Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - Printable Version
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Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - oldalum - 04-03-2020
“In a crisis event, one thing people do is engage in sense-making — seeking out facts and coming up with explanations,” Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington, told me this week. “It’s a way of psychologically coping with the uncertainty and anxiety of the event, and of having agency in the response.”
seems a lot like what we're doing in this forum! (BTW, looks like she's tenured now. Hope she's not helping coach their bball team on the side! :)
NY Times opinion piece
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - akiddoc - 04-03-2020
https://fsi.stanford.edu/people/kate-starbird
Coming out of college, Kate was in a start-up with my brother. Her family and mine funded it. Didn't take off and they went off to other endeavors.
Kate Starbird in NYT article on Covid - 81alum - 04-05-2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-fake-news.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
She is quoted well into the article, helping to explain how misleading stories on Covid spread--with a particular look at a blog by Aaron Ginn, who offered seemingly plausible skepticism about the severity of the epidemic. Ginn, a product manager, said “You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say.” The post gained millions of views as it was increasingly featured on Fox--which Starbird charts-- until it was debunked by epidemiologists as “unsubstantiated” and ignorant of “first-chapter-of-the-epidemiology-textbook stuff.” The blog has since been taken down--prompting anger from the right.
Starbird says:
Quote:“In a crisis event, one thing people do is engage in sense-making — seeking out facts and coming up with explanations,” Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington, told me this week. “It’s a way of psychologically coping with the uncertainty and anxiety of the event, and of having agency in the response.”
Mr. Ginn’s post, which seems informed by his reflexive skepticism of the mainstream media, filled two needs for readers: It offered a scientific-seeming explanation that real scientists would not provide. And it provided a political foil, the media.
“The online dynamics allow others to seize upon that sense-making process and to use it to further their own political objectives,” Dr. Starbird said. In this case, it drew political lines around a public health issue.
An epidemiologist commenting on the Ginn post went further:
Quote:Without a deeper knowledge of epidemiology or evolutionary biology, it would have been easy to be seduced by Mr. Ginn’s piece. This, according to Dr. Bergstrom, is what makes armchair epidemiology so harmful. Posts like Mr. Ginn’s “deplete the critical resource you need to manage the pandemic, which is trust,” he told me. “When people are getting conflicting messages, it makes it very hard for state and local authorities to generate the political will to take strong actions downstream.”
Now, this board has some professional physicians and some people well trained in statistics. But the rest of us are indeed "arm chair epidemiologists." Something to ponder.
RE: Kate Starbird in NYT article on Covid - JustAnotherFan - 04-05-2020
(04-05-2020, 08:09 AM)81alum Wrote: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-fake-news.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
She is quoted well into the article, helping to explain how misleading stories on Covid spread--with a particular look at a blog by Aaron Ginn, who offered seemingly plausible skepticism about the severity of the epidemic. Ginn, a product manager, said “You don’t need a special degree to understand what the data says and doesn’t say.” The post gained millions of views as it was increasingly featured on Fox--which Starbird charts-- until it was debunked by epidemiologists as “unsubstantiated” and ignorant of “first-chapter-of-the-epidemiology-textbook stuff.” The blog has since been taken down--prompting anger from the right.
Starbird says:
Quote:“In a crisis event, one thing people do is engage in sense-making — seeking out facts and coming up with explanations,” Kate Starbird, an associate professor at the University of Washington, told me this week. “It’s a way of psychologically coping with the uncertainty and anxiety of the event, and of having agency in the response.”
Mr. Ginn’s post, which seems informed by his reflexive skepticism of the mainstream media, filled two needs for readers: It offered a scientific-seeming explanation that real scientists would not provide. And it provided a political foil, the media.
“The online dynamics allow others to seize upon that sense-making process and to use it to further their own political objectives,” Dr. Starbird said. In this case, it drew political lines around a public health issue.
An epidemiologist commenting on the Ginn post went further:
Quote:Without a deeper knowledge of epidemiology or evolutionary biology, it would have been easy to be seduced by Mr. Ginn’s piece. This, according to Dr. Bergstrom, is what makes armchair epidemiology so harmful. Posts like Mr. Ginn’s “deplete the critical resource you need to manage the pandemic, which is trust,” he told me. “When people are getting conflicting messages, it makes it very hard for state and local authorities to generate the political will to take strong actions downstream.”
Now, this board has some professional physicians and some people well trained in statistics. But the rest of us are indeed "arm chair epidemiologists." Something to ponder.
Excellent share, 81alum. I think it is fabulous how society has largely democratized the ability to put our ideas out there for the world, so that we are not overly reliant on sources of information that can easily be controlled by people with power and money (e.g., government, mainstream media, churches). Unfortunately that rise in the ability to easily share ideas with the world has not come with a rise in critical consciousness. I can't help but put much blame on the schooling system (that so many of us navigated so well) that but for a very few demands shallow understanding, discourages deep inquiry, and promotes performative displays in lieu of meaningful learning. This is why I believe it is so easy for people to latch onto whatever challenges their image of self the least, whether that be political, religious, or just a need to be a contrarian.
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - CornFed - 04-05-2020
I suspect we come at things from widely diverging perspectives, JAF, but your share just then was a truly excellent summary of the deep morass into which our society has fallen.
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - g1313 - 04-05-2020
Curious about one point in the twitter thread by the epidemiologist, he says "Next up a very, very basic fallacy about the effect of flattening the curve. Almost *any* reasonable epidemiological model you use, from SIR to all sorts of fancy spatial PDE or agent-based approaches, will show that decreasing transmission rate decreases total epidemic size."
Some other articles I have read (such as this interview with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in Wired) say the opposite, "By slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine"
I had mostly been thinking of flattening the curve as helping prevent fatalities by not overwhelming healthcare resources like ventilators at any one time, but does it also result in fewer overall infections? That would be nice.
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - BostonCard - 04-05-2020
(04-05-2020, 06:08 PM)g1313 Wrote: Curious about one point in the twitter thread by the epidemiologist, he says "Next up a very, very basic fallacy about the effect of flattening the curve. Almost *any* reasonable epidemiological model you use, from SIR to all sorts of fancy spatial PDE or agent-based approaches, will show that decreasing transmission rate decreases total epidemic size."
Some other articles I have read (such as this interview with epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in Wired) say the opposite, "[url=https://www.wired.com/story/whats-social-distancing-flattening-curve-covid-19-questions/]slowing it down or flattening it, we're not going to decrease the total number of cases, we're going to postpone many cases, until we get a vaccine"
I had mostly been thinking of flattening the curve as helping prevent fatalities by not overwhelming healthcare resources like ventilators at any one time, but does it also result in fewer overall infections? That would be nice.
Reducing the transmission flattens the curve, delays the peak, and reduces the total number of transmissions.
BC
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - 2006alum - 04-05-2020
(04-05-2020, 03:01 PM)CornFed Wrote: I suspect we come at things from widely diverging perspectives, JAF, but your share just then was a truly excellent summary of the deep morass into which our society has fallen.
It's funny - I often don't share either of your views on other issues but also thought JAF's takeaway was excellent and on point. Perhaps what many Cardboarders have in common is an iconoclastic skepticism of the status quo notwithstanding our broad success at navigating within it. :)
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - teejers1 - 04-05-2020
(04-05-2020, 06:17 PM)BostonCard Wrote: [Reducing the transmission flattens the curve, delays the peak, and reduces the total number of transmissions.
BC
Does that assume the conditions leading to flattening the curve remain in place?
If yes, well . . . that's sort of a problem, isn't it?
If no, then why is everyone worried about a second flare up if restrictions are loosened?
Fundamentally, don't we want to flatten curve to point where we feel comfortable with hospital resources (which may vary by locale - see another post on SC County excess ventilators) and then ease off restrictions? Because this is a sports board (at heart), perhaps folks are equating easing back on restrictions with allowing 50,000 in a stadium to watch a game or match. Um . . . no. I'm not sure that will ever come back - or at least until some kind of vaccine (artificial or natural - from virus running its course) is secured.
But that doesn't mean sports won't/can't go forward. It can. With no attendance; then very limited; etc. The good news for Stanford fans who like to attend contests in person: we'll be back to "normal" before most other schools!
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - dabigv13 - 04-05-2020
Yeah, the conditions have to stay in place until community transmission is functionally zero. And then you can reopen with good testing and tracking. That's a while away. Otherwise the hospitals will get overwhelmed again in a couple weeks.
And also just because some hospitals still have remaining ventilators doesn't mean they are back to normal. Hospitals in California are in a once in a lifetime war footing. Nonemergency care is being deferred. That won't change soon, and that will have it's own costs.
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - magnus - 04-05-2020
(04-05-2020, 10:14 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: And also just because some hospitals still have remaining ventilators doesn't mean they are back to normal. Hospitals in California are in a once in a lifetime war footing. Nonemergency care is being deferred. That won't change soon.Hospitals are going to need to find a source of revenue (covid patients probably aren't adding much margin to their bottom line and every other department is pretty much shut down in preparation). Will we be able to get enough medical supplies to be able to safely reopen up normal (or highly profitable or at least pressing but not emergent) operations?
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - BostonCard - 04-05-2020
(04-05-2020, 09:55 PM)teejers1 Wrote:(04-05-2020, 06:17 PM)BostonCard Wrote: [Reducing the transmission flattens the curve, delays the peak, and reduces the total number of transmissions.
BC
Does that assume the conditions leading to flattening the curve remain in place?
If yes, well . . . that's sort of a problem, isn't it?
If no, then why is everyone worried about a second flare up if restrictions are loosened?
Fundamentally, don't we want to flatten curve to point where we feel comfortable with hospital resources (which may vary by locale - see another post on SC County excess ventilators) and then ease off restrictions? Because this is a sports board (at heart), perhaps folks are equating easing back on restrictions with allowing 50,000 in a stadium to watch a game or match. Um . . . no. I'm not sure that will ever come back - or at least until some kind of vaccine (artificial or natural - from virus running its course) is secured.
But that doesn't mean sports won't/can't go forward. It can. With no attendance; then very limited; etc. The good news for Stanford fans who like to attend contests in person: we'll be back to "normal" before most other schools!
In a word, the answer is yes, the models that predict flattening the curve say you need to keep your transmission rate down until the end of the pandemic.
Now, in practice, there will almost certainly be some titration. Once we are on the down-slope of the curve, you can start to relax the most onerous restrictions. IF nothing else, the models predict that each "wave" will be slightly less bad than the one preceeding it, if for no other reason that (unless this virus is weird and recovery doesn't confer immunity) after each wave some fraction of the population will now be immune and no longer able to transmit it. In practice, for it to make a difference, you need a substantial fraction to be exposed, and that seems unlikely (though we won't know for sure until we see serology testing).
However, it will be tricky to get the balance right. Remember, what you see (even if you test extensively) is about two weeks behind what actually happened, because there is a delay between exposure and measurable virus shed and symptoms. So, by the time you react to a small increase in cases it might be too late, and you will have a full blown wave. The best you can hope for is that with some social distancing measures plus generally better hygiene, even if it flares up again, the rate of exponential growth (the doubling time) will be more like 7 days than 3 days.
BC
RE: Kate Starbird quoted in NY Times on Covid-19 - JustAnotherFan - 04-06-2020
(04-05-2020, 03:01 PM)CornFed Wrote: I suspect we come at things from widely diverging perspectives, JAF, but your share just then was a truly excellent summary of the deep morass into which our society has fallen.
Thank you.