Originally Posted by
ridethecliche
Please continue to educate me about how epidemiological stats work
Those of us who study infectious diseases (you from practical first-hand experience, me from the lab) have had a rough time keeping our mouths shut lately. This spring I was sort of excited because I thought my students were going to ace the virology and epidemiology portions of their exams because they were living it and random people on the street suddenly were interested in stuff I've thought was cool for the last couple decades, but it quickly turned into a whole lot of people who suddenly were mansplaining things to me based on a blog post they read. About the same time I took on a grad student who my wife calls the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger because he keeps trying to explain how he shouldn't follow my directions for experiments I've been doing for 20 years and he's only heard me explain to him.