{"id":306,"date":"2020-03-09T22:42:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T02:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=306"},"modified":"2020-03-10T10:50:07","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T14:50:07","slug":"of-base-rates-and-bs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Of Base Rates and BS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was having dinner with some good friends last week. He a physician, recently retired; she a principal, head of her own, private middle school. Both are trained thinkers and observers; both experienced in those endeavours. M, the educator, was sneezing and sniffling, apologetically reassuring that her \u2018symptoms\u2019 were an allergic reaction \u2014 \u2018not to the company\u2019, again reassuringly. Never at a loss for conversational topics, she borrowed my napkin (having exhausted her own and husband\u2019s) to \u2018mop up\u2019 \u2014 and the chat turned to COVID-19. \"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

A significant plank in my friendship with P, the physician, is his grounded, no-nonsense, and (underscore) reality-based view of the world \u2014 something I like to think we both share. On long bike rides, he\u2019s fond of sharing his aphorisms and agitations, both the aggregation of long years of practice and exposure to the human condition. He opened the conversation with a query: \u2018so what do you think the mortality rate of this one is?\u2019 Reference to the red-plumed snowball pictured above. In short order, followed comparisons between the world\u2019s current obsession and the more mundane, \u2018common garden variety\u2019 flu. To wit, the base rates<\/em> hove into view \u2014 that would be the naturally occurring frequency of a phenomenon in a population<\/em>. And, as it turns out, the former (aka, the bloody snow ball) is running a shade over 2%; the latter, hovering just above 1% \u2014 depending on the population sampled, and the particular strain of good, old fashioned, happens every year FLU. Hmm?<\/p>\n

So. . . what\u2019s up? Not a simple question. A Harvard epidemiologist estimates that between forty per cent and seventy per cent of the world\u2019s roughly five billion adults will eventually<\/em> (read, over the next four to five years) contract COVID-19. Having picked oneself off the floor, it may be politic to take a Valium. I recall long term care homes restricting access, hospital wards instituting amped up isolation and containment practices \u2014 every year of my four decade\u2019s work in public health facilities. I do not recall quarantined cruise ships, store shelves devoid of toilet paper and rubbing alcohol, cancelation of major public events world wide, stock market catastrophics, condemned countries, boycotting of my favourite Mexican beer, failing economies, and every Tim Horton\u2019s table talk subject (since 9-11) centring on the viral treat of the week. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to argue the scenery chewing, centre stage status of an event that will potentially impact up to 3 of 4 folks standing on the planet. Sort of like acne, constipation, teenaged angst, and poor driving habits. But then it\u2019s hard to get behind this latter group as \u2018stop the presses, hold the front page\u2019 issues. More like slow news day content \u2014 no less widespread, no less distressing, but equally commonplace (read \u2018widespresd\u2019). Kind of like flu. <\/p>\n

I recall my (much revered) statistics prof\u2019s favoured annual lecture opener: \u2018All heroin addicts drink milk!\u2019 Followed by his well-honed treatise on the evils of confusing causal relationships<\/em> (drinking bossy\u2019s white nectar may not<\/em> be the point of entry to a lifetime of hard drug abuse) with events that merely coexist<\/em> with each other. It\u2019s all in the spin. And the angst value. And it\u2019s what (in old-speak) sells papers. To quote Bob (the prof), \u2018let\u2019s have a good look at the data \u2014 and not the presumption\u2019. He could just as easily have said: \u2018keep calm and carry on\u2019 (i.e., don\u2019t panic!!).<\/p>\n

Easily overwhelmed by the media\u2019s feeding frenzy, and it\u2019s search for a good, global disaster, a few voices of rationality might be detected \u2014 if we listen very (very) hard. Cognitive scientist, Samuel Veissiere is quoted recently: <\/p>\n

Covid-19 is turning out to be a remarkably intelligent evolutionary adversary. . . Ebola was a rather stupid virus, because it kills its host. The coronavirus is different: by exploiting vulnerabilities in human psychology it has already shut down many of our schools, crashed our stock market, increased social conflict and xenophobia, reshuffled our migration patterns, and is working to contain us in homogenous spaces where it can keep spreading. The bad news is that people living in densely populated areas are very likely to contract the virus. . . The good news is that most people won\u2019t die of it.<\/em> <\/p>\n

A friend recently reposted the similarly reasoned position of a physician and infectious diseases specialist that certainly merits a re-repost:<\/p>\n

I am not scared of Covid-19. What I am scared about is the loss of reason and wave of fear that has induced the masses of society into a spellbinding spiral of panic, stockpiling obscene quantities of anything that could fill a bomb shelter adequately in a post-apocalyptic world. I implore you all. Temper fear with reason, panic with patience and uncertainty with education.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>So I suspect the reasoned position is somewhere between Chicken Little and Marcus Aurelius. Somewhere midway between the sky is falling<\/em> and the stoic acceptance of the (real) father of cognitive rationality. A good helping of common sense would go a long way. As my (infinitely reasonable) educator friend advises: wash your hands to two full renditions of ‘Happy Birthday’. Certainly beats my usual pass ’em under the hot water tap and wipe ’em on your sleeve!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was having dinner with some good friends last week. He a physician, recently retired; she a principal, head of her own, private middle school. Both are trained thinkers and observers; both experienced in those endeavours. M, the educator, was sneezing and sniffling, apologetically reassuring that her \u2018symptoms\u2019 were an allergic reaction \u2014 \u2018not to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}