Coronavirus: The Wrong Numbers

The American Spectator ^ | April 6, 2020 | Robert Stacy McCain

[CheshireTheCat]

...While the cumulative totals of cases and deaths continue rising, the media are doing a lousy job of reporting the most important numbers: How many COVID-19 patients are currently hospitalized? How many new patients are admitted to the hospital each day, and how many patients are discharged? The reason for “social distancing” policies was to slow the spread of the disease, to “flatten the curve” of the pandemic and avoid overwhelming the hospital system. We have reason to believe that these policies are succeeding in that regard, and something else may explain why we may be averting the “apex” crisis: chloroquine....

[CheshireTheCat]

Statistics without adequate context are not much better than lies.

[Pelham]

“How many COVID-19 patients are currently hospitalized?”

The problem of the Unknown Demoninator keeps that from being known.

That can’t be solved until there is enough widespread testing of the general population to find out how many people have had mild or asymptomatic cases.

Right now only suspected cases are being tested, which skews numbers to the high side.

[fhayek]

I believe that the number of actual cases is being skewed to the low side. In other words there are almost certainly more people who have contracted the disease, or have been exposed and built up an immunity without being counted in the "official" statitistics.

Similarly, for various reasons (and/or incentives), more deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 than are probably warranted. I mean if you had terminal cancer, were 85 and contracted the disease, COVID-19 may have contributed but did not cause the death.

I imagine the true rate of fatality will take years to sort out, and even then, be subject to debate.

[HighSierra5]

Divide the deaths by the population of the U.S. and you have a better chance to .... the Pope.

[null and void]

When in the entire course of human history have people who were merely exposed but not sick enough to talk to their local shaman, medicine man, witch, or doctor counted as part of the denominator?

Why not just use the entire population of the universe as the denominator it you are going to count people who were never sick?

That would give you a very low morbidity number and that's all that matters, isn't it?

Orange Man Bad! Him kill economy cuz 0.000000000000001% die!

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

The false positive rate was 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's or one old fart’s life, it's worth it.

[metmom]

If you were still kicking until you caught the virus, other health issues aside, then it’s safe to say that the virus killed you because there’s no reason to presume you’d be dead anyways from a condition you lived with for so many years.

[ASOC]

Southcentral Alaska (call it 60% of the total population) 112 confirmed cases - tested and confirmed. BTW, you have to have a doctors conslut to get a test This from a population of over 400K 112/400,000 is 0.00028% - proof we needed to shut the economy down

[PapaBear3625]

Florida COVID cases

Shallow curve possibly because of this:

Is Hydroxychloroquine Making Covid-19 Clinical Trials Harder?

Of course, to do this right — to really know that the gas was the crucial factor — one of his fellow doctors advised that they should exclude Covid-19 patients who were already using other experimental coronavirus therapies, including the anti-malarial and lupus drug hydroxychloroquine (brand name Plaquenil), and tocilizumab, a common arthritis medication.

But this, Alvarez already knew, would be a challenge. “I very plainly told him, I agree with you from a science standpoint,” Alvarez said, “but I can tell you that if you did that right now in Miami, you would have no patients in your trial.” That’s because the vast majority of patients ill enough to need ventilators were already taking one or both of these drugs.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

[bert]

It is easy for fools to be critical of numbers of which they know virtually nothing.

The numbers were never wrong. The numbers were always the best available at the time projected on the available data

It is easy for ignorant people to be critical in retrospect

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Santa Clara County (CA) has a good dashboard. The numbers are really encouraging. "Surge capacity" has hardly been touched (1.1% utilization to-date)...

[Grampa Dave]

Statistics without adequate context are not much better than lies.

There are 3 types of liars: liars, damn liars and statisticians"

Statistics are only useful, when you know the whole story about how and why those terribly wrong stats came into existence.

Cui Bueno or who benefitted from the bad/horrible stats? Who paid for them?

[DoodleBob]

As long as we're talking numbers, here is today's installment of the proper relative comparison of deaths across the world. Below is today's update with April 9th totals for the US and other countries that started their round of golf on March 26. While the US' time series ends on Day 16 (which is April 9 - and is basis of the order, i.e., I sorted the data by Day 16 values), I am publishing other countries future totals/'golfer's scores' who are on hole 8 while we're at hole 4.

To help with one FRiend who hinted that the grid was mind-boggling, I can post the fatalities in the 1,000, i.e., the US Day 16 total is sixteen point five thousand fatalities. Let me know if that would work for you or not.

The US' ranking improved one notch, with Switzerland now rising in the ranks (note: rising in the ranks is not a good thing). As noted previously, the 'hands-off' countries like Sweden and the Netherlands have higher adjusted fatalities but some would question if the economic carnage was worth about 2.4M-5.7M fewer fatalities. (The answer: if would, if one of those fatalities was your mum.)

Country	Date of Day 1/1,000 population-adjusted deaths	Day 14	Day 15	Day 16	Day 17	Day 18	Day 19	Day 20
San Marino	3/3/20	68,711	68,711	107,974	107,974	137,421	196,316	196,316
Andorra	3/21/20	68,000	72,250	76,500	89,250	93,500	97,750	106,250
United Kingdom	3/15/20	34,021	41,018	47,016	59,744	78,537	97,497	120,322
Spain	3/13/20	30,541	35,950	41,855	47,600	53,988	59,222	65,680
Belgium	3/19/20	23,678	28,911	32,686	36,689	41,379	46,669	58,193
West Bank and Gaza	3/25/20	28,167	28,167	28,167	-	-	-	-
France	3/18/20	17,353	19,864	26,521	32,034	37,212	39,762	43,855
Netherlands	3/17/20	16,335	19,640	22,189	25,324	28,138	31,273	33,445
Italy	3/5/20	16,291	18,627	22,057	26,395	29,956	33,244	37,308
Sweden	3/23/20	12,789	15,213	18,848	21,910	25,290	-	-
Ireland	3/25/20	14,062	15,736	17,611	-	-	-	-
Switzerland	3/16/20	11,514	13,779	16,619	18,730	20,572	22,683	25,561
United States	3/25/20	12,722	14,695	16,478	-	-	-	-
Luxembourg	3/17/20	11,810	12,347	15,568	16,105	16,642	16,642	19,326
Macedonia	3/24/20	11,153	12,608	14,063	14,548	-	-	-
Portugal	3/23/20	9,460	9,973	11,064	12,186	13,116	-	-
Denmark	3/22/20	9,112	10,131	10,584	11,489	12,338	13,414	-
Germany	3/25/20	7,990	9,310	10,333	-	-	-	-
Austria	3/23/20	7,552	8,144	8,995	10,106	10,920	-	-
Iran	3/9/20	6,664	7,166	7,649	8,214	8,835	9,404	9,954
Iceland	3/23/20	3,619	5,428	5,428	5,428	5,428	-	-
Cyprus	3/23/20	3,386	3,386	3,386	3,386	3,762	-	-

[blam]

Antibody testing starting Friday in L.A. County to find past COVID-19 infections

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I’m guessing we could multiply the known cases by at least 10, thus dropping the CFR to around 0.3 percent.

[SandwicheGuy]

Fallacious reasoning. Nothing ever happens until it does... People die all the time for no apparent reason.

[Pelham]

It’s possible. Without knowing how wide the asymptomatic infection pool is it’s anyone’s guess.

[gleeaikin]

Recent reports say people are being removed by the hundreds from NY homes, but are not counted as Covid dead. Are they saving tissue to check on the cause of death and getting true statistics? There are probably politicians who would rather avoid having true statistics. True rate will NEVER be sorted out if they are not preserving tissue samples of non hospitalized dead.

[trebb]

This is why I recommend folks tune in to the weekday Task Force briefings which the President gives...helps debunk a lot of the crap being put out all over the place...there’s a reason (or two) the Fake News folks and other Leftists wish they would stop holding/airing the briefings...

[Pelham]

“Are they saving tissue to check on the cause of death and getting true statistics?”

My guess is that NYC medical is much too busy running covid tests on live patients right now but could be saving tissue from the dead for later testing. You would hope so, we need to have a bigger pool of the general pop to get an idea of how widespread the virus is.