Posted by bleauberry on May 3, 2018, at 10:56:57
In reply to Let's play with numbers. (Repost) » bleauberry, posted by SLS on May 3, 2018, at 0:14:51
Scotty I am really not interested in playing with numbers. I am interested in seeing suffering patients get better. The time, effort, and brain energy utilized to play with these numbers would be much better spent studying other things.
10X, by the way, is not a "non answer". The best estimates floating around - nobody knows - is that for every 1 patient correctly diagnosed, there are 9 walking around with wrong diagnosis of fibromyalgia, CFS, MS, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia. That's where the 10X came from. It is an estimate by doctors who work this topic in real world clinics. It is not think tank theory.
There are no accurate numbers to work with. Any number games are going to be flawed right from the get-go. There are so many myths and mysteries involved in Lyme disease. That is exactly why so many people suffer needlessly and encounter treatment resistance. You can't get better if you are treating the wrong thing. You can't get better if you are playing with a calculator instead of finding a 2nd opinion.
For future reference, the CDC is totally unreliable on lyme stats, diagnosis and treatment. For every flawed scientific study they use to make their case about something, there are 2 or 3 other better scientific studies which directly refute their claims. The CDC cherry picks. They do not include all data. They censor. There is deep politics and economics in these massive bureaucracies. CdC is better for acute settings - of example a Zika outbreak in Africa - absolutely spectacular the CDC was. But when it comes to chronic mystery disease, they are way behind the curve.
The reason I was a treatment resistant psychiatric patient for 20 years was directly because of CDC guidelines.
imo
> Bleauberry.
>
> You have been told by your physicians that 9 out of 10 (90%) people presenting with depression will actually have Lyme Disease.
>
> > I have my own estimate of the number of lyme cases in USA. It is 10X whatever we think it is.
>
> Nice non-answer. How much do "we" think it is?
>
> Let's try another experiment. We need to come up with a value representing the number of people in the USA who are walking around with Lyme Disease. 33,000 cases are reported to the CDC each year. However, they estimated that the true number is 10 times higher than this = 329,000. If you were to multiply this number by another 10, we get 3,290,000. Still, this would yield a much lower number than the 90% number you keep touting. For every 100 cases of depression, 8 would have Lyme = 8%. That's still a very big number - certainly bigger than the 7 out of 1000 (0.740%) that results when you use the CDC estimate.
>
> Okay - just for kicks:
>
> To get to 90%, you would have to multiply the CDC estimate by a factor of 110.
>
> That's 110x !
>
> By the way, such a number would imply that 1 in 10 people in the USA are walking around with Lyme Disease.
>
> Does this sound reasonable to you?
>
> Oh, c'mon, Bleauberry. Smile.
>
> For now, I would have to guess that the prevalence of Lyme Disease among people with depression in the USA is somewhere between 1% and 2%. However, this number will vary greatly regionally. 96% of Lyme cases occur in 14 states. To not take this into account in clinical practice demonstrates a lack of desire to get it right.
>
> Connecticut
> Delaware
> Maine
> Maryland
> Massachusetts
> Minnesota
> New Hampshire
> New Jersey
> New York
> Pennsylvania
> Rhode Island
> Vermont
> Virginia
> Wisconsin
>
>
> - Scott
>
poster:bleauberry
thread:1098431
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20180331/msgs/1098500.html