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Why would you normalize by population in the early stages of an epidemic? If you assume a large and small country both have similar growth rate and number of in
by matthewdgreen 7y ago
Why would you normalize by population in the early stages of an epidemic? If you assume a large and small country both have similar growth rate and number of initial cases, then their absolute case growth will be similar in the early stages. But the large country will appear "better" once you normalize for population. This is exactly the pattern I see when you compare Sweden to its smaller neighbors.
- chasd00 7y agois this still the early stages? A number of countries have passed their peak.
- butler14 7y agoA number of countries have most of their populations under what is effectively house arrest Meanwhile, the virus still permeates, those same populations' collective immunity has barely changed, and we're only marginally closer to a vaccine The fundamentals won't have changed when we do get around to removing the lockdowns
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoWhether the virus is permeating is the point. If the virus has broadly spread across society, and it sounds like we're agreed that it has, then you have to normalize by population to get useful numbers.
- kalleboo 7y agoWhy would you assume a large and small country both have similar number of initial cases? I'm under the impression a lot of the nordic initial cases were travelers coming home from ski trips in Italy. That ought to scale pretty linearly with population.