This could just be CNN reporting on a scientific study, but seeing how the network took a hard stance against reporting any positive news on the use of hydrochloroquine to treat COVID-19, there’s almost certainly an agenda guiding which studies they decide to promote.
We certainly can’t see any further racial division coming from this headline:
Black newborn babies in the US are more likely to survive childbirth if they are cared for by Black doctors, but three times more likely to die when looked after by White doctors, a study finds. https://t.co/cwZ3BZmlL2
— CNN (@CNN) August 18, 2020
Rob Picheta reports that “the authors did not speculate about the reasons behind the trend, but wrote: ‘Taken with this work, it gives warrant for hospitals and other care organizations to invest in efforts to reduce such biases and explore their connection to institutional racism.'”
Is there a correlation/causation thing going on here or is this as bad as the title makes it out to be?
— TheCouch (@TheTeaCouch) August 18, 2020
Guessing the number of experienced white doctors is higher meaning they're more likely to work on deliveries with complications. The article said the infant mortality rate for blacks is 2x higher than whites in general, so twice as likely to have complications at birth.
— containercore (@containercore) August 18, 2020
"I'm not calling every White Doctor in the country a murdering racist but…" – @CNN
— Kevin Dalton (@NextLAMayor) August 18, 2020
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Good for Black docs, and all that- but results like this are ~always the result of dubiously honest "backwards margin reporting." For example, a 99.9% survival rate under Black doctors and 99.6% SR under white ones CAN technically be spun as a "300% difference in survival rates." https://t.co/JLarCltky0
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) August 18, 2020
My assumption here was pretty much correct: "Under the care of White physicians, the White newborn mortality rate is 290 per 100,000 births. Black mortality is estimated at 894 per 100,000 births." Having a Black doc closes the gap from ~600 to ~200 per 100,000 babies.
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) August 18, 2020
Another way of putting this is that the survival rate is 99.71% for white babies with white doctors, 99.11% for Black babies w white doctors, and 99.37% or so for BB with BD. This is the study. https://t.co/4ngSdEdufR
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) August 18, 2020
Here’s Twitchy’s resident pediatrician:
I actually forced myself to look for the article. It’s not published in a legit journal and costs $10 to read so screw them. Even from the abstract the article looks like utter bullshit. https://t.co/4j8o3SRxWf
— Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) August 18, 2020
Here, let’s try it this way. Maybe black doctors prefer to go into general pediatrics in their own communities and see a lot of well babies while the really sick babies get transported to the NICUs in children’s hospitals which are generally not in the inner cities. Fuckheads.
— Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) August 18, 2020
Final comment: if you draw a conclusion about causation from a retrospective study (even a good one unlike this pile of crap) you are a dumbass who deserves ridicule.
— Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) August 18, 2020
Fact: racial disparities in care access, usage, quality and insurance are real and create adverse health outcomes. But CNN shouldn’t report on an emotionally fraught topic unless full article can be accessed by viewers. Abstract has no methods, strength of results, limitations.
— Janice Utley (@janice_utley) August 18, 2020
Do white doctors handle a disproportionate number of high risk/high mortality pregnancies and if so does the study control for that?
— Wynthryth March (@wynthryth) August 18, 2020
The fact that the white doctors/white babies infant mortality rate is higher than the black doctors/black babies infant mortality rate suggests to me that the small subset of doctors who specialize in treating very sick babies aren’t black and that is all the study measures.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) August 18, 2020
The world’s best open heart surgeon has more people die under his care than the average general practitioner. That’s a function of who the patients are rather than who the doctor is.
— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) August 18, 2020
Another way of putting this might be that not a lot of Black doctors choose to work at the hospitals that service the greatest number of high risk births.
Without a deeper dive into the numbers we simply don’t know
But the headline will float around as ‘science fact’ for years
— Seany Hide (@SeanyHide) August 18, 2020
"The authors did not speculate about the reasons behind the trend…"
I think that's kind of important. We know the "what" but the "why" is probably more important.
— MetsMan7186 (@man7186) August 18, 2020
The authors of the study? No. The CNN author? Yes. It's clear what Rob is implying here, and he's hedged his argument twice over. The passive-aggressive insinuations actually make me angrier than if he just said his rehearsed bit about white docs ignoring black babies to death.
— Barnabas Reynolds (@barneysreynolds) August 18, 2020
So now correlation is causation if there’s a potential race issue involved?
— Darren Reiter (@DarrenReiter) August 18, 2020
Jumping straight to institutional racism without mentioning or even noting other factors like socio-economics, maternal health conditions, etc.
— Peter Thompson (@peter334tom) August 18, 2020
This article told me nothing.
— Mister Majestic | Gigantic Guyver | Pickle Rick (@AntonioB79) August 18, 2020
Wow. I didn’t think there were any more levels @CNN could sink to, but here’s another one.
— Suzie Q (@SuzieQ8600) August 18, 2020
Related:
‘He WANTS people dead’: CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta has a lot of disclaimers for that VA study showing no benefit from hydroxychloroquine https://t.co/ZshVwkczZv
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 22, 2020
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