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bkydx t1_ixvupl1 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in A study of NFL games during the 2020 season suggests a link between attendance and COVID spikes in surrounding counties 14 and 21 days later. The inferred connection held strongest for games attended by 20,000-plus fans by Wagamaga

Sorry one too many 0's but it still doesn't change the equation.

.001% of a problem is not the cause of the problem.

There are way more people watching sports at bars and having people over in their house then watching in the stadium.

There are more people on public transit.

There are more kids in school.

There are more workers in the office.

They have no explanation as to how or why and no mechanism and the magical inferred connection they found completely disappears with no explanation at 10k people or less.

They collected data during the peak climb of the Beta outbreak and didn't mention it or acknowledge it.

The same data was collected outside of the Beta outbreak in another paper and all of the correlation and inferred connections disappeared.

So maybe the cause of the beta outbreak is the Beta Variant and not the NFL or NCAA just maybe.

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JKUAN108 t1_ixvvar4 wrote

I just want everyone to know that I have asked u/bkydx on three separate occasions for a source on his claim that the cause of the post-NFL spike was the Beta variant, as it relates to the current paper in discussion, and so far they have provided nothing.

They have now also backpedaled from "BECAUSE THEY [the authors] ALREADY KNOW THE CAUSE WAS THE BETA VARIANT" and "The cause of the increase in cases was the Beta Variant and nothing else" to "just maybe" the spike was caused by the beta variant.

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Korwinga t1_ixvz4pg wrote

They also were initially making the assertion that the NFL played 1000 games in 2020, so using 269 games was "cherry picking". In reality, there were 269 NFL games played in 2020, and this paper used all of them.

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bkydx t1_ixvzcxa wrote

You do not understand sarcasm.

There is no back-peddling and my argument stands.

NFL/ncaa attendance Data collected pre Beta variant shows no increase.

NFL attendance Data Collected during Beta variant, inconsistent, sometimes no effect with no explanation as to why.

The Strong relationship when over 20,000 fans is explained by population density being higher in the larger cities and outbreaks effecting higher populated areas significantly harder.

I provided Mechanisms, Reasoning, Comparing papers and variables.

​

You provided "both papers show no covid problems with less then 10,000 people" which agreeing with me and contradicts yourself.

Conclusion

NO COVID PROBLEMS FROM NFL GAMES.

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JKUAN108 t1_ixvzud1 wrote

> I provided Mechanisms, Reasoning, Comparing papers and variables.

Ok, so for the fifth time, please provide a PAPER backing up your claim about the Beta variant ("BECAUSE THEY [the authors] ALREADY KNOW THE CAUSE WAS THE BETA VARIANT" and "The cause of the increase in cases was the Beta Variant and nothing else")

> contradicts yourself

No, what I said was that there were no COVID problems with less than 10,000 people (or maybe 5000 people) and there were COVID problems with more than 20,000 people. Show me where I contradicted myself.

> NO COVID PROBLEMS FROM NFL GAMES.

Do you work for the NFL or something? The conclusion is "no covid problems with less then 10,000 people" not "NO COVID PROBLEMS FROM NFL GAMES"

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JKUAN108 t1_ixw1nn5 wrote

> The Strong relationship when over 20,000 fans is explained by population density being higher in the larger cities and outbreaks effecting higher populated areas significantly harder.

Should I even bother asking you if you have a source on this one?

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cyberentomology t1_ixvwxqr wrote

It boggles the mind how your preconceived biases are preventing you from connecting the dots here.

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Korwinga t1_ixvz3pd wrote

> The same data was collected outside of the Beta outbreak in another paper and all of the correlation and inferred connections disappeared.

I'm real curious how 2 papers can collect data from the same set of NFL games (2020 season), but only one of those sets of games occurred during the Beta outbreak. Care to explain it?

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bkydx t1_ixw1821 wrote

One set occurred Aug-Dec 2020 and they also looked at NCAA games.

This paper looked Sept -February 2020-2021

Beta Variant October-Feb 2020-2021.

​

Many of the NFL games were in both studies but one is 95% Beta variant and the other is balanced 50% before and 50% during beta which cancels out.

51 NBA games happened this week with close to 20,000.

Where are all the outbreaks? It's indoors and should be worse then NFL games and yet nothing.

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Korwinga t1_ixw4908 wrote

Do you know how long the NFL season is? It lasts from September until January, with all but one set of games being complete by the end of December. Your paper that looked from Aug-Dec includes all of the normal season games from the NFL, minus 16, but none of the post season games (13 games). Out of the total NFL games (269), your paper should include 240. 89% of the data set for the NFL is in fact the exact same games (aside from the potential cherry picking of data in your study, but we don't need to get into that).

Here's the real difference. Your paper is 20% NFL games, and 80% NCAA games. They lump all of the games with in person attendance together and judge that entire batch as a group. Now, from this more recent study, we know that games with <5000 people didn't show any trend towards increased Covid spikes. We don't have the attendance numbers for the NCAA games (a serious limitation of that study, but that's okay), but I really struggle to imagine that it was higher than the NFL games during that same period. If your data set is dominated by data that doesn't match the rest of the data, that can easily skew results.

Now, I can't prove that without doing a study of my own, but it's a perfectly reasonable explaination for why these studies got different results. If you read the conclusions of BOTH of these studies, they talk about limitations. One of the limitations of your study is exactly what has been stated here:

>First, owing to data limitations, we considered in-person attendance as a 0 or 1 binary variable. Specifically, while in-person attendance numbers were available for NFL games, they were not available for NCAA games. Explicit consideration of attendance numbers may change the estimation.

There are also additional limitations on this study that they specifically said should be followed up on:

>Third, we also did not account for the spillover effects to the counties adjacent to the ones hosting NFL or NCAA games.

This is one of the limitations that OP's study specifically was looking at. They also discuss your study and why they think they got different results:

>It is important to note that our study was distinct from and comes to different conclusions than a 2021 study that examined in-person attendance in NFL and NCAA games and detected no increase in COVID-19 cases in 3 ways. First, Toumi et al only included 19.1% of NFL games, whereas our study included every game. Second, our study examined both in-county and contiguous county COVID-19 cases whereas Tuomi et al only considered in-county spread. Third, our study examined the number of fans in attendance whereas Toumi et al6 only included a dichotomous measure indicating fan or non–fan attended games. Consideration of these factors may explain the differing results.

You're trying to spin this as bad science, and I guarantee you that the authors of your study would disagree. This is important expansion of previous work. There is no single source of truth in science, and you can have different results among similar studies; Often deeper dives will tell you why this occurs and gives a more complete answer. That's what OP's study is doing.

>51 NBA games happened this week with close to 20,000.

>Where are all the outbreaks? It's indoors and should be worse then NFL games and yet nothing.

Maybe because a lot of people have been vaccinated now? Weird, it's almost like vaccination works to help us get back to a normal life. How strange.

EDIT: I had a math error. Fixed it.

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JKUAN108 t1_ixw21og wrote

Ok, for the SIXTH time, what is your source on your claim on these claims of yours:

> BECAUSE THEY [the authors] ALREADY KNOW THE CAUSE WAS THE BETA VARIANT

>The cause of the increase in cases was the Beta Variant and nothing else

Also:

>The same data was collected outside of the Beta outbreak in another paper and all of the correlation and inferred connections disappeared.

> One set occurred Aug-Dec 2020 and they also looked at NCAA games.

Ok, so it's not the same data and you admit your first statement was incorrect?

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