/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15483186
Risk factors (no, anal sex is not a big risk factor) aside, apparent prevalence and true prevalence are not synonyms. Going off descriptive statistics likely highly biased by testing rate, detection rate, etc, all of which will change over time. You have to account for variable rates of testing and shifting demographics being tested. Selection bias.
In epidemiology this is apparent prevalence vs true prevalence,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9195606/

All the sources near as I can tell from that Daily Mail article are not doing any of the work required to infer actual rate. I would say that is shameful, but most shameful is the fact the overwhelming majority of all publications do not, and do not even mention it. Worse, seem to make such inferential errors genuinely, and routinely, with virtually nobody pointing out the mistake in doing so. Such as, for example, younger ages being able to access medical care due to expanded medicaid.

Consider the table presented here, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4666003/
Which very carefully and unhelpfully for nonprofessionals says "apparent". Once. Without elaboration as to implication.

How much between age categories has shifted, or been eliminated, due to earlier diagnosis? If the true rate has declined in the elderly partly due to earlier removal of precancerous polyps, and for others got diagnosed before 75 and 50, they'd shift lower or off the board. Likewise, with increase in access to medical care, those formerly diagnosed at 35+ would now be diagnosed at 20-34. You can't know whether any of this is indicative of true rate or not without accounting for it, and ZERO of the sources talking about this have done so.

As for why that's important? Just as a sample, see image. With medicaid expansion you'll see an even higher rate due to slow progression of colon cancers and earlier detection.