As we have discussed in these pages, the CFR (case fatality rate) for COVID-19 is extremely difficult to calculate. We have a rough estimate of the numerator (deaths). But even that may be off, because of the difference between dying “with” COVID-19 and dying “of” COVID-19. In other words, if a person who was going to die of cancer today anyway gets COVID-19 an hour before he dies, is it correct to say he died of the virus just because he had it when he died. This is not theoretical. The Health Minister of Italy said the virus fatality number in his country is certainly overstated for this reason. For all the problems the numerator has, they pale in comparison Read More ›

Trump’s plan calls for protecting vulnerable age cohorts while letting the less vulnerable get back to work. The two charts below demonstrate why opposition to this proposal borders on the insane. The first chart is from CDC’s website showing COVID-19 deaths by age cohort as of April 17. The total is only 13,130, because CDC is behind in sorting this data. According to Worldmeter, total US deaths as of April 17 are 37,230. The second chart assumes the rates stay the same as the data is compiled (and I see no reason we should not assume that). Then I calculate total deaths as of today by age cohort. One number should jump out at you. 3,315. That is the total number Read More ›

I am seeing a report: Gilead Science’s experimental antiviral medicine remdesivir is reportedly showing promise for the treatment of people plagued with the novel coronavirus, with nearly all patients in a closely monitored clinical trial at a Chicago hospital discharged in just days, an early assessment of data released this week revealed . . . . STAT, a medical news outlet, first reported that an early peek at the data from the clinical trial in Chicago suggested that coronavirus patients were responding to the Gilead Science drug. “The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish,” Kathleen Mullane, the University of Chicago infectious disease specialist overseeing the Read More ›

Shortly after I posted yesterday on whether placebo based studies are properly a gold standard, one of our common objectors, JT, linked the Guardian. Perhaps, he did not realise just how aptly it illustrates my point. I therefore responded, as I now headline as a shop window case- in- point illustration of what is going wrong with medical testing, linked statistics and linked ethics . . . not to mention, too much of the media and the way we tend to think: This is part of why I have written as I have in the OP: [Guardian, annotated:] >>The French doctor Didier Raoult has claimed [–> has reported, on now almost 3,000 patients, under a test protocol approved by relevant Read More ›

Surprising results from computer programs do not equate to creativity, says computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord. Is there such a thing as machine creativity? The feats of machines like AlphaGo are due to superior computational power, not to creativity at originating new ideas. Computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord sees the ability to write, say, a novel of ideas as a more realistic test of human vs. computer achievement. “And probably the world’s leading authority on musical creativity, David Cope, does say explicitly that if the machine can do problem-solving, it catches people by surprise, he would stick to his guns and say that’s creative. I absolutely reject that notion. I think the next step up is MacGuyver creativity—what I called N creativity Read More ›

As we have seen in recent weeks as Covid-19 and Hydrochloroquine cocktail treatments have been on the table, there is a clear tendency to view and treat double-blind placebo controlled testing as a “gold standard” yardstick and to then use such to discount and dismiss whatever does not “measure up” such as Professor Raoult’s work over in France. I will now argue in outline that such an attitude is selectively hyperskeptical, seriously ethically, epistemologically and logically flawed, and sets up a crooked yardstick. It is a commonplace in Medical research that arguably more lives were saved, net, than perished through the tainted medical studies in the Nazi death camps. However, the taint was seen as so serious that a programme Read More ›

The Turing test has had a free ride in science media for far too long, says an AI expert: In the view of Rensselaer philosopher and computer scientist Selmer Bringsjord, the iconic Turing test for human-like intelligence in computers is inadequate and easily gamed. Merely sounding enough like a human to fool people does not establish human-like intelligence. He proposes the much more challenging Lovelace test, based on an observation from computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) that true creativity is what distinguishes humans from machines. – Mind Matters News Further reading: No materialist theory of consciousness is plausible. All such theories either deny the very thing they are trying to explain, result in absurd scenarios, or end up requiring an Read More ›