the Washington Post all the time and be informed with all that critical thinking you displayed here in its defense, wasting both our time.

Please do me a favor. Since I'm not worth reading, don't waste your time reading what I write. I'm clearly beneath you, if not your consideration of my flaws, and the annoyance I have felt at addressing your "critical thinking" such as it is, led me - my own fault - to waste time I could have used to finish reading papers like this one:

Mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 Evolution Revealing Vaccine-Resistant Mutations in Europe and America (Rui Wang, Jiahui Chen, and Guo-Wei Wei The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2021 12 (49), 11850-11857)

...in which I never got past this text...

...Although there are 28,912 unique single mutations distributed widely on the whole SARS-CoV-2 genome, the mutations on the S gene stand out among all 29 genes on SARS-CoV-2 due to the mechanism of viral infection. With the assistance of host transmembrane protease, serine 2 (TMPRSS2), SARS-CoV-2 enters the host cell by interacting with its S protein and the host angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) (10) (see Figure 1b). Later, antibodies will be generated by the host immune system, aiming to eliminate the invading virus through direct neutralization or non-neutralizing binding, (11,12) which makes the S protein the main target for the current vaccines. Specifically, there is a short immunogenic fragment located on the S protein of SARS-CoV-2 that can facilitate the binding of SARS-CoV-2 S protein to ACE2, which is called the receptor-binding domain (RBD). (13) Studies have shown that the binding free energy (BFE) between the S RBD and the ACE2 is proportional to the infectivity. (10,14−17)....

...because I was foolishly checked in here and ended up frankly finding myself childishly dicking around with someone interested in dicking around with me.

I'm disappointed in myself for dicking around with dicking around, since the paper I was reading would have been worthwhile, and I stepped away from it for this, which is not worthwhile.

I'm sure I had a thousand more useful things I could have done with this time. How about you? Was there something you could have done that was interesting as opposed to this uninteresting exchange? At least you could have read all about how scary things are in Denmark in the Washington Post, but, wait, you did, which apparently, you were inspired to do in order to get at me. And you did. You annoyed the shit out of me and showed me to be a fool for engaging you here. Congrats.

We value our time differently and I can't believe I wasted it in this dicking around.

Have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year, and try not to go to Denmark if you can avoid it. It's a very scary place. I heard about it somewhere in the news.