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Nope. If the data is bad, looking more closely at the same data won’t help anything. In Covid 19 there are so many different variables in the way the data is re

Nope. If the data is bad, looking more closely at the same data won’t help anything. In Covid 19 there are so many different variables in the way the data is reported that it’s completely pointless to draw any conclusions across counties, including where to focus further attention on.

usrusr 6y ago
Some trends are clearly visible nonetheless, like when numbers are going down (unless someone started to deliberately exclude the symptomatic from testing. And observed "high water marks" serve as a lower bound for worst case outcomes, this is where county level data would be far more interesting than country level data (it's no coincidence that tiny states like San Marino, Andorra or the Vatican dwarf all other normalized country level stats).
- Armisael16 6y ago
  The trends you see may not means anything. You’re looking at garbage data.
  - Moru 6y ago
    Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/2295/ https://xkcd.com/2295/
  - xg15 6y ago
    Are you telling me that e.g. right now, new cases in China could actually be doubling each day while the US might not have any - and we wouldn't be seeing it because of differences in reporting? Also, how did we get from reporting differences to "garbage data"? What kind of data would you classify as non-garbage?
xg15 6y ago
> If the data is bad, looking more closely at the same data won’t help anything. I'm not arguing for looking more closely - on the contrary, I'm saying that the large-scale trends are meaningful - say, how growth rate or mortality/population develops over time.