Epistemic resilience of the medical community: a proposal that just came through

[FamDocDon]

Yes. Sad.

[alberto]

Hello and welcome @FamDocDon! I guess @markomanka is facepalming right now about the bandanas.

Update: we set up a listening post to discuss some of these topics, specifically the bit about “fight the pandemic by repression and curtailing of civil liberties”, which happens exactly under the “better than nothing” banner. More information at the link below.

A surveillance pandemic? A community listening session on emergent post-COVID trends, from contact tracking to special powers

[image] This topic is now closed. Find the writeup and subsequent discussion here. Several of the smartest people we know in the Net activism space are worried. SARS-CoV-2 will be defeated, at some point; but it might leave behind new limitations to civil liberties and privacy. We have had two decades of consumer surveillance; and at least one decade of the inter-governmental panopticon we learned about through Edward Snowden’s revelations. The right to privacy online has been tenuous at best…

[salvo_cognetti]

Another example of this would be UK breweries who have started making alcohol sanitizer, but still have to pay duty of about £20 on each litre of alcohol they brew…

[salvo_cognetti]

Possibly statisticians - to help sift thru the noise of badly done statistics (usually retrospective studies), underreported deaths for a variety of confounding reasons, etc. It’d be an idea if we had an index of all the bad science that is circulating, and we could authoritatively say, ‘this is rubbish for all these reasons’ (for example, chloroquine is now being touted as the miracle cure, when there’s no evidence it works at all actually). We could be a beacon to show what is and is not true of the dozens of potential nonsense claims that keep appearing…

[alberto]

@salvo_cognetti

Possibly statisticians - to help sift thru the noise of badly done statistics (usually retrospective studies), underreported deaths for a variety of confounding reasons, etc.

Excellent point about statisticians, @salvo_cognetti. @MariaEuler has already written about the difficulty she and others have when dealing with the reporting of statistical results – she calls it statistically feeling bad.

So, we are going to be starting to look into the issue of how the pandemic shifts society towards tighter surveillance via policies that are presented as based on medical evidence next week, at this event. You are very welcome, especially if you bring any statistical expertise with you.

[nadia]

have a look at this crowd - maybe worthwhile reaching out and inviting them? Fighting Coronavirus: A New Infection Alarm System on Your Smartphone - DER SPIEGEL

[salvo_cognetti]

Thank you! Unfortunately I am no statistician. I suppose I should introduce myself. I am a medical doctor who has recently moved from UK to Italy and I am now working in northern italy.

I initially got to know about edgeryders in 2015, when I was doing my elective at CERN and I met Nadya and Massimo, and I have known Marco for quite some time.

I was a psychiatry trainee in the UK but am now working in a ‘punto di primo intervento’ - basically a scaled down a&e in a rural setting. I have had a longatanding interest in TB and infection control for it and at one point coauthored a toolkit for interprofessional collaboration for TB infection control. Many of the principles of TB IC are actually transferrable to Covid, and if you want I can get into details about things I routinely see done wrong.

Other than that, I am an avid nethack and d&d player… And when i am not doing that i read, play the flute, and play chess.

I see that Edgeryders has grown a lot from 2015 and I am impressed i think we can really make a difference thanks to our… I don’t know if it’s an actual term, but I would say, ‘open source mindset’? I hope you get what I mean.

Nice to meet you all and thanks again for taking on this project! I feel we will do a lot of good.

Salvo

[salvo_cognetti]

I was reading a very interesting thread from a palliative care doctor:

https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1246549341789130752?s=20

Allowing people to die with dignity and as much comfort as possible seems to be more important than ever now. Yet I don’t see this topic talked about much. We (Humanity) need much more drugs for end of life care than we are currently producing, and we (doctors) need some know-how about palliative care to make its way to the frontline of docs who are treating covid. Do you think we (Edgeryders) should get involved in that? (should i make a new thread? How does it work?)

[nadia]

@zmorda I think this is our problem owner/ challenge for the special edition of the OCI Lab. What do you think?

[alberto]

@salvo_cognetti

Many of the principles of TB IC are actually transferrable to Covid, and if you want I can get into details about things I routinely see done wrong.

This would be a valuable contribution to our Surveillance pandemic listening event. Are you coming?

@salvo_cognetti

Do you think we (Edgeryders) should get involved in that? (should i make a new thread? How does it work?)

You are super welcome to open a topic on Edgeryders. Ask @noemi, @johncoate or @MariaEuler if you need any help. @nadia could help if you are up for a more structured effort, with something called the OCI Lab.

[salvo_cognetti]

About the surveillance listening pandemic event: i woukd love to, but I am scheduled to work. Therefore, depending on whether i have patients coming in (i live and work in a rather small village of 2000 souls up in the mountains, and these days patients tend come in only when they really must), i may or may not be able to participate for some or all of it, if that’s okay.

I would be up for creating a more structured effort. I can think of two areas that we could look into: one is as mentioned palliative care, another is mental health care (i was a psychiatry trainee in the UK up until i left the country) for those affected by covid/in isolation. I am thinking about:

• seriously unwell psychiatric patients who are kept in a psych hospital against their will, and at very high risk of catching Covid there, as it involves cramming lots of people into a shared space with minimal ventilation (psych hospitals typically have shut or minimally opening windows to stop people from jumping off them, or escaping - and an open window policy is the most effective zero-cost action to prevent TB transmission via droplets ), cared for by nurses who are great at psychiatry but have little to no medical expertise depending on different countries’ training programmes for them (and doctors who are psychiatrists, not infection control experts) as well as other factors and complications caused by mental illness itself about which i can go into more detail on perhaps in a separate topic;

• less seriously unwell psychiatric patients who can manage their life at home but need regular contact with psychiatric services.

• people with no previous psychiatric illness who are at risk of developing one when forced into prolonged isolation

Sorry for throwing a lot of thoughts. This project / the problem of covid deals with an unprecedented level of complexity on many levels. I hope to be able to help with a few of these…

[alberto]

@salvo_cognetti

i may or may not be able to participate for some or all of it, if that’s okay

Of course, @salvo_cognetti. Best effort. No pressure.

@salvo_cognetti

I would be up for creating a more structured effort.

More power to you. I think @nadia and @zmorda might be able to guide you into bootstrapping some kind of early stage project. Am I wrong, ladies?

[nadia]

Not wrong. Am chatting with @zmorda about this now.