4 ms·

Um, what flattening curve? Flattening growth rates just mean linear growth instead of exponential. Flattening total or active case numbers is what flattening

by mkl 7y ago

Um, what flattening curve? Flattening growth rates just mean linear growth instead of exponential. Flattening total or active case numbers is what flattening the curve usually means. Here are some clearer graphs: https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#currently_sick&ratio&places=Australia,Belgium,Brazil,Denmark,France,Germany,Italy,Japan,New%20Zealand,Norway,Russia,Singapore,Spain,Sweden,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=confirmed https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#currently_... (active cases normalised by population) https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&places=Australia,Belgium,Brazil,Denmark,France,Germany,Italy,Japan,New%20Zealand,Norway,Russia,Singapore,Spain,Sweden,USA,United%20Kingdom&alignTo=confirmed https://boogheta.github.io/coronavirus-countries/#deceased&p... (deaths, absolute numbers)

tomohawk 7y ago
I wouldn't get too spun up by an opinion piece designed to spin you up. But, since you asked: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...
- Retric 7y ago
  Dead people don’t require medical attention. Flattening the curve is about hospitals getting overwhelmed even if similar numbers of people get sick and die either way. The difference between hypothetically 1 million deaths vs 1.2 million deaths makes a huge difference for 200,000 people.
  - tomohawk 7y ago
    I have a family member working in a major metropolitan hospital. They are not overwhelmed. By all accounts, our state is at or past the peak, and we are not even close to being overwhelmed. Many doctors and nurses are actually out of work as "elective" procedures are on hold. Measuring the number of cases as the testing is being massively bumped out does not measure overload - actual death rate does.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Specific hospitals being overwhelmed or not is a different question. If we want to know how stressed the healthcare system is look at hospitalization rates, other proxy’s are pointless when you have hard data. Deaths don’t track 1:1 with hospitalizations because some people die much sooner. The most at risk tend to die within 2 weeks, while others are still extremely sick and can die 6+ weeks after infection. Those people have lower rates of death per day, but may still require ventilators. Thus, a steady rate of new infections can look like a very slow decrease in deaths even as the heath system is getting more stressed.
      - tomohawk 7y ago
        All I can say is that the data does not support a conclusion other than that the death rate has flattened for some time. The number of tests per 1000 people is increasing each day in the US. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-daily-covid-19-tests-per-thousand?time=2020-03-08..&country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-daily-covid-19-... This means that it is increasingly likely to uncover more cases, independent of how many new infections there actually are. Where is the data on overloaded hospitals?
    - travisporter 7y ago
      the 7 day moving average means there is a lag in that curve for prediction. Incubation time of upto two weeks may not show itself for upto three weeks.
      - tomohawk 7y ago
        If you go to the site, they answer these concerns. The reporting is also delayed, and so can be very bursty. Here is the raw data, which shows a flatening. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&time=2020-03-08..&country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- mkl 7y ago
  That's a graph of growth rate again, showing similar data to the article. That roughly flat growth rate means linear increase in total deaths, day by day. To be flattening that total curve, the growth rate needs to keep decreasing.
  - tomohawk 7y ago
    It is not a graph of growth rate. It is a graph of death rate, and it shows the death rate on a day-to-day basis is pretty much constant for a while. If we have pretty much the same deaths per 100000 from one day to the next, where is the growth?
    - mkl 7y ago
      It is a graph of the rate of change of the total number of deaths, in units deaths/day. I.e., the growth rate of the death count. The total number of deaths is approximately the area under the curve, so if the curve stays constant as time goes on, the total area (number of deaths) increases linearly.
  - madengr 7y ago
    Well I take “growth” to be a “rate” (the velocity). So a “growth rate” would be acceleration. That death curve is now flat for the last two samples, implying the rate is zero. The graph should be labeled deaths/million/day, which means the acceleration is zero and the velocity is constant. Sorry, just drives me bonkers when the media tosses about words such as “the economy grew at a rate of ....”. I suppose English is more confusing with “Billy grew 10 cm” (implied over a year), compared with “Billy is growing 10 cm/year”.
mtreis86 7y ago
The stacked graphs are probably the most valuable for me, this isn't a competition between countries and I think the stacked graph better represents that.
- morsch 7y ago
  Seems to me that it's extremely valuable to compare the efficacy of different measures that were taken, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to compare the numbers between countries. It's helpful if the X axis is not simply a date but in "days since community spread started", and you're relying on the represented numbers actually mean the same thing which depends on many things. Here's an example: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajectory-per-million?zoomToSelection=true&time=..&country=DEU+ITA+ESP+GBR+USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajec...
  - mkl 7y ago
    Exactly, it's a competition between approaches. Here's a similar graph I like, with days since 100 cases on the x axis, and helpful doubling rate lines: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/infection-trajectory-flattening-the-covid19-curve/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/infection-trajectory-flatte...
xoa 7y ago
>Flattening total or active case numbers is what flattening the curve usually means. When I clicked on it, the very first thing at the top was a graph showing "the number of newly reported cases each day". Since cases cycle out of the total too as the disease runs its course one way or another, if the number of new cases per day becomes flat and/or begins declining then so too will the total number of active cases (after a lag) right? Are you seeing something different from me in the article? I have uBO and NS on but whitelist the nytimes.com and nyt.com domains.
- mkl 7y ago
  The units of the graph are cases/day. It's a growth rate. If it stays constant (flat), then the total number of cases will increase in a straight line. If it decreases to zero, the active cases will disappear a few weeks later.
  - xoa 7y ago
    >If it stays constant (flat), then the total number of cases will increase in a straight line. What? After a set period of time, active cases become past cases. People recover (or die). If the number of new cases per day is flat, than the total number of active cases will also become flat (after a delay if it was growing previously). If the number of new cases per day declines, the number of active cases will also decline (all the way down to zero as you say if the number of new cases drops to zero). I am genuinely confused by what you're writing here. "Number of new cases per day" isn't the same thing as an increasing rate of new cases per day.
    - mkl 7y ago
      I meant total cases, not active cases. Total cases can't go down, as it is just everyone confirmed, active, recovered, or dead. You are right about active cases.

by mkl 7y ago

tomohawk 7y ago

I wouldn't get too spun up by an opinion piece designed to spin you up. But, since you asked: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-mi...

Retric 7y ago
Dead people don’t require medical attention. Flattening the curve is about hospitals getting overwhelmed even if similar numbers of people get sick and die either way. The difference between hypothetically 1 million deaths vs 1.2 million deaths makes a huge difference for 200,000 people.
- tomohawk 7y ago
  I have a family member working in a major metropolitan hospital. They are not overwhelmed. By all accounts, our state is at or past the peak, and we are not even close to being overwhelmed. Many doctors and nurses are actually out of work as "elective" procedures are on hold. Measuring the number of cases as the testing is being massively bumped out does not measure overload - actual death rate does.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Specific hospitals being overwhelmed or not is a different question. If we want to know how stressed the healthcare system is look at hospitalization rates, other proxy’s are pointless when you have hard data. Deaths don’t track 1:1 with hospitalizations because some people die much sooner. The most at risk tend to die within 2 weeks, while others are still extremely sick and can die 6+ weeks after infection. Those people have lower rates of death per day, but may still require ventilators. Thus, a steady rate of new infections can look like a very slow decrease in deaths even as the heath system is getting more stressed.
    - tomohawk 7y ago
      All I can say is that the data does not support a conclusion other than that the death rate has flattened for some time. The number of tests per 1000 people is increasing each day in the US. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-daily-covid-19-tests-per-thousand?time=2020-03-08..&country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-daily-covid-19-... This means that it is increasingly likely to uncover more cases, independent of how many new infections there actually are. Where is the data on overloaded hospitals?
  - travisporter 7y ago
    the 7 day moving average means there is a lag in that curve for prediction. Incubation time of upto two weeks may not show itself for upto three weeks.
    - tomohawk 7y ago
      If you go to the site, they answer these concerns. The reporting is also delayed, and so can be very bursty. Here is the raw data, which shows a flatening. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-million?tab=chart&time=2020-03-08..&country=USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/new-covid-deaths-per-mill...
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
mkl 7y ago
That's a graph of growth rate again, showing similar data to the article. That roughly flat growth rate means linear increase in total deaths, day by day. To be flattening that total curve, the growth rate needs to keep decreasing.
- tomohawk 7y ago
  It is not a graph of growth rate. It is a graph of death rate, and it shows the death rate on a day-to-day basis is pretty much constant for a while. If we have pretty much the same deaths per 100000 from one day to the next, where is the growth?
  - mkl 7y ago
    It is a graph of the rate of change of the total number of deaths, in units deaths/day. I.e., the growth rate of the death count. The total number of deaths is approximately the area under the curve, so if the curve stays constant as time goes on, the total area (number of deaths) increases linearly.
- madengr 7y ago
  Well I take “growth” to be a “rate” (the velocity). So a “growth rate” would be acceleration. That death curve is now flat for the last two samples, implying the rate is zero. The graph should be labeled deaths/million/day, which means the acceleration is zero and the velocity is constant. Sorry, just drives me bonkers when the media tosses about words such as “the economy grew at a rate of ....”. I suppose English is more confusing with “Billy grew 10 cm” (implied over a year), compared with “Billy is growing 10 cm/year”.

mtreis86 7y ago

The stacked graphs are probably the most valuable for me, this isn't a competition between countries and I think the stacked graph better represents that.

morsch 7y ago
Seems to me that it's extremely valuable to compare the efficacy of different measures that were taken, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to compare the numbers between countries. It's helpful if the X axis is not simply a date but in "days since community spread started", and you're relying on the represented numbers actually mean the same thing which depends on many things. Here's an example: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajectory-per-million?zoomToSelection=true&time=..&country=DEU+ITA+ESP+GBR+USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajec...
- mkl 7y ago
  Exactly, it's a competition between approaches. Here's a similar graph I like, with days since 100 cases on the x axis, and helpful doubling rate lines: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/infection-trajectory-flattening-the-covid19-curve/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/infection-trajectory-flatte...

xoa 7y ago

>Flattening total or active case numbers is what flattening the curve usually means. When I clicked on it, the very first thing at the top was a graph showing "the number of newly reported cases each day". Since cases cycle out of the total too as the disease runs its course one way or another, if the number of new cases per day becomes flat and/or begins declining then so too will the total number of active cases (after a lag) right? Are you seeing something different from me in the article? I have uBO and NS on but whitelist the nytimes.com and nyt.com domains.

mkl 7y ago
The units of the graph are cases/day. It's a growth rate. If it stays constant (flat), then the total number of cases will increase in a straight line. If it decreases to zero, the active cases will disappear a few weeks later.
- xoa 7y ago
  >If it stays constant (flat), then the total number of cases will increase in a straight line. What? After a set period of time, active cases become past cases. People recover (or die). If the number of new cases per day is flat, than the total number of active cases will also become flat (after a delay if it was growing previously). If the number of new cases per day declines, the number of active cases will also decline (all the way down to zero as you say if the number of new cases drops to zero). I am genuinely confused by what you're writing here. "Number of new cases per day" isn't the same thing as an increasing rate of new cases per day.
  - mkl 7y ago
    I meant total cases, not active cases. Total cases can't go down, as it is just everyone confirmed, active, recovered, or dead. You are right about active cases.