[mumblemumble]

They do have some discussion in there about the option of valuing asymptomatic cases at $0. So it's not like they didn't think of this option. But they went with $11,000 as the default option in their model, anyway. This leaves me thinking we may be looking at a Chesterton's Fence situation: the reason isn't obvious to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't a good one.

I'm guessing there is some subtext here that an armchair analyst isn't going to catch from reading just this paper. Perhaps, for example, the cost of asymptomatic cases is there because "asymptomatic" doesn't actually mean "no symptoms at all", it means "the patient didn't subjectively feel ill enough to seek care." In which case there probably is some real cost to factor into the average. Or perhaps the argument is that asymptomatic cases still carry some risk of secondary effects such as myocarditis that absolutely need to be taken into account and averaged into the group from a public health perspective.

It's hard to say for sure, since the paper clearly isn't written for a non-expert audience and therefore doesn't spend much time on defining jargon.

[dboreham]

I've seen reporting recently that studies showed some large percentage (63%?) of asymptomatic patients had visible signs in chest x-rays. So asymptomatic doesn't seem to always mean "absolutely no measurable effects".

[blaser-waffle]

How does that compare to x-rays of people with the common cold or the standard flu?

[neilmock]

I'm probably going to perma-delete my HN account after this, but this is my main complaint with popularized scientific research being parroted for political purposes. "The paper isn't written for a non-expert audience" yet one of the authors is going on Anderson Cooper tonight to talk about it to a non-expert audience.

[rblatz]

Wouldn't that be the best way to communicate this to a non-expert audience? Bring the expert in to explain the report and fill in the context that the layman is missing compared to an expert?

[mumblemumble]

The same researcher can speak to a popular and expert audience. And that researcher should absolutely say things in the paper that they don't say in the popular outlet, and vice versa. They're different audiences with different needs and different background knowledge.

Compare the experience of reading one of Einstein's scientific papers with the experience of listening to one of his interviews. It's almost like they're not even the same person.

[dhimes]

That's the difference between a paper and someone explaining it to the layperson.