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^^^ Way too long of a post for me to read. I have time but not that much time, I did glance at some of your points.
More people already have it or have had it than you realize.
We don't know for sure, why? NOT enough widespread testing. It's been a problem from the beginning.
What we do know, based on actual numbers out of NY is that 50% of the people that have been tested that show no symptoms, do have the virus. Since the rest of the country is not really testing asymptomatic people, logic will tell you that there are way more people that have it and don't know it. This is not conjecture, it is logic. The good thing is that most are staying home and wearing masks in public. That is all we have at this time since again, not enough testing and I mean diagnostic testing. You can cast doubts on the serology testing, I have no reason to do this either but that is a separate issue.
^^^ Way too long of a post for me to read. I have time but not that much time, I did glance at some of your points.
More people already have it or have had it than you realize.
We don't know for sure, why? NOT enough widespread testing. It's been a problem from the beginning.
What we do know, based on actual numbers out of NY is that 50% of the people that have been tested that show no symptoms, do have the virus. Since the rest of the country is not really testing asymptomatic people, logic will tell you that there are way more people that have it and don't know it. This is not conjecture, it is logic. The good thing is that most are staying home and wearing masks in public. That is all we have at this time since again, not enough testing and I mean diagnostic testing. You can cast doubts on the serology testing, I have no reason to do this either but that is a separate issue.
The problem is that people are trying to make policy recommendations based on the results of those serology studies, not understanding that the numbers of positives the antibody testing is generating are not reliable (except perhaps in the NYC metro area). And you know the old saying "garbage in, garbage out."
Your response of "no...just no" is an emotional response. You don't have any evidence that COVID deaths are not being overcounted in some areas, perhaps even including NYC. I've heard this so many times from so many different sources about so many different locations that it's unlikely they are all lies.
I realize you don't want it to be true.
You recall that the poster she was responding said that if someone died for any reason in a hospital that was counted as a death from Covid 19? Do you realize what a truly absurd statement that is?
Why would you expect someone to be able to prove that deaths from Covid 19 were not being "over counted"? When a physician prepares a death certificate, he/she follows specific criteria in listing a cause of death.
Let's list all those "so many different sources" you claim are proof that deaths from Covid 19 are over counted. I hope they are greater quality than an Alex Jones radio show.
Its just a hunch. You are one of those people who desperately wants this whole thing to blow over so you can go back to doing what you were doing. You blame the government for shutting things down rather than coronavirus for causing the problem in the first place. Sticking your head in the sand isn't going to solve this problem.
That's why you're confused..You don't think those details are important, but they are at the very root of the calculations:
For example, there's a difference between how many Americans die in car accidents every year (40K deaths vs 330M Americans) and how many people in car accidents die (40K deaths vs 6M accidents.)
For CoViD, it's a matter of how many who get sick wind up dying (that's pretty high- maybe 1-4%) vs how many who get infected wind up dying (that looks less sever-- like 1 in more than 1000) vs what's your likelihood of getting sick (a rate improved by social distancing-- if you don't contact the bug, you can't get sick from it).
We can count the dead accurately, and we can count the total population accurately. What we don't know yet is how many are actually infected..... We need a good testing survey of an appropriate sample population...We don't need to test everybody anymore than we take political polls by calling every single citizen-- a representative sample does the trick.
One problem with "rates" is that the numbers don't apply to a single individual, just the group-- you're either alive or dead. You can't be 0.1% dead.
^^^This!
The subject was discussed incessantly in multiple threads on CD:
it is not the math- it is a confusion in epidemiological terminology and a fallacy of logic.
COVID-19 mortality is not the same as COVID-19 Case Fatality Ratio/Rate, etc.
Look it up.
Until all cases of infected people are resolved we can’t say what percentage has recovered and what percentage has died. We may see more deaths than recovered at first, eventually more people would recover- as in “case closed”.
There are some intensive modeling and methods epidemiologists are using to project the CRF of COVID and the mortality of the COVID.
Some people fail to understand that measures against the spread of COVID is not all about death:in addition- it is about a high infectivity rate and a very lengthy extensive demand on our current healthcare resources as well as in the future- the research was recently published about a discovery of an organ damage- lungs, heart, etc- in asymptomatic people
The problem is that people are trying to make policy recommendations based on the results of those serology studies, not understanding that the numbers of positives the antibody testing is generating are not reliable (except perhaps in the NYC metro area). And you know the old saying "garbage in, garbage out."
Sure, and then there are also those trying to influence policy claiming that CoVid-19 is not that big of a deal. Ideally, we'd just meet in the middle.
Garbage in, garbage out is reference to an idea in computing that if you have junk input you can only get junk output. This makes sense as programming languages are based on logic. That is to say something is either 100% true or 100% false. Logic does not understand mannerisms of speech. To your computer, shoot the breeze means to literally shoot at a breeze.
Data analysis is different. The data is the data and does not change but if there is error in the statistical analysis, the error can be accounted for and new analysis run as long as the original error along with the correction are noted and the original data was not altered. So no need to toss out the whole lot.
1. Until the past week or so, in many areas, only symptomatic people were being tested, and only about 10% (or 7%) tested positive. These were people who believed they were sick and might have been exposed to covid-19. (Actually, only the most symptomatic were tested. Those who lacked a fever or hadn't traveled were sent home with instructions to self-isolate.)
So if only a small fraction of those whose symptoms indicated they might have covid-19 actually did have it, how is it that now everyone who has symptoms consistent with covid-19 is counted as having it?
2. The symptoms of covid-19 are similar to symptoms of cold and flu, and there is no symptom that is always (or almost always) present. In the most serious cases Therefore it doesn't make sense to use symptoms only without tests.
Data analysis is different. The data is the data and does not change but if there is error in the statistical analysis, the error can be accounted for and new analysis run as long as the original error along with the correction are noted and the original data was not altered. So no need to toss out the whole lot.
The problem with many of the serology studies that have recently released is that the “data” is literally just noise. The specificity of the tests available right now is low enough that when you run the test on a population with a low antibody prevalence rate (under about 10%), the false positive rate becomes so high that there’s actually no way to measure what the actual percentage of true positives is. It’s a classic signal-to-noise ratio problem: below a certain threshold, the signal is so low it simply becomes lost in the noise and you can’t measure it. You can only say “the prevalence is no higher than X” but you can’t say anything more specific.
Fortunately tests are now coming onto the market which have a much better sensitivity and specificity, which will help lower the threshold where the results become unreliable noise instead of good data.
You recall that the poster she was responding said that if someone died for any reason in a hospital that was counted as a death from Covid 19? Do you realize what a truly absurd statement that is?
Why would you expect someone to be able to prove that deaths from Covid 19 were not being "over counted"? When a physician prepares a death certificate, he/she follows specific criteria in listing a cause of death.
Let's list all those "so many different sources" you claim are proof that deaths from Covid 19 are over counted. I hope they are greater quality than an Alex Jones radio show.
I guess statements from Dr Birx aren't a good enough source for you???
Or 2 different ICD codes for COVID death, one of which does not require any testing for confirmation of anything???
Good grief. Facts are ... well, facts. Whether you want them to be true or not ... they ARE true.
We will NEVER have an accurate mortality rate. Ever.
You can just tell the stats are being manipulated to force people to stay at home.
Per the statistics on March 31 there were 178K confirmed cases of corona virus in the USA, but today, well over the 2 weeks it is supposed to take for them to recover.... we only have 80K listed as recovered. Why isn't that at least up at 140K?
Clearly they are slow walking the recovery statistics while listing ALL deaths they possibly can.
I guess statements from Dr Birx aren't a good enough source for you???
Or 2 different ICD codes for COVID death, one of which does not require any testing for confirmation of anything???
Good grief. Facts are ... well, facts. Whether you want them to be true or not ... they ARE true.
We will NEVER have an accurate mortality rate. Ever.
Please reference Dr Birx specific remarks for me.
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