Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - Printable Version
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Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - stupac2 - 04-04-2020
Great article from Nate Silver at 538: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts-are-meaningless/
RE: Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - Phogge - 04-04-2020
The death count is not meaningless. Just how many seasonal flu deaths would there be without a vaccine?
RE: Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - stupac2 - 04-05-2020
(04-04-2020, 05:54 PM)Phogge Wrote: The death count is not meaningless. Just how many seasonal flu deaths would there be without a vaccine?
Did you read the article? I just copied their headline, but it's specifically about testing counts, not death counts.
RE: Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - Farm93 - 04-05-2020
Sadly, Coronavirus death counts are now big enough in every state that the media really can start focusing on the more relevant death counts.
More importantly though is that the media should start utilizing deaths per capita.
California has been one of the top 5 states in overall reported cases, but is now ~25th in per capita deaths.
RE: Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - BostonCard - 04-05-2020
Turns out even death count may be an undercount.
https://apple.news/AQP2g8JTzSnmybwOqKPxoAA
Quote:More than 9,100 people with the coronavirus have been reported to have died in this country as of this weekend, but hospital officials, doctors, public health experts and medical examiners say that official counts have failed to capture the true number of Americans dying in this pandemic, as a result of inconsistent protocols, limited resources and a patchwork of decision-making from one state or county to the next.
In many rural areas, coroners say they don’t have the tests they need to detect the disease. Doctors now believe that some deaths in February and early March, before the coronavirus reached epidemic levels in the United States, were likely misidentified as influenza or only described as pneumonia.
With no uniform system for reporting coronavirus-related deaths in the United States, and a continued shortage of tests, some states and counties have improvised, obfuscated and, at times, backtracked in counting the dead.
BC
RE: Coronavirus counts are meaningless* - dabigv13 - 04-05-2020
The death count is certainly not accurate right now, but I think once this is over we will be able to get a pretty accurate estimate. Just taking the delta in total deaths from this year versus averages of prior years will be a close approximation. It's definitely the most useful number in measuring the extent of the pandemic in any given place at the moment since testing is extremely variable from place to place, while deaths will be more likely to be tested than random population.