Categories Health
Back in January, a news story was published about Kerrianne’s study showing improved social interaction outcomes for autistic adults when paired with another autistic partner.
A detailed thread about the study and a link to the paper can be found here (feel free to DM me your email address if you’d like a copy of the full paper for this study or any of our studies):
In our new paper out today, autistic adults held a \u201cget to know you\u201d conversation with an unfamiliar autistic or typically-developing (TD) person. We were curious: would social interaction outcomes differ when their partner was also autistic? THREAD https://t.co/4koqUKV9G1
— Noah Sasson (@Noahsasson) December 11, 2019
Another paper published early in 2020 (it appeared a few months earlier online) showed that traditional standalone tasks of social cognition are less predictive of functional and social skills among autistic adults than commonly assumed in autism research.
How well does social cognition predict functional and social skills in autism? Our new paper attempts to answer this question. This thread summarizes why we conducted the study, what we found, and why I think it\u2019s important. https://t.co/KB1nIpK0M2
— Noah Sasson (@Noahsasson) August 16, 2019
Next, @kmdebrabander led and published an innovative study about how well autistic and non-autistic adults can predict their own cognitive and social cognitive performance.
New by @kmdebrabander and our lab: Autistic adults don\u2019t differ from non-autistic adults in the accuracy of their self-assessment on general cognitive tasks but are less accurate on social cognitive tasks. This however was unrelated to social functioning https://t.co/0MrqMKKO0r
— Noah Sasson (@Noahsasson) September 20, 2020
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No. 3) and (All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
https://t.co/L5jwlTDaIE
(Thread)

These are not a new set of regulations: they are amendments an old set of regulations
Which we thought were gone! But they are back
Welcome back No.3 regulations
A quick thing before we continue!
I have been analysing these laws for free for 9 months now - if you want to say thanks and have a few £ to spare please give to my @LawCentres fundraiser
They give free legal advice to people who need it
They also amend the All Tiers regulations
Oh god it's all amendments by paragraph references
Basically all of England now in Tier 4 and Tier 4 is amended but not by a huge amount
This really is a terrible way to make laws on the fly - who can possibly understand it?!

So, to explain, you need 2 documents open if you want to understand what is going on:
All Tiers regulations (Tiers 1-4, 2 December as amended) https://t.co/IraPQ112ak
And amendments https://t.co/L5jwlTDaIE
No sensible way of doing except by track changes, on it now, back soon
The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
£800 'house party' FPN & police can now access track & trace data
https://t.co/k9XCpVsXhC

“Large gathering offence”
As trailed by Home Secretary last week there is now a fixed penalty notice of £800 (or £400 if you pay within 14 days) for participating in an gathering of over 15 people in a private residence

Fixed Penalty Notices double for each subsequent “large gathering offence” up to £6,400
Compare:
- Ordinary fixed penalty notice is £200 or £100 if paid in 14 days
- Holding or being involved in the holding of a gathering of over 30 people is £10,000

Second big change:
Since September has been a legal requirement to sell-isolate if you test positive/notified by Track & Trace of exposure to someone else who tested positive
Police can now be given access to NHS Track & Trace data if for the purpose of enforcement/prosecution

This will make it easier for police to enforce people breaking self-isolation rules. Currently there has been practically no enforcement.
Data says only a small proportion of people meant to be self-isolating are fully doing so.
Very important that obvious failures with Track and Trace and self-isolation (study late last year said 18% of people complying https://t.co/dhJUZ7Pm0l) are not painted as an enforcement issue. Plainly not. Would just pass buck to police who have almost no capacity to enforce https://t.co/Eb4Kl5Ze0E
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) January 25, 2021
Imagine you go to the doctor and get tested for a rare disease (only 1 in 10,000 people get it.)
The test is 99% effective in detecting both sick and healthy people.
Your test comes back positive.
Are you really sick? Explain below 👇
The most complete answer from every reply so far is from Dr. Lena. Thanks for taking the time and going through
Really doesn\u2019t fit well in a tweet. pic.twitter.com/xN0pAyniFS
— Dr. Lena Sugar \U0001f3f3\ufe0f\u200d\U0001f308\U0001f1ea\U0001f1fa\U0001f1ef\U0001f1f5 (@_jvs) February 18, 2021
You can get the answer using Bayes' theorem, but let's try to come up with it in a different —maybe more intuitive— way.
👇

Here is what we know:
- Out of 10,000 people, 1 is sick
- Out of 100 sick people, 99 test positive
- Out of 100 healthy people, 99 test negative
Assuming 1 million people take the test (including you):
- 100 of them are sick
- 999,900 of them are healthy
👇
Let's now test both groups, starting with the 100 people sick:
▫️ 99 of them will be diagnosed (correctly) as sick (99%)
▫️ 1 of them is going to be diagnosed (incorrectly) as healthy (1%)
👇