Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I strongly disagree - ashtonkem's description is quite sensible. I don't expect HN comments to be more precise than medical professionals.

That is, it's easy to find scholarly papers published by doctors which don't add the "about" like:

"Measles vaccine is highly effective, with 1 dose being 93% effective and 2 doses being 97% effective at preventing measles." from "Measles Outbreak — Minnesota April–May 2017" by authors from the Minnesota Department of Health, at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5687591/

"Based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, one dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against MeV, 78% effective against mumps virus (MuV), and 97% effective against rubella." by authors from The Ohio State University at https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/12/e2026153118.full.pd... .

Yes, I already mentioned malnutrition as a known factor.

I asked for substantiation of your statement "insufficient vitamin C being especially bad."

You cited reference doesn't even mention vitamin C.

I was wrong with vitamin C, it was vitamin A deficiency that is correlated with severe symptoms, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28282701/

And given that precise numbers like 93% is meaningless. One should either give the range or at least describe the population.

And it turned out 93% was not coming from the study in https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/12/e2026153118.full.pd..., they just reference https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5863094/ , but that nowhere mention the number 93% and it’s abstract give much more sensible data:

Delivery of the two doses of vaccine needed to achieve >90% immunity is accomplished by routine immunization of infants at 9–15 months of age followed by a second dose delivered before school entry or by periodic mass vaccination campaigns. B

Do you expect HN comments to use more accurate language than medical researchers use in published papers?

I don't.

So describing the difference between "93%" and "about 93%" as 'much more sensible', in this context, seems excessively nitpicky.

Even more so given that you got the wrong vitamin and it took you a couple of tries until you got the right citation.

I am extremely skeptical about precise numbers in medicine. The biology just does not work in that way. And it does no matter if the number comes from HN comments or peer-reviewed journal article. It signals that with very high probability that at best those who gave the number do not understand what they are talking about. At worst in can be just an arbitrary number where the extra precision was used to give a sense of legitimacy.

And note how much better the claim from the original article sounds: the efficiency of at least 90%. Which tells that even if one follow a reasonable lifestyle that minimizes chances of getting the infection (or at least feed infants in a reasonable way as we are talking about <2 years old), then still the vaccine reduces the chance of infection by a factor of 10.

And yes, it was stupid for me to rely on the memory when claiming about particular vitamin.

> And it does no matter if the number comes from HN comments or peer-reviewed journal article.

I’m sorry, that’s absurd. You will always be picking pedantic fights with people if you expect everyone everywhere to meet the standards of peer reviewed medicine.

From the outside picking a fight over the difference between “93%” and “about 93%” on a technology board is pedantic to the point of being suspicious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com