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This is regarding someone who died recently from as-yet unannounced causes. You can probably figure out who, but the question is about the illness rather than the person, so I omit his name. A news article said:
He was up and about until a few days ago, then entered hospital and died rather quickly. Do those symptoms sound like covid, or anything else particularly? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF ( talk) 08:57, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
[Damn, it's no longer possible to recover an unsaved edit from an edit conflict, so I have to rewrite this response]. I carefully tried to not make this about the patient, but rather about whether those symptoms match what has been observed about Covid and other possible causes. That's not a matter of speculation, but of trying to identify Bayesian priors, grounded in sources (maybe indirectly) if you like to think of it that way. E.g. this mentions toxins as a cause of soapy taste in the mouth, suggesting he was exposed to something, while "lung-ache" immediately evokes covid. "Speculation" on the other hand would be e.g. "maybe Putin poisoned him with Novichok".
Note that Wikipedia's treatment of this type of topic is almost useless, because MEDRS makes it exclude an enormous amount of sourcing that a reasonable person would consider informative. I mentioned that the person is dead to make it clear that this is not about a medical decision. Plus, a Covid article would say nothing about other possible causes.
Anyway, stop freaking out. We have a big article about possible causes of the death of Mozart since how Mozart died is still uncertain centuries later. What's left is to match up Mozart's symptoms with possible causes, as that article shows is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The only thing really different about the case I'm thinking about is that it is much more recent. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF ( talk) 15:52, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
In case there's some confusion, BLP including BDP apply to living persons and recently deceased regardless of whether you "avoid naming them" when it's extremely obvious who you are referring to. The question of what level of obviousness may be debated, but if you were to open a discussion at WP:BLP/N I'm sure you'll find this affirmed. Otherwise I could sat "according to my contacts, the president of X is a paedophile who enjoys raping kids" (where I specify X), and it's fine since I didn't actually name the person. That's clearly nonsense. If you want to try and argue semantics that "president of X" is equivalent to naming them, you could easily substitute world leader who talked about injecting disinfectants, world leader actively promoting Covid-Organics, former world leader who said "we don't have homosexuals, like in your country" etc.
P.S. As a further example of why your question was so incredibly flawed, you seem to have completely ignored that person you're referring to also said they tested negative in response to a question about COVID at the time of the post you referred to. You also ignored the fact the post referred to a tooth infection and root canal. Such details are surely important when considering the symptoms but of course are difficult to consider when we are analysing random parts of someone's post where you think avoiding mentioning their name or directly linking to them somehow gets around BLP concerns. If you didn't mention such details because they weren't explicitly mentioned in whatever RS you read, that again, the obvious question is why it matters unless you too recognise that there are indeed still BDP concerns. (I think it also raises the question of how reliable this source actually if is they would neglect to mention such details.)
Am I right in thinking that groundwater levels are higher the closer the place is to a river bank? Would that mean that dams reduce groundwater levels downstream by making rivers smaller? Is there any place I can read more about this? Wikipedia does not provide answers, unfortunately. Surtsicna ( talk) 22:51, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
Science desk | ||
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< September 3 | << Aug | September | Oct >> | Current desk > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives |
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The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
This is regarding someone who died recently from as-yet unannounced causes. You can probably figure out who, but the question is about the illness rather than the person, so I omit his name. A news article said:
He was up and about until a few days ago, then entered hospital and died rather quickly. Do those symptoms sound like covid, or anything else particularly? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF ( talk) 08:57, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
[Damn, it's no longer possible to recover an unsaved edit from an edit conflict, so I have to rewrite this response]. I carefully tried to not make this about the patient, but rather about whether those symptoms match what has been observed about Covid and other possible causes. That's not a matter of speculation, but of trying to identify Bayesian priors, grounded in sources (maybe indirectly) if you like to think of it that way. E.g. this mentions toxins as a cause of soapy taste in the mouth, suggesting he was exposed to something, while "lung-ache" immediately evokes covid. "Speculation" on the other hand would be e.g. "maybe Putin poisoned him with Novichok".
Note that Wikipedia's treatment of this type of topic is almost useless, because MEDRS makes it exclude an enormous amount of sourcing that a reasonable person would consider informative. I mentioned that the person is dead to make it clear that this is not about a medical decision. Plus, a Covid article would say nothing about other possible causes.
Anyway, stop freaking out. We have a big article about possible causes of the death of Mozart since how Mozart died is still uncertain centuries later. What's left is to match up Mozart's symptoms with possible causes, as that article shows is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The only thing really different about the case I'm thinking about is that it is much more recent. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF ( talk) 15:52, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
In case there's some confusion, BLP including BDP apply to living persons and recently deceased regardless of whether you "avoid naming them" when it's extremely obvious who you are referring to. The question of what level of obviousness may be debated, but if you were to open a discussion at WP:BLP/N I'm sure you'll find this affirmed. Otherwise I could sat "according to my contacts, the president of X is a paedophile who enjoys raping kids" (where I specify X), and it's fine since I didn't actually name the person. That's clearly nonsense. If you want to try and argue semantics that "president of X" is equivalent to naming them, you could easily substitute world leader who talked about injecting disinfectants, world leader actively promoting Covid-Organics, former world leader who said "we don't have homosexuals, like in your country" etc.
P.S. As a further example of why your question was so incredibly flawed, you seem to have completely ignored that person you're referring to also said they tested negative in response to a question about COVID at the time of the post you referred to. You also ignored the fact the post referred to a tooth infection and root canal. Such details are surely important when considering the symptoms but of course are difficult to consider when we are analysing random parts of someone's post where you think avoiding mentioning their name or directly linking to them somehow gets around BLP concerns. If you didn't mention such details because they weren't explicitly mentioned in whatever RS you read, that again, the obvious question is why it matters unless you too recognise that there are indeed still BDP concerns. (I think it also raises the question of how reliable this source actually if is they would neglect to mention such details.)
Am I right in thinking that groundwater levels are higher the closer the place is to a river bank? Would that mean that dams reduce groundwater levels downstream by making rivers smaller? Is there any place I can read more about this? Wikipedia does not provide answers, unfortunately. Surtsicna ( talk) 22:51, 4 September 2020 (UTC)