Astral Codex Ten

Rzztmass

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Rzztmass

Article

Rzztmass is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 23, 2021 and November 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “Rzztmass writes : The worms thing is clever, but it doesn’t really work”; “the only paper reporting semi-reporting prevalence Rzztmass likes to cite were immunosupprsssed from steroids”. It most often appears alongside Alexandros Marinos, COVID, Dr. Bitterman.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: November 23, 2021
  • Last seen: November 28, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Ivermectin
November 23, 2021 · Original source
Lots of people were skeptical of the worms hypothesis. Rzztmass writes:
Inline links: writes
But I’m also not as skeptical as Rzztmass. We don’t have to speculate about whether doctors in parasite-prone areas would give steroids - we know they did! Dr. Bitterman asked and lots of these trials admitted giving steroids to their patients. Ravakirti gave steroids to the entire control group, Lopez-Medina gave it to some controls. It happened! We know it happened!
Inline links: the entire control group
Open Thread 200
November 28, 2021 · Original source
This is simply not true. I've pointed out exactly why this isn't true in the past to you as well and yet you continue to repeat it. I'm not sure why. Anyway, this is just pure ignorance of the relative risk scale and just how few deaths can radically shift that reported scale. The entire difference of mortality effect is only 39 people among a control group of 1984 patients. Assuming a 15.5% prevalence (average prevalence by parasitologic methods of the trials driving the favorable effect), and even assuming a only 5% chance of getting disseminated strongyloids infection due to either immunosuppression (since less half of the patients in the only paper reporting semi-reporting prevalence Rzztmass likes to cite were immunosupprsssed from steroids) or eosinopenia associated with COVID (which happens even without steroids), that already explains ~15.5 deaths, which is already ~40% of the mortality benefit. That absolutely makes a dent. And even then I suspect this is a low estimate. Bottom line: you continue to not appreciate how small number absolute patient event differences can translate into large differences on a relative risk scale.