Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

That is not a conspiracy. It is basic efficiency. Count them now and don't spend a boatload of wasted time when more important things can be done for the still living and sort out the dead later. Take a worst case approach. I don't find that a conspiracy in the least. I find it does however make our live data incorrect on a small scale.

Everything that people counter with from a conservative respective does not require a tin foil hat. Some of it is just common sense.

 

A bias would mean a negative motive. It is not biased to lump them in now to save time and sort it out later. That has been my belief all along. The CDC does this. They perfect the data later. Right now, focus on the living.

It is not a biased inflation, but it is a (temporary) inflation of the numbers.

 

Okay, then you are arguing statistical bias, which is what I was discussing.

Bias (statistics) - Wikipedia

However, that still isn't supported by the fact that the first estimate was lower, the second observation was high, and the third estimate went back to similar to the first estimate.

 

I have stated previously in this thread that the number I am focusing on is the % of population infected. Stanford showed about 5% and NY showed upwards of 20% of the pop was infected. I understand that all these studies are in need of peer review and were hasty. But those two things should jump out. The NY study shows that way more of their pop has had it then the Stanford study does of their area.

 

Yes, The governor of NY and the mayor of NYC for starters.

 

My guess is 2, 3 tops. And that was very early on when none of us knew what this thing would become.

 

One person was still using that analogy yesterday. I'm sure there are many more that don't post here too.

 

The second number was still pretty soon after the fact. It was obviously an inflated number based on some falsehoods, otherwise they would not have adjusted it back to the first number. That is my point. Numbers are fluid until history and time allow us to look back. This is the reason they are counting these deaths now, and likely the reason for the inflated number in the CDC 2nd estimate. My assumption is history will get it right.

 

OK...but I am just talking about people posting. Someone actually used the wreck/lightning analogy here yesterday??? That's crazy.

 

Clothing company offering a free mask to every American

Good deed or just trying to get rid of excess inventory and a tax write off?

The latter is the cynic in me

But with that thought, with all the excess inventory sitting in retail clothing stores right now. Maybe a tax credit for them if they donate the material to be reused to make free masks.

 

The problem is that you aren't just claiming that numbers are fluid. You are claiming they are upwardly biased, i.e., that they are biased higher. Obviously, numbers are very likely to not be 100% correct. However, you have regularly ignored the sources of potential downward bias (i.e., I brought up earlier in the thread that we weren't likely catching all of the deaths due to a lack of testing and you dismissed that as well) while focusing on sources of potential upward bias. I don't think we have enough information to claim that the numbers with the new information is upward or downward biased (although we did have enough information in order to claim downward biasing only using the data from the confirmed tests).

 

I just remembered it was you lol. Not about the virus in general but about the risk of attending the hypothetical Gator/LSU football game. You equated it to car wrecks on the way home and I pointed out that the risks go beyond the people that attended the game.

I got my posts mixed up.

 

I can't take on all of your points right now.But let me say this, even if it is lower than first thought, your interpretation that this is was an "overreaction" is way off. This disease is still far deadlier than either the flu or H1N1 (by comparison) and we're only a few months into the outbreak. And even if it's less than what was projected, part of that is likely due to the shut down and social distancing, which would in effect slow the spread and save lives. The other side of this equation, however, is that we don't have any demonstrated antiviral treatments, no protocols on how to treat it before the outbreak,and no vaccines or human immunity to have some herd protection.

This again means that it is an uncontrolled virus that we have yet to learn a hella much about. So to me to call this an "overreaction' is to pretty much misunderstand the very nature of the threat, which is that we might not be able to stop it's spread well into the future and this means more disruption and mounting deaths and sickness. This is why our CDC and health officials jump on any novel virus. We've learned through the centuries the possibility of massive deaths and reoccurring outbreaks, which is to say the potential of utterly calamitous destruction due to disease is still there, even if we have modern health care systems and knowledge.

 

Common sense would tell you that even if they're wrong on a small percentage of the cases that they're counting as presumptive, they're also likely missing some cases that should have been counted but weren't for one reason or another. Basically, the idea that they're intentionally inflating the numbers for whatever reason is bunk. It's very much a conspiracy theory. One of the many we've seen to try and downplay the virus.
Virus deaths likely UNDERCOUNTED — SMALL BIZ loans slow to roll out — HARVARD FLIPS, will refuse federal funds

 

I have never ignored them. Are we at the point of making things up now? The discussion was specifically about the CDC changing the criteria that led to NY and others raising their number.

I mean this new methodology sort of covers that though does it not? By counting everyone who was a match for C19 we are eliminating the likelihood that someones death is not attributed.

Are you suggesting that thousands died in their homes with no symptoms?
People with critical symptoms most likely died in a hospital with very few exceptions.
Those people are now being counted. Retroactively in many cases.

This is why I suggest we extrapolate from confirmed testing.

 

Yes, you have. As I pointed out, you dismissed the notion when I brought it up a while back that there were deaths due to this that weren't captured by stating that you couldn't imagine somebody would die without a test.

We are limiting it, not eliminating it.

It is certainly possible. Tough to say. However, they also wouldn't necessarily need to not have symptoms to not be counted. They would just have to not have documented symptoms.

It is possible that these estimates are downward biased due to a lack of knowledge about relatively rare complications. Also possible is that there are still deaths that are not being captured in houses.

However, we don't know the relative size of these biases. As such, there is no way to claim bias in either direction based on the information that we have. So your claims that the numbers are systematically higher now is not well supported.

If the testing is so poor as to miss 90% of cases, why would we want to use that as a basis on which to extrapolate? Seems like building on quicksand.

 

C'mon Mutz. I am pretty intentional with my words.
I never said it IS an overreaction. I have been very supportive of our democrat governor here and his reaction to current data.
What I said is that we MAY find that a TOTAL shutdown was an overreaction considering certain places have done very well. I cited NYC vs my town.

And I clearly said that social distancing was the contributing factor to preventing the spread. I even acknowledged the R0.

 

Where did I post that?

 

Again. The number is being ADDED. The CDC made the chose to ADD. That brings the number HIGHER.
Again. no one is saying "systematic" in some negative way. You are looking for a fight. I am NOT AGAINST the CDC doing this. It just means the live number is not accurate.

Because you base it on the confirmed +/- tests that were given. You have a large enough number to use. The number is not scientific right now anyway. This would at least make more sense.

 

Im not so sure it is an inflation by your definition. If we already know that this method is going to over-estimate the number, we would just simply adjust it down now.

If you put 10 trained science groups on the project, their result would likely be similar, but there is no doubt that they wouldn’t all converge on the exact same number. This is naturally a part of complex science.

I think the bottom line is that I trust that the approaches of the experts will be at least as sound as my own intuition about how to do this calculation. Others seem to see this the other way.