If you’re in a room of 30 random strangers, there’s a 50/50 chance someone in that room has tested positive in the last two weeks
In the last 14 days, 111,488 people in Ireland tested positive for Covid. That’s one in every 45 people
A short thread on the state of #COVID19ireland
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— Mark Shrime, MD PhD (@markshrime) December 30, 2021
16 comments
This tweet will be way more impactful in a week or two
Think it would have been better to use 60 random strangers in this example surely lol.
Also using 10 days as opposed to 2 weeks would be more relevant.
What? This is just confusing? There’s a 50% chance that 1 of 30 people had Covid in the last 2 weeks?
Or there is a 98% chance that anybody you meet hasn’t tested postive.
59 in 60 people you meet haven’t had a positive pcr.
Sex Panther!
Not fully related to the post but jesus I hate twitter.
How is such a nuanceless communication model so central to discourse around a pandemic.
This guy wanted to essentially write a quick bit of info and had to split it into 3 parts. Its so clunky and confusing.
Now excuse me, there are some clouds I need to shout at
Maths abuse
Sure, if Covid is evenly distributed throughout the populace but it’s not.
It’s a misunderstanding of the birthday problem (possibly willingly) and not realising there are underlying assumptions
theres also a 70% chance two people share the same birthday..
Is it really necessary to describe strangers as “Random”? Are there any other kind?
So if I’m in a room with 60 strangers then there’s statistically a 100% chance one of them has tested positive in the last two weeks?
I’m due to do exams with a couple of hundred others in DKIT next week. No sign of them being moved online, I have Asthma and Crohn’s, I’m on immunosuppressants and basically have no immune system.
Fully vaccinated but the answer I got was if you don’t sit the exams you either repeat in August and graduate with only a pass or repeat the year next year. Absolutely fuming but have no choice to just sit in a hall for two hours with people I’ve never met before from other parts of the campus.
Meanwhile everyone in thr gym is maskless….
That’s one of those catchy statements, which doesn’t hold up in real world situations. Someone misinterpreting the statistics, albeit for a good cause.
[Edit] To clarify, people who know they have covid should be self isolating and would not be found in a room of 30 people. Additionally, people who enter a single room of 30 people may not be the most covid-cautious people out there.
So make sure to stay in a room of 39 or r less