COVID Misinformation
Someone on a COVID group posted a long list of referenced claims about the dangers of COVID. I would like to be able to share lists like this to explain why Miriam and I are continuing to isolate as much as we are, but I won't share things like that without spot checking the writer's interpretations of the cited data. Most of them looked ok when I browsed through some random ones.
In one spot, though, the writer says "In fact ALL kids have lung damage after covid. 60% air/bloodflow match vs normal of 80%". I read the cited article and IT DOESN'T SAY THAT. It shows a very statistically significant increase (P value .001 for several measures) of problems with lung functionality in children who've had COVID, but there is no listing of individual participants' results in the paper, and the authors always discuss numbers in terms of mean (average).
Looking at it with Miriam, we found another instance where the writer says "100% of these people examined by MRI had brain damage," and that's not supported by what they're referencing either.
I hate it when people do this. It's awful. It's counter-productive. Fear-mongering language makes COVID, which is a very serious illness with dangerous long-term effects, much harder to get people to take seriously, and I will not share a list of interpreted citations that contains errors like this. This happened with another list like this a while back that I wanted to share, but found at least one serious error in.
Maybe the author misunderstood the statistics or something. I wish I could implore people not to make absolute statements they are not absolutely sure of. This is misinformation and/or disinformation. It is NOT HELPING.