FUN WITH NUMBERS! (Musings for Probabilists and All Who Enjoy Gaming)

[oeb11]

Except - 1b1 - HSV2, HIV, and HPV viruses, among others - are not treatable with antibiotics.

Please stop trying to advocate medical care.

Stick to your own work.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

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As requested, I'll try to fill in the blanks for the "hypothetical gentleman," who will be referred to as "HG." (Comments in red):



Good info! Although the mind boggles, I'll start calculating!

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HG just sounds too impersonal. I'll call him Huey Guey. Guey because he's planning a trip to Latin American, and that's what all the cool cats in Mexico City call each other. And Huey because it rhymes with Guey, in English.

Based on a few links below, it looks like Huey Guey's probability of dying if he gets COVID, if he were an average person his age in an OECD country, might be around 3% or 4%. He's got a strike against him being male (the IFR for women is lower), but on the other hand he's in much better health than your average person in his early 70's. So let's assume 3% to 4%.

So if 0.8% is the overall IFR for the population, Huey Guey's probability of dying if he gets COVID may be about 4X the overall population's. Btw, I'm assuming the 0.8%, which is pretty good for the USA as a whole, is good for the OECD and Latin Countries too, since that's where part of the data we're using comes from. And that may not be the case.

We'll look at Costa Rica, because it looks like the Dominican Republic and Colombia are safer destinations right now. If Huey Guey's comfortable traveling to CR, he's darn sure going to be comfortable in Colombia and the DR.

Right now deaths in Costa Rica are running about 30 per day:

https://www.google.com/search?q=cost...hrome&ie=UTF-8

That's 6 deaths per million people per day. If Huey Guey's just going to be in CR, say, 3 days, then his chances of picking up COVID and subsequently dying might be 4 x 3 days x 6 deaths/million people/day = .0072%.

This would be an acceptable risk to me. From this table, it would appear a 72 year old man's probability of dying during the course of a year would be 1.79%, so .0072% doesn't sound too bad:

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

But what are Huey's chances of dying if he just stays in Texas for 3 days, were 8.6 people per million are dying from COVID? Well, perhaps higher than in Costa Rica, if his behavior were similar in both places.

Now all this assumes that Huey's a cautious individual. He'll wear N95 or KN95 masks while traveling, stay upwind of the hookers at the outdoor Cocal bar, and, as indicated in your earlier post, just bang a couple a day, not 10 or 12. So we're assuming his behavior while in Costa Rica won't be riskier than the average person's behavior elsewhere. If he gets drunk on his ass and starts swapping tongues with every hooker he sees that of course won't be the case.

Footnote:

IFR’s:

9% for 65+ https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...scenarios.html, Table 1, last CDC planning scenario, March 2021, USA
3.5% for early 70’s: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289900/, Figure 3, December, 2021, meta analysis of studies in OECD countries
0.992%, 2.913%, 3.892%, 2.491%, for 60-79, from several various German studies, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8178670/, Table 1, June, 2021
2.8% or 3.47%, for 70 to 79, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...l.pone.0246831, February, 2021, various OECD countries

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

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HG: "Wait! What about the possibility of taking a shot as a sort of prophylactic? I mean, wouldn't that prevent getting anything? I have a big date soon, and although I'm not sure anything will happen, I don't want to fuck things up for good by giving her the clap!"

Doc: "Sure! We can shoot you up with 1.5 million units of penicillin and whatever you might be growing in there will be killed stone dead!"

HG: "OK!"

HG asked the doc what the probability of catching gonorrhea from that one contact might be and he said, "Oh, maybe 10% up to 25%."

Holy shit! Did he really want to take up to a 25% risk of torpedoing a possibly budding good thing? (Marsha was fucking hot!)

Good for Huey! This is why prevalence of gonorrhea and chlamydia in College Station and Lubbock has always been so much higher than Austin. UT attracts a wiser bunch.

[oeb11]

https://www.kxan.com/news/austin-ran...atistics-show/

• Austin - 56
• Waco — 33rd
• Lubbock — 38th
• Dallas — 60th
• San Antonio — 74th

the differences of those in teh top 100 are in practicality - negligible.

College station - not mentioned
Aggies are smarter than 'woke' indoctrinated tu teasippers.

[GaGambler]

Originally Posted by oeb11

Except - 1b1 - HSV2, HIV, and HPV viruses, among others - are not treatable with antibiotics.

Please stop trying to advocate medical care.

Stick to your own work.

Is there really anyone here that thinks that antibiotics will have any effect on a VIRUS???

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Tiny

That's 6 deaths per million people per day. If Huey Guey's just going to be in CR, say, 3 days, then his chances of picking up COVID and subsequently dying might be 4 x 3 days x 6 deaths/million people/day = .0072%.

I forgot to take into account that Huey Guey's had the two vaccines and the booster. That should reduce his chances of death by 85% or more, taking the guesstimated probability of contracting a fatal case of COVID in Costa Rica from .0072% to .001% or less. The likelihood he'll croak dead from a heart attack or stroke on his trip may be greater than him contracting a fatal case of COVID

[Texas Contrarian]

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Originally Posted by Tiny

I forgot to take into account that Huey Guey's had the two vaccines and the booster. That should reduce his chances of death by 85% or more, taking the guesstimated probability of contracting a fatal case of COVID in Costa Rica from .0072% to .001% or less. The likelihood he'll croak dead from a heart attack or stroke on his trip may be greater than him contracting a fatal case of COVID

Thanks, that is excellent information! After hearing this, I think H will conclude that a pleasure trip to Costa Rica might actually entail less risk than opening up the throttle in a ridiculously fast car on a nearly deserted interstate. (Which he has done a few times, including one instance when he came upon a Texas DPS radar trap while accelerating to approximately double the speed limit. Oops!) Though a gentleman with a fair degree of risk aversity, he feels that he needs to enjoy life!

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[Texas Contrarian]

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Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

Consider the case of a man who is a terrible hypochondriac and continually gets himself tested for various genetic markers or other health status issues, even though he has no reason to believe that he is at even the slightest elevated risk of being affected by any of them.

Suppose that there is a condition that occurs in 0.01% (1 in 10,00) of the general population. There is a test that is "99% accurate," both for positive and negative status.

He takes the test and it comes back positive. What is the probability that he is actually affected by the condition?

Originally Posted by oeb11

For non-mathematicians - I trust you will post an answer discussion
CM - thank You.

Okay!

Originally Posted by Strokey_McDingDong

Bayes

Originally Posted by adav8s28

Bayes

On the right trail!

Here I think is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward way of considering the problem:

Suppose one million people take the test. In that group, 100 would actually have the condition, while 99 of them test positive. But 999,900 people would not have the condition, even though 9,999 of them would nonetheless test positive.

So the total number of positive tests would be 99 + 9,999, or 10,098.

99/10,098 approximately equals 0.0098 ... or slightly less than one percent!

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[Tiny]

OK, This is a wee bit off topic. But this thread deserves more attention. Perhaps a poster will come up with another intriguing probability problem like the Case of the Terrible Hypochondriac. Btw, I instinctively knew the answer was "slightly less than one percent," but didn't know the exact answer until CM provided the solution.

This is an interesting article from financial journalist James Surowiecki, who wrote the Wisdom of Crowds, titled,

Covid misinformation spreads because so many Americans are awful at math

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...eb7_story.html

Now while Surowiecki says the problem is mathematical skills, I think you could just as well attribute it to analytical skills or common sense.

We've discussed various topics in various threads that Surowiecki brings up in the article. One of my favorites is about COVID patients in New South Wales hospitals. Supposedly 141 out of 142 hospitalized patients were vaccinated, back during the time when vaccinations were just getting started in Australia. I had a bet with Bambino on that one - I'd have to bang the fattest, ugliest hooker in Juarez if it were true. I won the bet, whether he admits it or not.

Surowiecki also explains better than we have here why it's so important to segment data by age ranges when you're looking at how effective the vaccines are at preventing severe disease. And provides examples of how the antivaxxers provide other misleading data.

The article is an interesting read. I've read parts of Wisdom of Crowds and likewise enjoyed what I read, although the more mathematically mature among us, like CM, might find it a bit elementary.

[oeb11]

Tiny - why are Americans bad at math?
the emphasis among Teacher's Uniosn is CRT, Racism, and marxist asgenda


Not educating students
Rather indoctrinating students with hatred, racism, and marxist Lies.

not wonder American students are poor in educational fundamentals

Teacher's Unions are unable to master the subjects themselves.



and - it bodes poorly for future American Competition on teh world market.



Buck fiden
From my cold dead hands!

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Tiny

OK, This is a wee bit off topic. But this thread deserves more attention. Perhaps a poster will come up with another intriguing probability problem like the Case of the Terrible Hypochondriac. Btw, I instinctively knew the answer was "slightly less than one percent," but didn't know the exact answer until CM provided the solution.

This is an interesting article from financial journalist James Surowiecki, who wrote the Wisdom of Crowds, titled,

Covid misinformation spreads because so many Americans are awful at math

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...eb7_story.html

Now while Surowiecki says the problem is mathematical skills, I think you could just as well attribute it to analytical skills or common sense.

We've discussed various topics in various threads that Surowiecki brings up in the article. One of my favorites is about COVID patients in New South Wales hospitals. Supposedly 141 out of 142 hospitalized patients were vaccinated, back during the time when vaccinations were just getting started in Australia. I had a bet with Bambino on that one - I'd have to bang the fattest, ugliest hooker in Juarez if it were true. I won the bet, whether he admits it or not.

Surowiecki also explains better than we have here why it's so important to segment data by age ranges when you're looking at how effective the vaccines are at preventing severe disease. And provides examples of how the antivaxxers provide other misleading data.

The article is an interesting read. I've read parts of Wisdom of Crowds and likewise enjoyed what I read, although the more mathematically mature among us, like CM, might find it a bit elementary.

That's a good article. Not off topic at all, especially given some of the clueless posts continually polluting this forum.

One of the worst offenders was that guy who kept posting that the covid case fatality rate is 0.02% without qualification as to age (even after his error was pointed out to him). Needless to say, that's self-evidently ridiculous. He made a number of other clueless statements as well, and his continual failure to reason through any of this is what prompted me to start this thread.

Yes, a large percentage of Americans suffer from a rather severe case of innumeracy as our educational system has been circling the drain for decades.

The Wisdom of Crowds and the issue of prediction markets in general is very interesting. Tyler Cowen wrote a piece some months ago on the issue:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...iction-markets

Among other things, he made the interesting suggestion of creating prediction markets for all manner of events, even including GDP and real estate market forecasts.

.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

That's a good article. Not off topic at all, especially given some of the clueless posts continually polluting this forum.

One of the worst offenders was that guy who kept posting that the covid case fatality rate is 0.02% without qualification as to age (even after his error was pointed out to him). Needless to say, that's self-evidently ridiculous. He made a number of other clueless statements as well, and his continual failure to reason through any of this is what prompted me to start this thread.

I've resolved not to post in the COVID threads. But three other posters are still having problems either dividing or understanding percentages. They divide 760,000 deaths by the U.S. population, 332 million, and come up with 0.023% or .0023% of the population dead from COVID. The actual number is 0.23%. Now I think one of them made a typo, but still....

I don't think the majority of Americans know how to express numbers less than 1% or greater than 100% in percentages.

Well, maybe we need to open up the spigot of foreign students again, from Asian countries like China, and get them to stay on after they finish their educations. They're good at math. Then maybe we'll be able to continue to compete in the 21st century.

[HedonistForever]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Carry along a more comfortable KN95 mask for your date, along with a home COVID test kit, available for $25 from CVS.

Just got a call from my sister who is coming to Miami to go on a cruise. She told me something that took me by surprise. She, her son and his kids, will all have to take a Covid test before they can get onboard.


She says that her son bought a home Covid test "machine". They will do a tel-communications with their doctor watching as they swab their nose and put it in the machine. She said she thinks that the doctor will get the results of the test within minutes.



I said the only way that could happen would be to hook up the machine to the phone or computer for the doctor to get the results, otherwise they will have to hold up the results so the doctor can see the results or just take their word as to what it says. Then they must present the results as they board the cruise ship. You have to really love cruising to get into a petri dish.



I didn't know this "home testing" was even possible.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by HedonistForever

Just got a call from my sister who is coming to Miami to go on a cruise. She told me something that took me by surprise. She, her son and his kids, will all have to take a Covid test before they can get onboard.

Hedonist, There are two tests, the Abbott BinaxNOW and the Ellume, that have been approved by TSA for travel to the USA. Before if you were flying to the USA you had to get a test done within 3 days of your departure at a laboratory or at your hotel. Now you can buy tests here, then while out of the country you swab your nose while using something like facetime or Zoom, so the nurse or whoever can verify you tested negative. You also have to have an App loaded on your phone, which I think uploads your results so the airline can see them when you check in at the airport. So anyway you don't have to go to the trouble of finding a lab while traveling.

I've used the Binax, although not while traveling, and you don't need a special machine. You just swab your nose and expose the swab to some kind of solvent that produces lines on a strip.

You can buy the home tests at a pharmacy, but if you want to use the Binax for travel, I think you have to buy it through Emed - https://www.emed.com/airline-travel

I'd assume the cruise line is doing something similar.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by oeb11

Tiny - why are Americans bad at math?

This may have something to do with it...

https://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=2781803


Great thread, Captain! Not sure how I missed it... full of excellent tips and mongering advice from Tiny...

I look forward to reading future instalments of Huey Guey's Latin American adventures! (Btw did he make it past 2nd base with Marsha?)