Two weeks ago, they started saying cases were going up again, but when I looked at the graphs, it didn't jump out at me. This week, however, yikes...

Number of new cases in the Northeast, clearly going down. (Remember, they were hit HARD in April.) Number of new cases in the Southeast, South, Southwest and West (including CA): Noticeably going up. It's like the virus has shifted its focus.

Two possibly mitigating factors:

1. Increased testing means increased discovery of cases. Even Trump knows that apparently.

2. Some people say the deadliness of the virus is diminishing. Well, we'll know more on that in a couple of weeks.

Hospitalizations is an important stat. I think the blast I got from KGO on my phone is hospitalizations in California are up 16% in the last 14 days. SoCal is getting shredded right now.

https://abc7news.com/health/newsom-gives-sobering-covid-19-update/6259879/

Big C said:

---

Two weeks ago, they started saying cases were going up again, but when I looked at the graphs, it didn't jump out at me. This week, however, yikes...

Number of new cases in the Northeast, clearly going down. (Remember, they were hit HARD in April.) Number of new cases in the Southeast, South, Southwest and West (including CA): Noticeably going up. It's like the virus has shifted its focus.

Two possibly mitigating factors:

1. Increased testing means increased discovery of cases. Even Trump knows that apparently.

2. Some people say the deadliness of the virus is diminishing. Well, we'll know more on that in a couple of weeks.

---

Check out the curve for the US vs. The European Union.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/19/countries-keeping-coronavirus-bay-experts-watch-us-case-numbers-with-alarm/

^^^ middle america's long held core belief in American Exceptionalism
pushes the country towards magical thinking and denial imo.

"the recount"s (re)retelling the story of the day. sorry if it's old news.

Big C said:

---

Two weeks ago, they started saying cases were going up again, but when I looked at the graphs, it didn't jump out at me. This week, however, yikes...

Number of new cases in the Northeast, clearly going down. (Remember, they were hit HARD in April.) Number of new cases in the Southeast, South, Southwest and West (including CA): Noticeably going up. It's like the virus has shifted its focus.

Two possibly mitigating factors:

1. Increased testing means increased discovery of cases. Even Trump knows that apparently.

2. Some people say the deadliness of the virus is diminishing. Well, we'll know more on that in a couple of weeks.

---

Yes, and yes.

Ignore the new case curve, focus on the new deaths curve, it is based on a far less volatile measurement with a lot less systematic error.

Quote:

---

Oaktown wrote:
Check out the curve for the US vs. The European Union.

---

Here is the comparative new deaths curves for the US, the EU and Europe, what you can see is that the curves and patterns are remarkably similar:



The US new deaths curve is basically the Europe curve with a time lag! That's basically been the main premise of my covid posting here.

People thought I was nuts to maintain back in February that it was going to get here in March and completely disrupt our lives, just like it had done in Europe. Now they think I'm an idiot for claiming that it is already on the wane in the US and will fade in July, just like it is now fading in Europe!

The new US deaths are going to dwindle to a trickle by mid/late July, the same way they are now in Italy, France or Spain, bank on it.

Quote:

---

CJay wrote:
^^^ middle america's long held core belief in American Exceptionalism
pushes the country towards magical thinking and denial imo.

---

The magical thinking here is to believe that the virus is going to behave completely differently in the US vs Europe. In reality, with a few exceptions like Germany, European leadership is just as bad as it is in the US.

There are some differences between the US and Europe that might have affected the spread, for example by and large the red states have a less favorable terrain for the spread of the virus, with a suburban layout and much higher automobile use vs public transit. As well the US is further south geographically, and got hit later in Spring, so warmer and sunnier conditions overall. Stockholm for instance is further north than Juneau. On the other hand the US has much higher obesity rates and poorer diets, then again the US has lower smoker rates. But by and large, at a continental scale, the differences wash out, and we should expect a similar pattern on both sides of the Atlantic, and the actual curves above reflect this, strikingly so.

The main policy differentiators will turn out to be nursing home management, testing/tracing and treatment policy.

OaktownBear said:

---

Big C said:

---

Two weeks ago, they started saying cases were going up again, but when I looked at the graphs, it didn't jump out at me. This week, however, yikes...

Number of new cases in the Northeast, clearly going down. (Remember, they were hit HARD in April.) Number of new cases in the Southeast, South, Southwest and West (including CA): Noticeably going up. It's like the virus has shifted its focus.

Two possibly mitigating factors:

1. Increased testing means increased discovery of cases. Even Trump knows that apparently.

2. Some people say the deadliness of the virus is diminishing. Well, we'll know more on that in a couple of weeks.

---

Check out the curve for the US vs. The European Union.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/19/countries-keeping-coronavirus-bay-experts-watch-us-case-numbers-with-alarm/

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As we've seen earlier, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.



Of course the Post did not bother to look at the similarity in the pattern of the new deaths curve in an attempt to assess whether the divergence in new cases might be due to the large growth in the number of tests done over time.

The question here is whether this shoddy scientific reporting is due to the incompetence of their reporters, or if it is a deliberate exercise in alarmism...

Quote:

---

"It really does feel like the U.S. has given up," said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the past three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.

"I can't imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it's unsafe," Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. "It's hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It's heartbreaking."

---

No it isn't, Siouxsie, perhaps if you'd bothered looking at the curve above.

Cal88 said:

---

OaktownBear said:

---

Big C said:

---

Two weeks ago, they started saying cases were going up again, but when I looked at the graphs, it didn't jump out at me. This week, however, yikes...

Number of new cases in the Northeast, clearly going down. (Remember, they were hit HARD in April.) Number of new cases in the Southeast, South, Southwest and West (including CA): Noticeably going up. It's like the virus has shifted its focus.

Two possibly mitigating factors:

1. Increased testing means increased discovery of cases. Even Trump knows that apparently.

2. Some people say the deadliness of the virus is diminishing. Well, we'll know more on that in a couple of weeks.

---

Check out the curve for the US vs. The European Union.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/06/19/countries-keeping-coronavirus-bay-experts-watch-us-case-numbers-with-alarm/

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As I've shown above, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.

Of course the Post did not bother to look at the similarity in the pattern of the new deaths curve in an attempt to assess whether the divergence in new cases might be due to the large growth in the number of tests done over time.

The question here is whether this shoddy scientific reporting is due to the incompetence of their reporters, or if it is a deliberate exercise in alarmism...

Quote:

---

"It really does feel like the U.S. has given up," said Siouxsie Wiles, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand a country that has confirmed only three new cases over the past three weeks and where citizens have now largely returned to their pre-coronavirus routines.

"I can't imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it's unsafe," Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. "It's hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It's heartbreaking."

---

No it isn't, Siouxsie, perhaps if you'd bothered looking at the curve above.

---

"The question here is whether this shoddy scientific reporting is due to the incompetence of their reporters, or if it is a deliberate exercise in alarmism..."

You of all people should shut your pie hole about shoddy scientific reporting.

Hoax.

Straw man.

Fake News. I trust hanky1 when it comes to the coronavirus because he was dead-on in saying Aaron Rodgers is no longer a Top 10 QB.

Cal88 said:

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As I've shown above, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.

---

Oh really? From what I can see, the US is undertesting compared to the EU. Our deaths have been dropping, but I see no reason to believe that our positive rate is anything other than an indication that the pandemic is spreading more here than in the EU. My working assumption is that we are seeing the spread primarily in the working age population as opposed to the elderly population where it is far more lethal.

It's all good.

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As I've shown above, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.

---

Oh really? From what I can see, the US is undertesting compared to the EU. Our deaths have been dropping, but I see no reason to believe that our positive rate is anything other than an indication that the pandemic is spreading more here than in the EU. My working assumption is that we are seeing the spread primarily in the working age population as opposed to the elderly population where it is far more lethal.

---

Unit2, have you tried plotting these figures in log scale? The US would not look too bad, just saying.

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As I've shown above, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.

---

Oh really? From what I can see, the US is undertesting compared to the EU. Our deaths have been dropping, but I see no reason to believe that our positive rate is anything other than an indication that the pandemic is spreading more here than in the EU. My working assumption is that we are seeing the spread primarily in the working age population as opposed to the elderly population where it is far more lethal.

---

You've done a great job here illustrating one of my main points above, that the new cases curve does not give you an accurate picture of the epidemic, at least not as much as the new deaths curve.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward, you are going to get a whole lot of variation in test results depending on the kind of population you test, the number of tests you run, and also the type of test you run. There is some variation in testing procedures and policies across countries, and across time.

When I look at your second graph above, I can immediately tell that this graph is a very poor indicator of the real picture of the pandemic. From that graph, one might insinuate that France (in purple) had a huge spike in late May/earlyJune, when in fact the number of deaths had already dwindled to less than 5% of the peaks reached in early April. So that test % curve is pretty useless in getting the real picture of the epidemic.

The deaths curve gives you a much better picture of the true situation, because the systematic error in its measurement is orders of magnitude smaller.

Here's the new deaths picture for France side by side with the test % graph you've provided above, with France in purple:






Look at the dates in both graphs, carefully. The France death curve peaked in early April and then steady dropped. The downwards descent carried into May and has flatlined into the low 2 digits in late May, whereas the test % curve showed a huge spike in late May and early June. You would have been totally wrong to extrapolate from that spike that the disease had suddenly spiked again in France in late May.

This tells you that the test % curve is an extremely flawed predictor of the big picture. The WP is clearly misguided in building its whole alarmist pitch on the new case curve while completely ignoring the steady drop in new deaths curve.

Washington Post: THIS IS ALARMING!!!!




Cal88: no, we're tracking Europe, closely.

I think infection data and deaths data are both open to manipulation. The metric that matters to me is hospitalizations. I don't care whether they want to call it coronavirus or pneumonia - are a regions hospitals overwhelmed or not? To me, that will tell the story.

And I don't know what the story is. I haven't seen the data. I'm not making a claim one way or the other, I'm just saying which metric I want see and why.

Cal88 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As I've shown above, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.

---

Oh really? From what I can see, the US is undertesting compared to the EU. Our deaths have been dropping, but I see no reason to believe that our positive rate is anything other than an indication that the pandemic is spreading more here than in the EU. My working assumption is that we are seeing the spread primarily in the working age population as opposed to the elderly population where it is far more lethal.

---

You've done a great job here illustrating one of my main points above, that the new cases curve does not give you an accurate picture of the epidemic, at least not as much as the new deaths curve.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward, you are going to get a whole lot of variation in test results depending on the kind of population you test, the number of tests you run, and also the type of test you run. There is some variation in testing procedures and policies across countries, and across time.

When I look at your second graph above, I can immediately tell that this graph is a very poor indicator of the real picture of the pandemic. From that graph, one might insinuate that France (in purple) had a huge spike in late May/earlyJune, when in fact the number of deaths had already dwindled to less than 5% of the peaks reached in early April. So that test % curve is pretty useless in getting the real picture of the epidemic.

The deaths curve gives you a much better picture of the true situation, because the systematic error in its measurement is orders of magnitude smaller.

---

Look at the language I quoted originally. You said that cases diverged because of testing. You said that the only reason we are showing an increase in cases is an increasing in testing. I showed data which proved you wrong. You ignored the data and claimed new cases don't matter because cherry-picking.

With respect to France specifically, it appears to me that the small spike in positive test rates you noted also corresponds to the temporary reduction in testing they did. If you look at their testing (which I can't link from mobile) you would see that. Of course if you saw that you would just ignore it and make some other claim.

You have made zero attempt to explain why we have much higher positive test rates if we are over testing.

You do you I guess but this is why it's hard for people to take you seriously.

Cal88 said:

---

Here's the new deaths picture for France side by side with the test % graph you've provided above, with France in purple:






Look at the dates in both graphs, carefully. The France death curve peaked in early April and then steady dropped. The downwards descent carried into May and has flatlined into the low 2 digits in late May, whereas the test % curve showed a huge spike in late May and early June. You would have been totally wrong to extrapolate from that spike that the disease had suddenly spiked again in France in late May.

This tells you that the test % curve is an extremely flawed predictor of the big picture. The WP is clearly misguided in building its whole alarmist pitch on the new case curve while completely ignoring the steady drop in new deaths curve.

Washington Post: THIS IS ALARMING!!!!




Cal88: no, we're tracking Europe, closely.





Al

---

I'd have more confidence in the data quality if they weren't showing Europe with -1300 deaths on one day around May 25th.

Isn't Newsom correct, that there was an expectation that once SIP ended, there would be an increase in cases (and he even admitted deaths), and that is the cost of opening-up? He literally said that his experts planned for this, and there was no going back. And I suspect he is right.

All the stats regarding COVID seems to be highly politicized. Hard to trust any numbers. I know in Europe they were encouraging doctors to list patients with covid that had co-morbidities to list the death as something other than Covid, and in the US doctors are encouraged to list deaths of patients that have covid as all covid deaths because they're paid more by the state/fed. I have a feeling in the years to come we'll still be discussing this.

MinotStateBeav said:

---

All the stats regarding COVID seems to be highly politicized. Hard to trust any numbers. I know in Europe they were encouraging doctors to list patients with covid that had co-morbidities to list the death as something other than Covid, and in the US doctors are encouraged to list deaths of patients that have covid as all covid deaths because they're paid more by the state/fed. I have a feeling in the years to come we'll still be discussing this.

---

https://outkick.com/media-ignores-90-coronavirus-death-collapse-in-country/

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

Unit2Sucks said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

The US and Europe new cases curves diverge sharply because the number of US cases is swelling due to continued growth in testing. As I've shown above, the US new deaths curve closely tracks the European curve.

---

Oh really? From what I can see, the US is undertesting compared to the EU. Our deaths have been dropping, but I see no reason to believe that our positive rate is anything other than an indication that the pandemic is spreading more here than in the EU. My working assumption is that we are seeing the spread primarily in the working age population as opposed to the elderly population where it is far more lethal.

---

You've done a great job here illustrating one of my main points above, that the new cases curve does not give you an accurate picture of the epidemic, at least not as much as the new deaths curve.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward, you are going to get a whole lot of variation in test results depending on the kind of population you test, the number of tests you run, and also the type of test you run. There is some variation in testing procedures and policies across countries, and across time.

When I look at your second graph above, I can immediately tell that this graph is a very poor indicator of the real picture of the pandemic. From that graph, one might insinuate that France (in purple) had a huge spike in late May/earlyJune, when in fact the number of deaths had already dwindled to less than 5% of the peaks reached in early April. So that test % curve is pretty useless in getting the real picture of the epidemic.

The deaths curve gives you a much better picture of the true situation, because the systematic error in its measurement is orders of magnitude smaller.

---

Look at the language I quoted originally. You said that cases diverged because of testing. You said that the only reason we are showing an increase in cases is an increasing in testing. I showed data which proved you wrong. You ignored the data and claimed new cases don't matter because cherry-picking.

With respect to France specifically, it appears to me that the small spike in positive test rates you noted also corresponds to the temporary reduction in testing they did. If you look at their testing (which I can't link from mobile) you would see that. Of course if you saw that you would just ignore it and make some other claim.

You have made zero attempt to explain why we have much higher positive test rates if we are over testing.

You do you I guess but this is why it's hard for people to take you seriously.

---

I did explain it; the testing policies, i.e. the type of population that is tested, the number of tests and the type of tests themselves, all these items vary over time, leading to a lot of systematic fluctuation in the overall test results over time.

For example in several countries including France and Canada, people who had symptoms and wanted to be tested weren't until May, they were told to just stay home and self-quarantine. Over time the policies determining who can get the test changed, and so did the profile of the population getting tested. As a result, you're going to get far greater variation, reflecting the great variation in all these factors above in testing policies.


the data is literally all over the map, and all this noise gets incorporated into the new case charts.

The death data on the other hand is inherently more stable and less prone to systematic change. You can see that very clearly in the very shape of the new deaths charts, which for most countries are bell-shaped (in compliance with Farr's Law) with steeper ascents and flatter descents:

Cal88 doing Cal88, indeed. He posts a long, wordy message, throws up some pretty graphs, and underpins it all with science that goes against the scientific consensus.

kelly09 said:

---

MinotStateBeav said:

---

All the stats regarding COVID seems to be highly politicized. Hard to trust any numbers. I know in Europe they were encouraging doctors to list patients with covid that had co-morbidities to list the death as something other than Covid, and in the US doctors are encouraged to list deaths of patients that have covid as all covid deaths because they're paid more by the state/fed. I have a feeling in the years to come we'll still be discussing this.

---

https://outkick.com/media-ignores-90-coronavirus-death-collapse-in-country/

---

After reading Minot's concerns about the accuracy of COVID data, you decided a good response was to post a link to a blog written by a sports talk host?

Yes. Because it validates his own opinions about the pandemic. He ignored the stuff from scientists and doctors and public health officials because they don't tell him what he wants to hear.

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

---

Cal88 said:

---

Here's the new deaths picture for France side by side with the test % graph you've provided above, with France in purple:






Look at the dates in both graphs, carefully. The France death curve peaked in early April and then steady dropped. The downwards descent carried into May and has flatlined into the low 2 digits in late May, whereas the test % curve showed a huge spike in late May and early June. You would have been totally wrong to extrapolate from that spike that the disease had suddenly spiked again in France in late May.

This tells you that the test % curve is an extremely flawed predictor of the big picture. The WP is clearly misguided in building its whole alarmist pitch on the new case curve while completely ignoring the steady drop in new deaths curve.

Washington Post: THIS IS ALARMING!!!!




Cal88: no, we're tracking Europe, closely.





Al

---

I'd have more confidence in the data quality if they weren't showing Europe with -1300 deaths on one day around May 25th.

---

The systematic errors/sharp adjustments in the new deaths curves stand out like a sore thumb in an otherwise bell-shaped curve, they don't fundamentally affect the shape of the curve to the point where you can't make up the trend in a particular country or region, that's actually why the death curve is a more reliable reflection of the real picture. You could take out the spikes by using a smoothed 3 or 7-day average plot, which I did for the plot of national new death curves above, but actually having the spikes there is also informative, in that you can see the way the data has been tabulated.

AunBear89 said:

---

Yes. Because it validates his own opinions about the pandemic. He ignored the stuff from scientists and doctors and public health officials because they don't tell him what he wants to hear.

---

What you're really saying here is that I am less prone to the authority and confirmation cognitive biases, and perhaps more immune to Bear Insider groupthink. I don't accord to an article like that WP piece above the kind of near-religious deference that you might when the basic data contradicts their entire narrative.

This is partly because of my academic background in data analysis and statistics, and partly because I have a much better global perspective on subjects like comparing the spread of covid in Europe vs the US. I grew up in Europe and lived in 6 western European countries, and have close friends and family in the healthcare industry in several European countries. As well I am not so bogged down emotionally into the Trump era political polarization. So I am less prone to cultural and emotional bias in interpreting a premise like the WP's.

It's the kind of perspective that has allowed me to accurately predict the historically unprecedented level of disruption that coivd19 was going to bring to the US all the way back in February, post which was widely panned with 22 mocking votes on this board.

My case here is very simple, the new deaths curves fundamentally contradict the notion that covid19 is behaving completely differently in the US than in Europe, that in fact, contrary to the what the WP article claims, the US and Europe are showing remarkable similarity in the patterns of the spread of the disease:



Bottom line - does this graph indicate that the disease is about to explode in the US, or does it show clear signs of receding, in the same pattern exhibited in Europe, following Farr's Law of epidemics?

I can't really help you any more than this, I can bring you to the well, but I can't get you to drink the water.

Eastern Oregon Bear said:

---

kelly09 said:

---

MinotStateBeav said:

---

All the stats regarding COVID seems to be highly politicized. Hard to trust any numbers. I know in Europe they were encouraging doctors to list patients with covid that had co-morbidities to list the death as something other than Covid, and in the US doctors are encouraged to list deaths of patients that have covid as all covid deaths because they're paid more by the state/fed. I have a feeling in the years to come we'll still be discussing this.

---

https://outkick.com/media-ignores-90-coronavirus-death-collapse-in-country/

---

After reading Minot's concerns about the accuracy of COVID data, you decided a good response was to post a link to a blog written by a sports talk host?

---

Not just a sports talk show host, but a sports talk show host who's a "pandemic fraudster."

https://thebulwark.com/the-ballad-of-clay-travis/




https://theoutline.com/post/8857/clay-travis-coronavirus-fox-sports-reasonable-men

chazzed said:

---

Cal88 doing Cal88, indeed. He posts a long, wordy message, throws up some pretty graphs, and underpins it all with science that goes against the scientific consensus.

---

Yup, he first argued that our number of cases is indicative of the fact that we test more than everyone else. I showed him that in fact we don't test more than everyone else so his response was that the test data is very messy.

Did he retract his prior claim that we were testing more than everyone else now that he acknowledges it's messy? Nope, he's on to the next specious claim.

Once again, providing us with reasons to distrust his analysis.

Right now the reality (again, as we know it from publicly available data) is that we know our positive cases is still rising dramatically and that our deaths are declining. We don't know whether deaths will start rising again or if we will continue to reduce our death rate. We don't know whether there has been a mix shift (eg younger healthier people getting sick who tend to have much lower death rates) or if there is another reason.

PHOENIX
The pastor of the Phoenix church hosting President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed in a Facebook video that it has installed air purification units that can virtually eliminate the coronavirus in a matter of minutes.
"When you come into our auditorium, 99% of COVID is gone, killed - if it was there in the first place," Luke Barnett, senior pastor of Dream City Church, says in the Facebook video, posted Sunday.

"You can know when you come here you'll be safe and protected. Thank God for great technology and thank God for being proactive."

Let the non-believers find their own way. Amen.

Unit2Sucks said:

---

chazzed said:

---

Cal88 doing Cal88, indeed. He posts a long, wordy message, throws up some pretty graphs, and underpins it all with science that goes against the scientific consensus.

---

Yup, he first argued that our number of cases is indicative of the fact that we test more than everyone else. I showed him that in fact we don't test more than everyone else so his response was that the test data is very messy.

Did he retract his prior claim that we were testing more than everyone else now that he acknowledges it's messy? Nope, he's on to the next specious claim.

Once again, providing us with reasons to distrust his analysis.

Right now the reality (again, as we know it from publicly available data) is that we know our positive cases is still rising dramatically and that our deaths are declining. We don't know whether deaths will start rising again or if we will continue to reduce our death rate. We don't know whether there has been a mix shift (eg younger healthier people getting sick who tend to have much lower death rates) or if there is another reason.

---

There is a fallacy is saying that the numbers we have right now reflect what is going on right now. Maybe it works that way in in a small county like Switzerland with real time data, a vigilant health care system and closed borders, but my suspicion is that we won't have an accurate picture of what is going on in the US presently, until weeks from now when the data is in and can be analyzed. I can go into all sorts of different scenarios, such as the many that contacted COVID last week may die several weeks from now or that many be counted with antibodies tests had COVID when SIP was active, or any number of things such as maybe we have a second wave.. I can tell you that some places are reporting spiking, a lot of places have no data, and in some places reported cases are going down. I can tell you that if you eliminated hot spots the numbers might way down, because than has been the trend and you need to have people tracing. I could tell you this is why why testing and tracing is so important to get a complete story notwithstanding the President's latest outburst. But what no one can tell you with any certainty is what is going on right now other than how many reported cases or deaths there are, and not what any of that means.

That controversial study done by Furd and FUCLA that was reported in the Mercury News a couple of days ago has now hit the British tabs:

Americans are OVERESTIMATING their coronavirus risk, study claims



https://mol.im/a/8451823


Covid-19 vaccine may not work for at-risk older people, say scientists


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/23/covid-19-vaccine-may-not-work-for-at-risk-older-people-say-scientists?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other


* Good news. The secret side effect of all prospective vaccines is it makes the tallywhacker shrivel up and fall off.

Unit2Sucks said:

---

chazzed said:

---

Cal88 doing Cal88, indeed. He posts a long, wordy message, throws up some pretty graphs, and underpins it all with science that goes against the scientific consensus.

---

Yup, he first argued that our number of cases is indicative of the fact that we test more than everyone else. I showed him that in fact we don't test more than everyone else so his response was that the test data is very messy.

Did he retract his prior claim that we were testing more than everyone else now that he acknowledges it's messy? Nope, he's on to the next specious claim.

Once again, providing us with reasons to distrust his analysis.

Right now the reality (again, as we know it from publicly available data) is that we know our positive cases is still rising dramatically and that our deaths are declining. We don't know whether deaths will start rising again or if we will continue to reduce our death rate. We don't know whether there has been a mix shift (eg younger healthier people getting sick who tend to have much lower death rates) or if there is another reason.

---

Precisely! You're buttressing my point here once again, the new case data is based on testing, which carries a far greater number of input variables than the new deaths data. The mix of people tested is constantly shifting, as are the tests themselves, and the number of these tests.


Here's how we know that the new case data is not as effective at quantifying the real spread of covid19 as the new deaths data:





-The top graph shows that early on, the US new case data closely tracked that of the EU, with a short time lag.

-Shortly before mid-April the US and EU new case data curves started diverging sharply, with the EU curve dropping precipitously, and the US curve tailing off on a much flatter trajectory at a steady rate for the next 2 months.

-That separation clearly observed in teh new case curve was however not observed in the new deaths curve, where the two curves continued to track very closely!

-Knowing that the incubation period of the disease is of the order of 1 to 2 weeks, we should have observed a separation in the number of deaths similar to the separation in the number of new cases.

This indicates that the number of new cases is not as reliable a measure of the evolution of the disease as the new deaths curve.