How Reliable Are the Coronavirus Numbers?

American Thinker ^ | 04/06/2020 | Igor Mandel

[SeekAndFind]

Any pandemic or epidemic is a complicated process, and the current one is not an exception. Besides all the actual problems (how to treat people, how to organize logistics, how to inform media and so on), there are basic ones: how to measure different aspects of the process. It was always not easy; it is very hard now. Here are some often repeated critical comments about different widely published and discussed indicators.

1. The real number of people with the virus is drastically higher than reported (according to some authors, by a factor of 10), because many people have the virus but were not tested (passed the sickness easily without noticing).

2. The number of available test kits is growing in time, and the number of discovered cases is increasing as a result, which makes data incomparable in dynamics.

3. Quality of test (ability to capture the smaller or higher concentration of viruses in a body) is different from country to country or even from state to state; it is also changing in time, which adds a mess into a problem of comparability.

4. Test availability is varied a lot by different regions, countries, and states, which makes any comparisons even harder.

5. Registered deaths are considered a more reliable indicator than the number of cases, but a suspicion is that too many cases are attributed to the virus without proper reason. If, say, one has tested positive, but also had many other complications (often mortal), the patient will be, most likely, included in the virus category.

All those and other concerns are valid and allow one to say that, very likely, the real lethality rate is seriously lower than reported 1%–5% (as was discussed, in particular, by Prof. J. Ioannidis at the outset of the crisis).

[SeekAndFind]

Estimation of the reproductive numbers in time (how many people may catch a virus from one infected person), four states (values are three-day moving averages; data presented from the day when the state had more than 20 cases; data source, Johns Hopkins University.

As it is quite clear, the virulence is seriously dropping (the last observed day was April 1). For Florida and especially Illinois, there is a peak about a week after the emergency was announced. For Washington, the state from which it all began, the process of declining started earlier. For relaxed California, small decreasing is taking place.

[Sicon]

How reliable are the coronavirus numbers? About as reliable as the globull warming numbers...

[SeekAndFind]

Estimation of the reproductive numbers in time, USA and East Coast (data presented from the day when the states had more than 20 cases; data source, John Hopkins University; three states include New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; six states — these three plus Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware).

These charts show that the concept of exponential growth, which is still often pronounced, is wrong. If it were right, the indicator should grow. A reproduction number below 1 means that the pandemic is to vanish. The earlier estimates of it showed a wide interval, from 1.5 to 5.5 (quite similar to the ones on the left area on Chart 2). Those days are over.

[SmokingJoe]

Deaths with coronavirus are being classified as death from coronavirus especially in deep blue states with Trump hating governors like New York.

[VastRWCon]

-—How reliable are the coronavirus numbers? About as reliable as the globull warming numbers...-—

worth repeating...

[TalBlack]

Reliable? Not at all. Everything is political today. EVERYTHING. People’s “facts” are what they WANT to believe. We haven’t lived in a world of 1 plus 1 equals two for a long time now...

[Maris Crane]

I am a BABY when it comes to higher math, but I could sense there was something with the figgering./s

[Migraine]

Add point #6, the X-factor of all time: 6. the effect of mitigation processes and practices, by a whole country at the same time, throw a skew into comparisons to all past epidemiological studies the size of Einstein’s warped universe.

[HighSierra5]

Don’t bother me with statistics. I’m busy designing my cool looking mask.

[Poison Pill]

How reliable are the coronavirus numbers? About as reliable as the globull warming numbers...

Bingo.

It was the perfect crime.

[cuban leaf]

This is the truly scary number:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1246548366454149120

[laplata]

“How reliable are the coronavirus numbers? About as reliable as the globull warming numbers..”.

You’re right. They have an agenda and they are pushing it.

I’ve seen numerous reports that many non-coronavirus deaths are being reported as coronavirus deaths.

[mewzilla]

If presumptive positives are counted in the death stats, the stats are crap.

[mewzilla]

But this has got me wondering about the 2009 epidemic death stats.

If WuFlu’s can be goosed up, were the 2009 H1N1 death stats jiggered down...?

Like voting, I guess it depends on who’s doing the counting.

[BamaBelle]

Well, just read an article that said Alabama will peak on 4/19 and by 8/4 the state will have over 5000 deaths. I just don’t see how. We have over 1800 cases and 45 deaths at present. It’s going to have to increase a HUGE amount to meet that prediction...

https://www.wsfa.com/2020/04/03/model-forecasts-alabama-hitting-coronavirus-peak-mid-april/

[kabar]

Finally, the IHME model has been updated today with real data. Last update was April 1. The total of estimated deaths thru Aug 4 has been reduced from over 93 thousand to 81,766. Look for that number to go down as well.

[SaxxonWoods]

This crud is the product of journalists.

Why can’t a journalist dial 911?

Can’t find the eleven button on the phone.

[kabar]

The IHME model used by the task force has been revised today. Alabama is projected to have 923 COVID-19 deaths thru Aug 4. .

[fireman15]

For Washington, the state from which it all began, the process of declining started earlier.

We live in the eastern part of King County which was the epicenter for the state and the country for several weeks. My wife and I have been at the ill fated Life Care Center in Kirkland more times than we can remember over the years for both volunteer and paid work.

A day or two after the governor issued his “stay at home order” it was already obvious that in this location the crisis had already passed. The local hospital intensive care units had already gone back to normal, and the number of people dying from pneumonia declined to actually less than normal for a bad flu season.

The local media was still predicting a high death toll, but what we have been left with is a flu season that is now fizzling out. At this point our local politicians are doing all that they can to “hide the decline”. When the national media started reporting on improving conditions here, suddenly the State Department of Health said that a “software glitch” was preventing them from reporting local hospital status, etc.. Strangely, my best friend who is a top FEMA official had no gap in the data that he was provided with.