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The number of confirmed cases is not really a great value to track, because countries test differently and change tactic after a while. Look at this graph for
by sorenjan 7y ago
The number of confirmed cases is not really a great value to track, because countries test differently and change tactic after a while.
Look at this graph for instance, number of tests per million people vs number of confirmed cases per million people. They're highly correlated, which means the more you test the more confirmed cases you'll have. In some countries it's the opposite, the more cases you'll have seeking medical assistance, the more tests you do.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tests-vs-confirmed-cases-covid-19-per-million https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tests-vs-confirmed-cases-...
- _nalply 7y agoThis is missing one of the most affected countries: Switzerland.
- froj 7y agoAccording to [1] the numbers for Switzerland are about 13k tests and 1.7k cases per million, which would be somewhere below the Faeroe Island. [1] https://www.bag.admin.ch/dam/bag/de/dokumente/mt/k-und-i/aktuelle-ausbrueche-pandemien/2019-nCoV/covid-19-lagebericht.pdf.download.pdf/COVID-19_Epidemiologische_Lage_Schweiz.pdf https://www.bag.admin.ch/dam/bag/de/dokumente/mt/k-und-i/akt...
- bravura 7y agoYou missed the point, that this sampling bias applies equally to the x axis and the y axis in this plot. So this plot allows you to fairly compare growth across different countries, regardless of their testing regime.
- _nalply 7y agoNo, there are two different biases at work and they might not cancel out each other.
- mkl 7y agoUnless I'm missing something, the data for that seems pretty dubious. It says New Zealand has done 120.8 tests per million people, which would be ~4.97*120.8 = 600 tests in total, but NZ has been doing more than double that per day. This data is also 9 days out of date.