Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

What time did the presser end, because it has been going on in this thread for days?

 

If you're worried about the NY numbers just know it could be worse.

"Chile is counting those who have died due to the coronavirus as “recovered” because they no longer show symptoms, the country’s top health official said this week."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/04/14/chile-counts-coronavirus-deaths-as-recovered/amp/

 

There’s been a recent series of interesting pressers, but fair point.

 

Hard to disagree with you, Tilly. I just find it unlikely that anyone would be working behind the scenes to artificially inflate death counts here. We’ll know more tomorrow.

 

Obese elderly man coughs once, dies of heart attack--coronavirus strikes again. Politically agenda'd statistics are truly a living thing.

 

That assumes that tested and non-tested cases were chosen randomly or not systematically or at least that those differences don't matter. Again, you could argue that an abnormal death measure would be better. Regardless, you would likely have to do some sort of a stratification if the demographics were not equivalent, which I would be willing to bet that they aren't. Without sufficient data, their method is a balance between theoretically conservative (i.e., that it doesn't require you to make distributional assumptions that are not supported) and more accurate than relying only on those that received tests.

 

Somehow I doubt the medical community struggling to get thru this gives a damn about the politics right now.

 

Just to be clear. I am not making the leap that this is intentional from some political standpoint, but in a nation in need of any good news, posting the numbers this way when we have been seeing some trends downward was not the best option.

 

Statistics should not be driven by the goal of making people feel better or worse. They should be attempts to describe the situation as accurately as possible. The perceived need for good news should in no way even enter the discussion.

 

I'd imagine they'd use the population of both confirmed and suspected deaths (both listed initially as suspected and others they/others later identify). I suspect that this is a big reason why the CDC wants unconfirmed covid-related deaths listed. The goal is to be able to reasonably identify that top range, in particular. FWIW, I'm also assuming the CDC will follow a somewhat similar method to how they id the flu.

 

Agree. But it does remind me of a story I posted weeks ago in this thread. A man had two heart attacks in a week and died, after having had several in his later life.
He had a terribly damaged heart. But since he tested for + Covid he is listed as a Covid death. It doesn't speak to anything shady, just that in times like this I think human nature is to overreact and ...maybe...be quicker to attach the Covid label.

 

Agree, so go back and attach those deaths to the actual days they happened. THAT would be as accurate as possible.
They have that data. It is an easy fix. While what you say is true, doing it the proper and yes accurate way, would also have been less unsettling.

 

Trump’s name will be on stimulus checks in an unprecedented move by the IRS. Also, this could slow down delivery of these checks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...1016c2-7e82-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html

 

I believe I read that is what they are doing. I assume they’ll get it all sorted eventually.

They are going to overstate some with this method. They are going to miss other cases that understate the number.

I think there is a good faith effort to get it right and the net amount of error won’t be meaningful rendering this line of discussion mostly academic.

 

That is what the Worldometer site is doing (or waiting until they can do it). Agreed that it would not be accurate to put them all today. They haven't even put it into the total death counts yet.

 

I’m shocked.

 

Me too. I was hoping for his photo.

 

To be fair, the administration says it won’t delay the checks. I believe them. I also believe that this is a ridiculous stunt.

 

This whole board has been nearly unreadable since Obama has been in office, probably even Bush. I know, I know, I shouldn't come back if that's how I feel but it's like a train wreck, you just want to keep watching. However, it's getting really bad. The things one side complains about during the other team having all the power is the same shit they do and dismiss / apologize for when their team is in office.

I just kind of throw random popshots here and there and that's about it. There's no use having honest conversation here.

 

I read this too. The cause of death would be ARDS which was caused by complications from COVID-19 (plus there are more lines if necessary), then you would list comorbidities. It's more complicated than people think. Doctors have to make judgement calls all the time on what to put on these forms. Not everyone has an autopsy done nor is one necessary for a doctor to have an reasonable opinion about what the factors were in the death. Who is going to do all these autopsies anyway? It has nothing to do with "padding stats". That's disgusting.