I don’t care how many test positive. That is only a reflection of how many are being tested. The ONLY figures I even care about are the death figures.
I would encourage you to pay attention to the people infected, as well. The deaths and those infected form the mortality rate, and we're finding that rate is much, much lower than was originally projected. With such a low rate, we have to ask, "why is everything shut down?"
The ONLY figures I even care about are the death figures.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
They are worthless unless they break down ALL the deaths and quit counting ‘may have had symptoms’ (THEY do tend to go to the extreme to be ‘safe’)
Like it has been said may be linked to beerflu is NOT the same as due to the beerflu.
And definitely have to really search for the data of how many die on a ‘normal’ day.
Have to use common sense and
FOLLOW THE MONEY
And *those* seem to be faked more and more these days.
Death figures are exaggerated - cause of death misclassification.
I agree with you when we get the real numbers and not someone dying who happened to have Kung Flu.
“The ONLY figures I even care about are the death figures.”
I agree but the historical flu figures for annual deaths are not reliable for comparison. The CDC numbers are mere estimates and the figures from other countries are not reliable.
It looks like the cumulative deaths from Covid 19 will come in around 50,000. That’s still subject to under counting for those who die at home and over counting for those who die in the ICU from other causes. But it is better than the flu death history. It will add 140 deaths per day over a 12 month period, which is not a significant increase over the normal 8,000 deaths per day in the US, and a lot of these would have been death by other causes in the same time period.
But you can’t really use averages for a geometric curve with a 5-6 month time scale. At its peak it looks worse than it is, and that’s what we are approaching now. The cascade of daily increases in deaths gets all the attention.
It is doubtful to me that a total lockdown of the economy is worth the touted flattening of the curve. Isolation of the most likely to die ( like me ) makes sense and would have few economic effects. Intelligent workplace precautions also make sense, but putting millions of workers on the shelf for months does not.
I don’t think we really have a great idea of how many people actually are infected with flu every year. Just like Covid-19, many, if not most, people who get the flu don’t seek medical treatment beyond over-the-counter medication, and at least some have no symptoms at all. The only way to know would be to test a large, random sample of mostly asymptomatic people, just as has been proposed for Covid, and I don’t know that that has ever been done.
Just another reason why the number of “confirmed cases” is irrelevant. You can’t even compare it with anything.