QTRS August 15, 2024

Interesting content for the curious with lots of graphs

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Lifestyle factors and COVID

The graph of the week comes from the paper Modifiable lifestyle factors and the risk of post-COVID-19 multisystem sequelae, hospitalization, and death (7/29/2024), but first some details. (Note: Multisystem sequelae are a collection of conditions that affect multiple systems in the body; I had to look it up.)

This study evaluated the association of modifiable lifestyle factors (smoking, alcohol intake, BMI, physical activity, sedentary time, sleep duration, and dietary habits) with COVID-19 multisystem sequelae, death, and hospitalization in the UK Biobank cohort (n = 68,896). A favorable lifestyle (6-10 healthy factors; 46.4%) was associated with a 36% lower risk of multisystem sequelae (HR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.58-0.69; ARR at 210 days, 7.08%; 95% CI, 5.98-8.09) compared to an unfavorable lifestyle (0-4 factors; 12.3%).

Here is the graph, with explanations to follow.

Caption:

Blue square represents risk estimates from models fully adjusted for age, sex, education level, ethnicity, IMD, and mutually for all lifestyle factors. The purple square represents risk estimates from models partially adjusted for age, sex, education level, ethnicity, and IMD. The horizontal lines indicate 95% CIs, with black line representing statistically significant results and the gray line representing non-significant results. The sample sizes were 60,561 for any sequela (4792 events), 55,106 for hospitalization (6958 events), and 68,887 for death (1203 events). The HR for each lifestyle factor was calculated by comparing the healthy category with the unhealthy category (e.g., past or never smoker versus current smoker).

Here is how I think you read this: HR is the ratio of positive lifestyle results over negative lifestyle results. If lifestyle has no impact, the top equals the bottom, and the ratio is 1. This is why any of the square boxes around 1 are not significant (the light gray line on the box).

Take smoking as an example. For multisystem sequelae, the mean is 0.72. We can think of this as non-smoker / smoker = 0.72 or non-smoker = 0.72 smoker, or better (sorry for the algebra) (1/0.72) non-smoker = smoker, or finally 1.39 non-smoker = smoker. In other words, smokers have multisystem sequelae at 1.39 times the rate of nonsmokers. The blue boxes have been adjusted for variables such as age, sex, etc.

Not surprisingly, obesity is to the left the center line for all three categories. There are 1.67 deaths (1/0.6) of obese people for every 1 non-obese person. This was the worst of all lifestyles studied and gets me on one of my pet peeves. The body positive movement is dangerous. I get that we don’t want people to feel bad about themselves for being obese or overweight, but at the same time, it is really bad for you to be overweight or obese. There must be some compromise here to encourage and support people to be healthy without making them feel bad about themselves. To simply say, don’t worry about your weight, just feel good about yourself, is setting people up for numerous negative consequences in life.

Two counterintuitive results are worth noting, and they are red meat eating and alcohol consumption. The “unhealthy” lifestyles had lower death rates. Of course, physical activity and proper sleep have positive impacts. One important takeaway here is that if you want to prepare for the next pandemic, getting healthy is going to do more for you than stocking up on masks.

Gaming and attractiveness

The NBER working paper Looks and Gaming: Who and Why? (8/2024) has three noteworthy results. The first two are from the abstract:

Average American teenagers spend 2.6% of their waking hours gaming, while for adults this figure is 2.7%.

Adults are good at pointing out bad habits of kids. Too much gaming, too much computer time, too distracted by the cell phone—more often than not, adults are just as bad. In this case, adults spend as much time gaming as teens.

Note: The data from this study come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Gaming is defined in the paper as this:

To test our central hypothesis, we consider the time spent video gaming based on the interviewees’ responses to the following question:9

In the past seven days, how many hours did you spend playing video or computer games, or using a computer? Do not count internet use for work or school.

There are a lot of uses for a computer, so the “or using a computer” part is a little suspect in this study. The second point is this:

Physically attractive teens are less likely to engage in gaming at all, whereas unattractive teens who do game spend more time each week on it than other gamers. Attractive adults are also less likely than others to spend any time gaming; and if they do, they spend less time on it than less attractive adults. Using the longitudinal nature of the Add Health Study, we find supportive evidence that these relationships are causal for adults: good looks decrease gaming time, not vice-versa.

This is worth thinking about. There is a case here that gaming is a refuge for less attractive teens and adults. If you want to see teens or adults spend less time on computers and playing games, then you have to address this issue to some extent.

Lastly, as part of the study, they have this graph. Female teens are rated overall as more attractive, but with a higher standard deviation. There are advantages to being more attractive, and so I wonder how this plays out in, say, school. Are females and males treated differently based on looks somehow? Are females considered more honest than males because they are perceived as more attractive? I don’t have answers here, just questions, and maybe this doesn’t matter at all. Thoughts in the comments are welcome.

China's natural gas consumption

From the eia (8/14/2024).

China’s natural gas production has more than doubled since 2010. Here is consumption by sector.

Since 2010, consumption in all sectors has more than doubled, with residential and commercial increasing by more than a factor of 3. Note that consumption includes imported natural gas. Does this seem like a green revolution for China?

From the gardens

We have lots of dahlias today and in the coming weeks.

US electricity generation

I generally like the regularly posted eia graphs, but this one (8/13/2024) bugs me.

Why, you ask? It is factually correct, but because it lacks context, it can easily mislead people. Wow, wind is not generating more electricity than coal. The green revolution and what not. The problem here is that the real player in electricity is natural gas. In April 2024, natural gas generated 122 terawatthours; more than 2.5 times wind. In fact, nuclear still produced more electricity (57 terawatthours) than wind at 48 terawatthours. Solar comes in at 19 terawatthours for April 2024.

More wind issues

The Propublica article Washington State Solar Project Paused Amid Concern About Native Cultural Sites (8/13/2024) is just another example of how difficult it will be to scale wind.

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation have objected to the Badger Mountain solar project for years, according to tribal business councilmember Karen Condon. They officially registered their opposition in May 2023, citing the foods, medicines, archaeological heritage sites and other cultural resources found on the mountain. They were joined shortly after by the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Both tribal nations have the right to access and use public lands in their ancestral territory, which includes the state-owned parcel on Badger Mountain.

Now, who is a good Democrat supposed to support here? The need for wind energy or the Native Americans?

Uncompromising Democrats?

The PRRI article Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election (10/25/2023) is almost a year old, but I just found it, so it is new to me. It has lots of charts, and most of them aren’t very surprising, except maybe this one.

Except for immigration, Democrats are more hard-lined in their stances than Republicans. One could argue that they are less willing to compromise based on this data. I don’t think this is the typical media narrative.

One other point: despite the press pushing on climate change, only 42%, not even a majority, of Democrats will use it as a litmus test for a candidate. I also find that a bit surprising.

Our different worlds

This chart comes from the Pew article Americans’ views of offensive speech aren’t necessarily clear-cut (8/9/2024). The gaps here for the first question are pretty astonishing. Gaps like this would seem to make work environments where there is a mixture of political affiliations at least somewhat challenging as well as encouraging a lot of self-censorship. The quote by Thomas Sowell, “There are no solutions, just trade-offs,” is something that stays in the forefront of my mind. Where is the line between minimizing people being offended and creating stale, dull, and self-censored public spaces? The problem with humor, sarcasm, quips, etc. is that people will get offended, but do we want to live in a world without it?

Data center update

Tract plans 1,700-acre data center campus in Phoenix, Arizona (8/13/2024).

The company is planning to build out a multiphased, 1,700-acre complex in Buckeye just south of Interstate 10, at a site that was previously set up for a master-planned residential community called Cipriani.

The spinning CD

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Comments

Please point out if you think something was expressed wrongly or misinterpreted. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks R for College Mathematics and Statistics and Applied Calculus with R. I welcome any collaboration.