Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 September 4

= September 4 =

Covid?
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:


 * "However, [person] posted on Twitter in August that he had “been sick for a month.” He maintained that the illness caused him “z exhaustion, stomach [and] lung-ache.”

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)
 * Per the instructions at the top of the page "We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate." This would require respondants to give opinions about whether or not the patient in question had Covid.  No one here examined that patient.  Instead, if you want to form your own opinion, you can read Coronavirus disease 2019.  -- Jayron 32 14:40, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Not a diagnosis and hardly an opinion, but each of these symptoms has been reported for COVID-19. Each individually could have any number of causes. --Lambiam 14:50, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The OP is capable of reading the linked article and learning that themselves. He doesn't need us to tell him that.  -- Jayron 32 15:12, 4 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Notice that "disease X causes set of symptoms Y with high probability" does not entail "symptom set Y is caused by disease X in most (or even many) cases". It is therefore not sufficient to know whether someone's symptoms are compatible with a given disease to deduce that they likely have that disease. For instance, blue mucus is a symptom of infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, but blue mucus reports are likely to be caused by hallucinogen abuse (source (fr)). Tigraan Click here to contact me 15:33, 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)
 * No one has freaked out. What people have done is told you where to find the answer to your question.  That's what we do here: tell people where to find answers to their questions.  If you have more questions, please ask them, and we will tell you where to find those answers.  -- Jayron 32 16:21, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * You mischaracterized a reasonable factual question (what identifiable causes do these symptoms match) with "request for opinions, speculation, or debate". I consider that response to be freaking out.  I rather carefully constructed the question to avoid the issues that trigger some people here (medical advice => nope, the person is dead; BLP/BDP => avoided naming the deceased person, etc.) but you seem to have gotten triggered anyway.  Obviously the cause of death can't be identified with certainty with the info available (at least as of yesterday) but I'm not seeking certainty.  As the Mozart article shows, it's perfectly reasonable to look for informative priors even though reaching anything like certainty is impossible.  That's all I'm trying to do here.  I really don't understand what set you off.  It's certainly a less consequential question (since the guy is dead) than "what could cause my washing machine to make a squealing noise during its spin cycle" (might be a belt, might be a problem with the motor, etc.) and nobody would complain about that question here, I hope. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF (talk) 16:38, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, "people" did not tell me where to find answers. You are the only one who did that, in an unhelpful and bureaucratic way.  Two other regulars, Lambiam and Tigraan, gave actual useful answers, for which I thank them.  (Tigraan's answer was basically advice to beware of confounders when reasoning about conditional probability and causation, something we all have to be reminded of sometimes). 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:DDAF (talk) 17:35, 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.)  Nil Einne (talk) 08:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)


 * For what little it's worth, I have no idea whom the OP has in mind. —Tamfang (talk) 01:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)


 * There is a difference between article space, like the Mozart article, and reference desk space, where we are now, and different rules apply to those different spaces. We have specific rules against answering the type of question you have asked here. In an article space, with proper reliable sources (rather than speculation of editors), something could be said (in conjunction with rules regarding biographical articles). Not here, though. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 18:20, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The question was "Do those symptoms sound like covid, or anything else particularly?" and why should it be forbidden to answer something like "No, they don't. If 'exhaustion, stomach [and] lung-ache' are compatible with covid, they are also compatible with a lot of other things. But so far as I know "being sick for a month" is not compatible with covid, which if it kills it does so in one to two weeks. And beside that several common symptoms are missing in the description like high fever, headache and insistent cough, which would have probably been mentioned had they been present." ? 2003:F5:6F00:ED00:D3A:2C30:3941:92C6 (talk) 14:57, 8 September 2020 (UTC) Marco PB
 * If you are unsatisfied, we can refund you all of the money you spent getting these answers. If you prefer, you can ask at other places on the internet where people are happy to pretend to know more than they do and give free medical advice.  We're just not going to do that here.    -- Jayron 32 15:39, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

River proximity and groundwater levels
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)
 * Usually the water table is higher than a river, and there will be springs and seepage coming into the river. However in a desert, you could expect the water table to be lower, and that the river recharges the water table. However if much of that happens the river will dry up. A dam will likely raise the water table around the dam, but since a dam is designed to retain water, it should not be in a place where much water leaks out. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:49, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
 * And if you aren't busy, Geological structure as a control on floodplain groundwater dynamics tells all. Alansplodge (talk) 11:33, 5 September 2020 (UTC)