Calm down and think for yourself; One can make a case for practically anything, by playing around with evidence, numbers, analysis and language.

One of the offshoots of being on the debate team in college, taking graduate level statistics as part of my masters and working as a lawyer, is an awareness of how one can make a case for practically anything, by playing around with evidence, numbers, analysis and language.

Coronavirus is a world-wide pandemic and should be taken seriously. But the crisis should not be taken advantage of, nor should politicians manipulate definitions, data and diagnoses to achieve political aims.

Getting Down to Cases

There is no such thing as a “case" of COVID-19. According to Merriam-Webster a “case” in medical terms is an instance of a disease or injury. “Cases” are subdivided for public health surveillance by the CDC into the following categories: confirmed, laboratory-confirmed, clinically compatible, etc.

COVID-19 is not a disease; COVID-19 is a family of viruses that may or may not cause illnesses such as the common cold, severe acute respiratory syndrome, etc.

It is reported that of the 1,133,453 "cases" of COVID-19 worldwide 80.9% are mild and can recover at home.

Thus, 80% of the reported “cases” of COVID-19 aren't "confirmed cases" at all under the above definitions. They include people tested positive (laboratory-confirmed) or (to use New York's creativity) people with symptoms that match known cases (clinically comparable).

What's news?

When the "news" reports new "cases" of COVID-19, thinking people should be skeptical about exactly what they are being told. For example, the now famous headline about the aircraft carrier where the Captain was sacked for raising alarm about "cases" of COVID-19 on his ship. The truth: 100 crewmen tested positive - with zero "cases" hospitalized -- on a ship of 5000.

Well, the good news is that we're beginning to see that people are coming out their haze of fear to look at this from a wider perspective. Not many, yet, and essentially none in DC or among the petty tyrants in the states who I quite certain are pleased -- if not thrilled -- with their new self-appointed power and authority.

Be prepared that this awakening we're starting to see may be muted over the next couple of weeks resulting not from renewed fear of the Chinese virus, but rather from the dulling effects of "fiscal anesthesia" -- the recovery checks and the enhanced unemployment benefits. But the dulling will fade -- I expect sooner rather than later -- as the weather gets better, the days become longer and the "novelty" of house arrest and spending every minute of every day indoors with the young-'uns (God love 'em) wears increasingly thin.

Getting Down to Cases

There is no such thing as a “case" of COVID-19. According to Merriam-Webster a “case” in medical terms is an instance of a disease or injury. “Cases” are subdivided for public health surveillance by the CDC into the following categories: confirmed, laboratory-confirmed, clinically compatible, etc.

COVID-19 is not a disease; COVID-19 is a family of viruses that may or may not cause illnesses such as the common cold, severe acute respiratory syndrome, etc.

What has this guy been smoking? I'm pretty sure, from just about every single article I've seen, whether layperson, idiot journalist, or actual doctor/medical field guy, that the virus family is coronovirae, or a bunch of coronaviri (there's only seven that hit humans, by the way). This particular one is Covid-SARS-2, and the disease it causes is called Covid-19.

Why would Covid-19 refer to SARS ('02) or MERS ('12)? What about the common cold? Those coronaviri were initially discovered in the 1960s. Oh, and what about this blurb from the CDC?
“On February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization announced an official name for the disease that is causing the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, first identified in Wuhan China. The new name of this disease is coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated as COVID-19. In COVID-19, ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona,’ ‘VI’ for ‘virus,’ and ‘D’ for disease. Formerly, this disease was referred to as ‘2019 novel coronavirus’ or ‘2019-nCoV.'”

So, while this guy really doesn't have much credibility, his point on counting "cases" is true. (Oh wait, I shouldn't put "cases" in quotes, because they aren't fake "cases", they actually are cases from a medical standpoint.) Different places have very different criteria for counting/confirming the virus, but that is something very difficult to do when an outbreak first starts, with a particulate that hasn't really been seen before, and is compounding by the virulence and magnitude of the infections. First you have to realize there's something new. Then confirm it's the same, unknown thing causing which cases. Then you gotta figure out what it is. Then develop testing that's cheap, reliable, and easy to manufacture/utilize. We jumped the first steps quick, likely because China already knew about it and was able to isolate and observe/track it quickly (while denying anything about it publicly).

But, yes, there's major differences between test-confirms, lab-confirms, and clinical guesses. The first two should be what we officially run off of, while the last one works for the flu. (Combined with random estimates from CDC anyways.) And, as others have mentioned, different countries will pad their numbers in different ways. Some may inflate them as much as possible to get as much help as possible (or like NY hospitals, get bonus funding per case), while others will hide the numbers to either prevent panic, or look better. Or, like China, just because it's what they always do.

He seemed like a bright fellow up until he began discussion politics and politicians. Clearly he doesn’t understand either.

Eh, the second half of his first sentence is good ("an awareness of how one can make a case for practically anything, by playing around with evidence, numbers, analysis and language"). But after that he immediately loses any semblance of intelligence when he attacks people calling the disease "Covid-19", as that is exactly what the disease, specifically, is called. He's either an idiot on purpose, or too dumb to do the tiniest bit of research on what he's talking about. I didn't even get to anything political (not in the excerpt), but I wouldn't trust what he had to say.

See my post 45 for the full point on his "covid-19" error.

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