Hacker News Reader

Comment by trav4225 | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, I wonder if they attempt to control for bias. It sounds as though they were asking random passersby if they wanted a COVID-19 antibody test. If so, it seems that the sample group could be biased toward including more people who suspected that they may have been infected (previously or currently) than a truly random sample.

View on HN

Also biased because they are sampling people who are out and about. People who are out and about likely come into contact with more people than people who are staying at home and rarely going out.

Out, about, and willing to speak to a stranger, which I think is the biggest bias. Pretty much everyone I know goes on the occasional walk, but we all stay the fuck away from other people.

My Hollywood movie plot theory is that Covid affects inhibitions.

It’s certainly not a hollywood movie—for the flu, it’s already the case!

Change in Human Social Behavior in Response to a Common Vaccine

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20816312/

Conclusions: These results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior.

You might enjoy David Cronenberg's film Rabid.

Except this aligns with other general sampling. You're not going to be able to sample people with consent.

Not like you can force people to test so it's impossible to get full randomness there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com