4 ms·

The doubling time of deaths appears to be much slower than the doubling time of confirmed cases, and is probably a better comparison. It could be slightly faste

The doubling time of deaths appears to be much slower than the doubling time of confirmed cases, and is probably a better comparison. It could be slightly faster than reports, if deaths are getting missed, or misattributed to other illnesses. But it still seems more accurate than judging the doubling time of confirmed cases, which is more just a measure of how quickly we are able to increase testing when there's a backlog of "actual cases".

raphlinus 7y ago
There's a much narrower range in reporting rate variation for deaths than for infection->test results, but (a) it lags considerably, and (b) there are many other things that conflate this data as well, including healthcare systems getting better at preventing Covid-19 deaths over time (learning from earlier cases, hopefully starting to see positive results from remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine). I am still comfortable with what I said elsethread, the best way to get your head around doubling time is to look at data from countries with very good test coverage, such as South Korea.
malandrew 7y ago
Even doubling times of deaths has issues as a measure. For example, the double time before you're forced to triage is going to be better than when your health system is overwhelmed.
raphlinus 7y ago
Where do you get that the doubling time of deaths is much slower than that of confirmed cases? I looked for data, and this graphic is not reassuring on the question: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Log-linear_plot_of_coronavirus_cases_with_linear_regressions.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Log-linear_plot_of_c...
- tunesmith 7y ago
  I was eyeballing various country deaths at worldometers.info, and they looked more like 8-11 days to me. Then again, the early South Korea stats looked steeper. But yeah, I recognize the larger point is we want to know doubling rate of "actual cases", and since that's currently unknowable, identifying the most reliable proxy. It just seemed to me that our testing rate occludes "confirmed cases" more than death rate occludes "actual cases" - at least with death rates we can identify the time points when mitigation rates are introduced, when hospitals get overwhelmed, etc.

raphlinus 7y ago

There's a much narrower range in reporting rate variation for deaths than for infection->test results, but (a) it lags considerably, and (b) there are many other things that conflate this data as well, including healthcare systems getting better at preventing Covid-19 deaths over time (learning from earlier cases, hopefully starting to see positive results from remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine). I am still comfortable with what I said elsethread, the best way to get your head around doubling time is to look at data from countries with very good test coverage, such as South Korea.

malandrew 7y ago

Even doubling times of deaths has issues as a measure. For example, the double time before you're forced to triage is going to be better than when your health system is overwhelmed.

raphlinus 7y ago

Where do you get that the doubling time of deaths is much slower than that of confirmed cases? I looked for data, and this graphic is not reassuring on the question: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Log-linear_plot_of_coronavirus_cases_with_linear_regressions.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Log-linear_plot_of_c...

tunesmith 7y ago
I was eyeballing various country deaths at worldometers.info, and they looked more like 8-11 days to me. Then again, the early South Korea stats looked steeper. But yeah, I recognize the larger point is we want to know doubling rate of "actual cases", and since that's currently unknowable, identifying the most reliable proxy. It just seemed to me that our testing rate occludes "confirmed cases" more than death rate occludes "actual cases" - at least with death rates we can identify the time points when mitigation rates are introduced, when hospitals get overwhelmed, etc.