(07-09-2020, 04:03 PM)fullmetal Wrote: Gotta love the experts who point to a low fatality rate as if covid survivors could bounce back to health just like flu survivors. That we don't refer to people recovered from the flu as survivors shows you the difference between flu and covid...
When this all started, I thought deaths would be the best indicator of what's happening because cases were basically a function of testing rates, and hospitalization data was hard to come by. Now, IFRs and CFRs seem to be dropping (a good thing if true), but that's giving people like this med school guy false confidence that we don't need to worry about current growth in cases. As fullmetal pointed out, there will still be a lot of negative consequences short of death for many people.
A good analogy is the 2nd Iraq War. IIRC, fatality rates in combat were much lower than in previous US wars, but that was only because soldiers who would've died in previous wars were being saved by modern medicine. Many of those saved ended up with major disabilities. The point being that death rates alone can give a false sense of what's happening.
I'm thinking now that hospitalizations may be the best measure going forward. This should be insensitive to both testing effects (hospitals get first dibs on tests regardless of availability) and death rates. California does a great job of reporting hospital numbers for the state and by county: https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID-1...VizHome=no