dreamshark (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamshark) wrote2021-09-20 05:03 pm
dreamshark) wrote2021-09-20 05:03 pm
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Now THIS is how you calculate risk!
I recently spent some time ranting and raving to quadong (because everybody else is tired of listening to this stuff) about a terrible NY Times article purporting to prove that the risk of breakthrough infection is minuscule because the average person's chance of infection on any given day is 1/5000. If you don't see what's wrong with that logic, I'm not going to bother explaining, but it's not a very honest or useful use of statistics.
Here's exactly the opposite - the Microcovid Project. It's a thoughtful, detailed, and completely transparent risk calculator that attempts to calculate the risk for a specific event and then multiplies the risk out over time. It's also an actual calculator taking a whole bunch of factors into account: where you live, what kind of mask you were wearing, what you know about other people present, etc. And then you can add in your vaccine status, if any. They show you exactly what assumptions they are making, so if you don't agree with their assumptions you can make your own adjustments to the results (e.g., they haven't updated for the new studies on Pfizer vs Moderna).
This thing is really fun to play with. The well-designed interface remembers your last inputs and lets you make changes one factor at a time and watch how the risk changes. You can choose a premade scenarios (shopping for groceries, visiting a bar, etc.) or design your own. It is fascinating and really well done, IMHO.
Matt, I am eager to hear what you think of this!
quadong (because everybody else is tired of listening to this stuff) about a terrible NY Times article purporting to prove that the risk of breakthrough infection is minuscule because the average person's chance of infection on any given day is 1/5000. If you don't see what's wrong with that logic, I'm not going to bother explaining, but it's not a very honest or useful use of statistics.Here's exactly the opposite - the Microcovid Project. It's a thoughtful, detailed, and completely transparent risk calculator that attempts to calculate the risk for a specific event and then multiplies the risk out over time. It's also an actual calculator taking a whole bunch of factors into account: where you live, what kind of mask you were wearing, what you know about other people present, etc. And then you can add in your vaccine status, if any. They show you exactly what assumptions they are making, so if you don't agree with their assumptions you can make your own adjustments to the results (e.g., they haven't updated for the new studies on Pfizer vs Moderna).
This thing is really fun to play with. The well-designed interface remembers your last inputs and lets you make changes one factor at a time and watch how the risk changes. You can choose a premade scenarios (shopping for groceries, visiting a bar, etc.) or design your own. It is fascinating and really well done, IMHO.
Matt, I am eager to hear what you think of this!