From the Red Zone

 

"If he has a science degree and says what you want, then that's ok." This sentence contains what happens daily in Italian communication. One has a specific opinion, and one is looking for someone with a proper scientific title ready to support it.

Our work is not like that. We are not here to support the views of some at the expense of others. To be authoritative, research must leave out personal opinions; otherwise, it loses credibility. We, too, and the results of our analyzes are often questioned. It is mostly part of the game. Talking, telling, doing research exposes researchers to criticism and comments.

The highly unpleasant part is that some comments, even from esteemed colleagues, are not carried at the scientific level but go beyond the academic domain to become personal attacks.

Our firm stance on managing epidemic data may reasonably dislike some and can be manipulated by others.

But we are not on that level. In both cases, our contribution is of a practical nature. It wants to lead to targeted interventions for better management of the situation, which remains an emergency. The controversy, the political manipulation, is of no interest to us.

Someone asks us, "what are you proposing?", It is easy to criticize, much more difficult to build.

In recent months, our scientific works (results verified and scrutinized by other technicians) have been (and are being) published in influential journals in the statistical field and beyond. We have built forecasting models that can (could have been) used by policymakers. We are not the only ones (RobBayes, Covistat). The concrete proposals are manifold. For example, unemployed people could be hired to resume contact tracing. Implement rapid monitoring campaigns in schools, administer salivary swabs to students, and process them with the pooled sample testing technique. In this technique, five (or more) swabs are analyzed together in the laboratory.  If the pooled sample is negative, all the individual swabs are negative, and no further analysis is required; if the pooled sample is positive, the five swabs are examined again one by one to identify the positive (s). (a technique that saves a lot of time and money, and that we had proposed, unheard, already a year ago).

Furthermore, it would be appropriate to use university laboratories so as not to further burden public health. Establish surveillance samples managed by Istat, which has all the skills to select and manage them. Again employing the same personnel trained ad hoc and hired for the occasion in the operational management. Create a network of regional laboratories that, in turn, sequencing a large number of positive swabs weekly to determine the effective spread of the variants. In short, the concrete proposals are not lacking at all: for months, the statisticians, all together, tried to raise their voices and made themselves heard. Our group is just a vehicle for this voice.

Yet, some still think it is all based on personal interest, a longing for visibility. Those who know us know that we have a strong sense of institutions. We identify ourselves with the state with the institutions we work for. Like everyone else, we can't wait for this moment to pass to return to our lives, made up of dinners, soccer, sea, mountains, family, tango, aikido, and above all, travel.

And for today from the red zone (of shame), that's all.