Flattening the Curve: Overrated?

[Weetabix]

I haven't had a chance to take notes and study it, but that Dr. Erickson video in Kern County, CA got me thinking a bit of a qualitative quantitative analysis. If that makes sense.

He was taking (number of positive tests/number of tests given) and extrapolating that to the population. Obviously, no controlling for the criteria they used for testing. What sort of conditions would that predict? I am not a statistician.

Say Location A tests only if you have certain symptoms. Presumably, you'd get a higher perceived rate of infection, right? Because the asymptotics aren't counted. Extrapolating that data would give you a worst (or worse) case number of infections.

Dividing the deaths by that case gives a higher morbidity number? The numbers he was citing (e.g. said "0.05 chance" on one I ran the numbers, but he meant 0.05% chance), didn't seem frightening.

I guess it seems to me like even with some of the infected (see what I did there) data, we're still not seeing terrifying RATES, though the magnitudes, I think, are cast to sound as scary as possible.

[Netpackrat]

Another mistake a lot of people are making is in focusing solely on the death rate. That doesn't take into account the permanent damage this virus is doing even to many of those who survive, which is something you won't normally see from a seasonal flu.

[Weetabix]

Another mistake a lot of people are making is in focusing solely on the death rate. That doesn't take into account the permanent damage this virus is doing even to many of those who survive, which is something you won't normally see from a seasonal flu.

I have to admit, I'm not hearing much about that. Percent of survivors who have that? Percent reduction in lung function?

[Fill]

It's an odd and nasty bug, but so long as the reported death figures include "died with" (and hell, "died in the vicinity of") as well as "died of," no meaningful conclusion of any kind can be inferred from the data except that the data are irretrievably compromised.

just like the flu, they'll look at the deaths over projected and correct for other factors.
I haven't seen anything to statistically indicate a serious under-count.

[Vonz90]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/youtu ... home-order

[Netpackrat]

The censorship is bullshit, but the video itself appears to have also been bullshit.

[Weetabix]

I have to admit, I'm uncomfortable with this repeated phrase "new normal." It sounds suspiciously synonymous with "fundamental transformation." Maybe like someone is not letting a good crisis go to waste.

Or am I too paranoid?

[blackeagle603]

Follow the money. As a child of Watergate I try to remember to ask "cui Bono?"

This in comments to a report elsewhere online this morning <emphasis added>:

"Are hospitals conspiring to gin up COVID-19 deaths to make the pandemic look worse than it is? No. There’s a simpler explanation: incentives.

As Minnesota lawmaker and longtime family practitioner Dr. Scott Jensen recently observed, hospitals are incentivized to pressure physicians to include COVID-19 on death certificates and discharge papers, since the CARES Act increases Medicare payments to hospitals treating COVID-19 victims."

File under: Rational responses to irrational incentives

Do I trust the numbers? Not so much as the high priests of public medicine and lockdowns would wish I do.

[MiddleAgedKen]

I have to admit, I'm uncomfortable with this repeated phrase "new normal." It sounds suspiciously synonymous with "fundamental transformation." Maybe like someone is not letting a good crisis go to waste.

Or am I too paranoid?

Are you paranoid enough?

[Vonz90]

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/2 ... ing-lives/