In our second episode, we are sitting down with Doctor-in-Residence of Nuclear Medicine, Ian Alberts. With a grounding in Physics and having begun his medical career in the British Royal Navy, including tours on nuclear submarines, Ian brings a unique perspective to the world. We have the pleasure of hearing his thoughts on our current understanding of Covid and what we may or may not ever know.   

Tune in to hear what he thinks of the predictions, methodologies and which stats he'll be looking for going forward.  For more great info on all things analytics, check us out at www.the-data-mind.com  

To learn more about our host, Kali Garbaczeski check her out at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kali-garbaczeski-48934a5/  

Episode Details:   

3:26   - What information should we want to know when facing a pandemic? 

10:15 - Complex systems and transmissibility 

16:30 - Popular studies done to date 

20:33 - Why the models were reasonable 

25:03 - Confidence Intervals and why they matter 

30:41 - A note on herd immunity  

36:24 - Infection fatality rate, the flu, and HIV 

40:04 - Why we might wish for this one back comparatively 

45:58 - A bit about testing 48:35 - What to look at going forward 

52:04 - This needs to be taken seriously but don't panic 

56:02 - Scientific thinking and the art of the polite debate 

59:14 - Up Next! What we think about the lockdown  

Other resources include:  

Emergent properties of a complex system as described by the two-armed pendulum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwT0k09w-jw  

The Reich laboratory at UMass publish a concatenation of various models: https://covid19forecasthub.org/ 

One look at Covid in terms of relative risk: https://medium.com/wintoncentre/how-much-normal-risk-does-covid-represent-4539118e1196 

General data resource: https://ourworldindata.org/ Good discussion of pros and cons: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51979654 

Domo dashboard with county-level Covid Data: https://www.domo.com/covid19/daily-pulse/   

Other Podcasts to check out! 

Recommend the Munk Debates: https://podcasts.apple.com/ch/podcast/the-munk-debates-podcast/id1486184902?l=en&i=1000471416990 And This Week in Virology  https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/   

Some advice regarding Fact-Checking on the Media:  

https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/topics/fact-checking/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/02/1002505/black-lives-matter-protest-misinformation-advice/   

Please like, subscribe, comment, and share if you liked what you saw! We will be continuing to interview leaders and experts across a multitude of industries and geographies with the same questions in mind: what is the data that you trust and why?   So if you are interested in analytics, data literacy, and data-supported decision making then please consider subscribing.   

Thanks and see you again next month!