Wonder if transport of the pollutants through local weather circulations may have caused similar death rates in the control areas specified,need to exclude this possibility by reference to a meteorological review of the affected days in question.
Really makes you wonder where peer review has disappeared to at JAMA.
Also makes you wonder what the editor at JAMA is doing, rather than his/her job. Mind boggling that causal language is even permitted based on data of this type, irrespective of the common sense/local knowledge issues that the authors lacked in this case.
It seems like the next step is to see how large the area of excess deaths might be. Perhaps a lot of people affected by the fires moved temporarily north and east and some died there. But it definitely seems to be a signal worth investigating in its own right. Also, by my perusal of a map, it seems Santa Ana winds are northeast winds, moving south westerly, not south easterly as declared in the post.
I can attest that since I lived, ate and breathed JAMA performance statistics for many years. Sensible Medicine has many more readers than JAMA does. You’d be surprised how small the readership of JAMA really is.
That is why my preferred venue for this article was Sensible Medicine rather than JAMA.
Wonder if transport of the pollutants through local weather circulations may have caused similar death rates in the control areas specified,need to exclude this possibility by reference to a meteorological review of the affected days in question.
Great post.
Really makes you wonder where peer review has disappeared to at JAMA.
Also makes you wonder what the editor at JAMA is doing, rather than his/her job. Mind boggling that causal language is even permitted based on data of this type, irrespective of the common sense/local knowledge issues that the authors lacked in this case.
JAMA was terrible in the 90’s during my residency and continues to this day. The AMA needs to be disbanded and redone from scratch.
It seems like the next step is to see how large the area of excess deaths might be. Perhaps a lot of people affected by the fires moved temporarily north and east and some died there. But it definitely seems to be a signal worth investigating in its own right. Also, by my perusal of a map, it seems Santa Ana winds are northeast winds, moving south westerly, not south easterly as declared in the post.
This is a marvelous and appropriate analysis. I hope the authors will attempt to get this printed in JAMA as, sadly, their reach is far beyond yours.
Amazingly, an article with an average read here is read by more people than any article (save one) that I ever published in JAMA.
I can attest that since I lived, ate and breathed JAMA performance statistics for many years. Sensible Medicine has many more readers than JAMA does. You’d be surprised how small the readership of JAMA really is.
That is why my preferred venue for this article was Sensible Medicine rather than JAMA.
Don't tell Bauchner.
Very good observations.
I appreciate "COD reports are not reliable!" Seems to be such low lying fruit for study to improve "Medicine!"