The tabula-py Python library, a wrapper around tabula(https://tabula.technology/), can extract tables within PDFs and convert them to Pandas DataFrames. It's a great little library and this is a blog showcasing an example.
Introduction to Statistical Learning by James, Witten, Hastie, and Tibshirani is one of the most popular books for gaining a fundamental understanding of machine learning. All of the code and exercises are presented with the R programming language. In this repo, all exercises are completed with Python, the most popular language today for machine learning. Recreations of some of the examples in the text are also provided. Each chapter is presented as a separate Jupyter Notebook.
Did you see all of the side effects from the vaccine vs the placebo? Here it is in percentages:
* Redness 5.8 vs 1.1
* Swelling 6.9 vs 1
* Pain 86 vs 23
* Fever 10 vs 1
* Fatigue 60 vs 46
* Headache 55 vs 35
* Chills 28 vs 10
* Vomiting 3 vs 1
* Use of pain med 37 vs 10
Only 1100 kids in the study and only 660 of them were followed up at least 2 months after the 2nd dose. These numbers seem unreasonably low.
This means that hundreds of kids had worse reactions than the placebo. All of this to prevent 11 symptomatic cases. I couldn't find the prognosis of these 11 symptomatic cases, but its highly likely that all of them were mild. To me, it seems like the overall health and well being of the vaccinated group was less than the placebo.
Seychelles has vaccinated 68.5k of its 98.5k population. [Around 25% of its total population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Seychelles) are 0-17, so maybe 75k max 18+. Over 90% of adults are vaccinated and less than 7k remain unvaccinated.
Seychelles just reported 1800 cases for the last week or 1.8% of its total population. This equates to 6 million cases in the US or more than 800k per day, a number never approached.
> It looks like the people testing positive in the Seychelles are mostly unvaccinated
It stated that 1/3 were in fully vaccinated and the rest were in partially vaccinated or unvaccinated. There are now 60k that are fully vaccinated, leaving just 8.5k first-dose only. The article was written before the 1800 cases dropped a couple days ago.
More data is needed for hospitalizations and deaths, but as it stands now, it does not look convincing for the vaccine. It's likely more cases will continue to come over the next few weeks, even more than the record breaking prior week.
Seychelles and other island nations that had no major covid outbreaks before vaccine launch (only 500 cases prior and 7.5k since) are the best real life settings we have for vaccine efficacy. For much of the rest of the world, a huge number of people were already infected before vaccine launch, making it difficult to separate out the effectiveness of the vaccine.
I saw that you doubled down on [this comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26181228). Week 5 excess mortality for 65+ in Israel is now up to 7.4 times above normal. It increased every update for the last three weeks. Unbelievable that people like you take 1 minute to read something, think you are an expert and try and proclaim victory. I'm 100% sure you will double down again instead of taking the honorable path of admitting you were wrong. People like you never get held accountable.
I made my comment two weeks ago, describing a fall in mortality that began three weeks prior. The z-score of mortality for Israel peaked as I described in my last post, and has continued to fall. The 65+ group in particular is well within historical norms.
The aggressiveness of your statement requires me to include an image of the current mortality graph for anyone not willing to take the time to dig it out themselves: https://ibb.co/1vCsD7Y
People like you never get held accountable. Please continue thread-stalking me, I'm happy to keep this up.
Excess mortality for the elderly in Israel in the last 6 weeks is the highest it's been (by far) in the last 5 years. Check euroMOMO https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Your comment is surprisingly true! And utterly out of context.
As of today, Israel's deaths - both for the 65-and-overs and all-ages - is nearly down to its historical normal range, per your link.
Going back two weeks there was a huge peak at a z-score of 9.7; and going back eight weeks it was at a statistically anomalous low, at a z-score of -2.2.
I'd be tempted to point out the period of the low was the high holidays; the enormous deflection to positive slope started a week after the high holidays, and continued for three weeks. So, you know, "a bunch of people broke all quarantine for the high holidays and new year and did their level best to stay home rather than go to the doctor, and caused a giant spike, which has receded as the cases associated with that spike calmed down."
You spoke too soon and I hope you issue a correction. The last week of euroMOMO isn't nearly fully updated. All countries see an enormous drop in the last week that is then pulled back up to the actual level in the following weeks of released data. Did you notice the yellow background and the "Corrected for delay in registration".
That was an interesting graphic, so I decided to revisit the Israeli graph on EuroMOMO.
The delay in registration is for deaths that occur up until the week-end update; it is a one-week retrospective potential bump. The fall to baseline in Israel began three weeks ago, and has shown a continuous and steady slope.
You spoke too late, and I hope you issue a correction.
Does it also make sense that they are currently ranked #2 in the world in cases per million in the last week for countries with more that 1 million population?
This is even after a down week in cases. Next door Lebanon is seeing cases fall at the same or faster pace and they peaked at the same time as Israel. Lebanon has yet to start vaccinating.
Case fatality rate has not fallen either. You would expect a huge drop in CFR if the elderly were protected, but this hasn't been the case.
It’s not that hard to understand. People usually die several weeks after exposure. Only 27% of the population has received both doses; a few weeks ago that number was much smaller. In addition, the ultra orthodox community has continued to flout rules on a nearly universal basis. I’m going to go check your comment history — pretty sure you’ll have been wrong about everything related to COVID so far.
Edit: shocked (not shocked) you were an early COVID vaccine skeptic, justified your belief with poor interpretation of statistics, and now that a huge amount of data have validated initial findings, you have instead decided to double down on your original gut feel!
> Edit: shocked (not shocked) you were an early COVID vaccine skeptic, justified your belief with poor interpretation of statistics, and now that a huge amount of data have validated initial findings, you have instead decided to double down on your original gut feel!
I won't defend the comment author's (apparent) anti-vaccine stance.
However, it's almost universally frowned upon to dig into HN users archives and lambaste them for things they've said in the past. That has been the case here for essentially the entire time HN has existed.
It's properly considered borderline cruel/mean and is entirely unnecessary. If there is something worth debating about what they said in their present comment, that should very obviously be the point of focus in the discussion.
In late 2018 some guy on here basically told me I was an idiot and had no idea about investing for predicting that Facebook's stock was a good investment after the irrational drop it had suffered at the time. I was right, they were wrong to an almost humiliating degree. Now, if I go dig up that post and follow that user around HN torturing them with their past comment/s, it would be considered to be in extremely bad taste in HN-etiquette. And I think it's easy to understand why: given the volume of comments and the long archives, HN would rapidly implode into just about the worst pile of garbage on the Internet if everyone went around hitting everyone else for things they said in the past, focus would shift to weaponizing the archives to attack users based on past comments (which would chill discussion dramatically and poison the well).
I’m very happy to lambast vaccine truthers, and it’s good for the discourse to point out that individuals making incorrect vaccine skeptic comments were also making incorrect vaccine skeptic comments in the past.
"Only 27% of the population received both doses". This is a misinterpretation. It's like saying 0.5% die of covid. The vaccinations (and fatality rates) are extremely stratified by age. Over 50% of the 70+ group received at least one vaccination by the third week of January and close to 85% have received both doses as of today.
You said cases were high. Case counts are going to depend on how quickly the age groups with the most cases get vaccinated, which is generally the younger population. So it is going to take a while for case counts to fall.
Since a COVID death generally happens 5-8 weeks after exposure, what you'd expect is that once the high risk populations have been fully vaccinated, you'd start to see the death counts dropping 5-8 weeks later, and you'd start to see the hospitalization rates dropping 2-3 weeks later. Case counts are going to drop last because the high risk populations are not driving the majority of cases.
Also I don't understand what point you are trying to prove? We have detailed clinical trials about the efficacy of the vaccines. We have strong evidence to believe they work. If you are trying to interpret the data to show this isn't the case, you are probably misinterpreting it because it would be going against what we think we know with a high degree of confidence. It doesn't mean we couldn't be wrong, but it is much more likely you are just misinterpreting the data.
Israel's issue has been and continues to be a very large orthodox and ultra-orthodox community which has flouted all quarantine laws and appeals to vaccination, in a tiny dense country where said orthodox and ultra-orthodox can't be meaningfully avoided.
That said, their statistics regarding the symptomatic case rate speak for themselves.
So you admit that total case numbers are not very good, particularly compared to a neighboring country that has not started vaccinating. Thats a good first step.
Scapegoating the orthodox jews? More than 92% of 70+ in Israel have received both doses of the vaccine. Are you blaming the high number of cases on this very small segment?
What happens when elderly all cause mortality is elevated substantially in 2021? This is the ultimate test for the vaccine.
This is despite over 80% of its 70+ age group having both doses of the vaccine. At least half of the 70+ were fully vaccinated by January 23rd.
It is the elderly all cause mortality that ultimately matters to me. If elderly are dying of other causes, then there are problems.
Regardless, 2021 elderly mortality in Israel will serve as a good test for the vaccine as the vast majority of 70+ will be fully vaccinated for nearly the entire year.
As a general rule of thumb there is at least a 2 week delay from getting COVID to death, so it's too early to say going off of a death count. Alternatively, looking up how many new cases of people vaccinated are getting COVID could be used, which doesn't have the delay.
No one was deliberately inoculated with the virus and only symptomatic people were tested. 99.96% of the placebo group did not have a severe case of covid. There is no way to determine effectiveness from this trial.
I'm surprised so many people are excited about this. I have many concerns with the Pfizer vaccine
* 99.96% of the placebo group did not have a serious case of covid
* 99.25% of the placebo group did not get covid
* No one in the trial was deliberately inoculated - participants just lived their lives as normal.
* Only symptomatic participants were tested - this seems unbelievable to me - we have no idea what the actual incidence rate is because not everyone was tested
* Vaccines might just mask symptoms - since not everyone is getting tested, vaccine makers just have to make sure there are no symptoms. No symptoms equals no test.
* No trials done with two placebos - we need trials where both groups are in a placebo group. One gets a shot that gives a mild side effect and the other gives no side effect
* No trials done with unrelated immune boosters - we need to see how well this vaccine performs against other immune boosters. This could be a drugs or even supplements (vitamin D & C and exercise).
* Two shots were given in a trial lasting just 4 months - 4 months is an incredibly short amount of time to know whether it will be effective long term. It also gives Pfizer two chances to boost immune
* Long term health consequences of vaccine - we only have 4 months of data, which is way too short of time to see any longer term consequences
* There is a huge incentive to provide something that masks symptoms - billions of dollars are at stake. Big pharma is one of the very last companies I would trust with a novel vaccine
* No coronavirus vaccine in history - many coronaviruses currently circulate, but no vaccine has even been produced for them. It seems quite coincidental that humans finally put the pieces together for our current novel strand
Covid will be in our rear view mirror before a vaccine is safe, ready, mass produced and easily distributed. Herd immunity is not terribly far away in most countries and by the spring the threshold should be reached nearly everywhere. A vaccine won't be necessary and even if available isn't likely to be taken by most people, as covid has lower IFR than the flu for people under 50 (and magnitudes lower under 20).
