Summary
A site for public information on statistical methodology in order to allow the public to understand the validity of new COVID-19 research.
Description
Description
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, there were conflicting reports on hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment for the virus. Social media essentially fanned the flames on the idea that the medication was effective, whereas published medical research questioned its effectiveness as well as the risk for side effects.
Examples of what would be covered would be:
-The Confidence Interval (CI) and the related issues to standard deviation.
-The Risk Rate (RD) and Odds Rate (OR), and how they differ.
-The risk difference (RD), excess risk, or attributable risk.
To give an example how this would help the public gain a greater understanding of the medical literature concerning COVID-19,
the following is a passage from an article explaining how in terms of medical statistics, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was not a effective as trending media information may have presented it as:
Disease exacerbation
Meta-analysis of all comparative studies showed that disease exacerbation was not significantly different between the HCQ group and the control group (RR: 1.41, 95% CI, 0.82–2.44; RD: 0.03, 95% CI, -0.03–0.11). Exclusion of pre-prints data from meta-analysis did not significantly change the results (RR: 1.50, 95% CI, 0.84–2.67). Meta-analysis of controlled randomised studies found no difference in disease exacerbation between two groups (RR: 0.62, 95% CI, 0.20–1.96; RD: -0.04, 95% CI, -0.13–0.05).
Source:
Review Article
The Role of Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 Treatment: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Amir Shamshirian, BSc, PhD, et al.
Ann Acad Med Singap 2020;49:789-800 DOI: 10.47102/annals-acadmedsg.2020370
Who will take these actions?
The goal would be a collaboration of various foundations that address issues ranging from statistical education to public information on medicine. What is proposed is a website that presents medical statistics on topics such as the one in the previous paragraph.
What are the projected costs?
As a collaboration that would be managed mostly by websites, the cost is negligible.
Timeline
This is expected to be online and having an effective audience reach by mid-year 2021.
About the author(s)
The author has participated in competitions ranging from COVID-19 model prediction to public education planning for the coronavirus. The author, although not a medical professional, has attended professional education courses on statistical applications to medicine.
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