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That’s not a useful comparison though. You want to compare cases now to cases when lockdown or similar measures were imposed. Otherwise a country that wastes 2

by knzhou 6y ago

That’s not a useful comparison though. You want to compare cases now to cases when lockdown or similar measures were imposed. Otherwise a country that wastes 2 months doing nothing and then takes action far too late just gets put in the “lockdown” bin.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
godelski 6y ago
While I mostly agree with you, I wouldn't call the comparison useless. I want to add a few additional things as well that add to the difficulty of these comparisons (and why these simple comparisons people are making are potentially wildly inaccurate) 1) Testing is all over the place and mostly done only on people that are hospitalized. This creates a huge selection bias in official numbers, especially when we're talking about a disease where we're seeing claims from 25-80% of carriers being asymptomatic. There's plenty of evidence to show that many people that suspect themselves (i.e. they show symptoms) are not getting tested because they aren't "sick enough". So all we can do is guess that official numbers are on the low side. This is part of why we see wildly different CFR numbers (as opposed to IFR) in different countries. (Obviously there are other factors as well, but this one captures effects like living conditions) 2) Deaths are being attributed in different ways. In some areas any pneumonia death is being counted while in others the person must have tested positive for covid. In America the attribution even varies by state. What makes this more complicated is that when the metric changes these tend to be deaths added on a single day (creating spikes). This makes it difficult to do 1 to 1 comparisons. 3) The disease's fatality rate drastically changes with the victim's age. There's strong evidence to show that if you're healthy and young that you have little to worry. But if you're relatively healthy and old you should be concerned. There are drastic differences in country's age, and thus this makes a big difference in comparisons. 4) The number of cases isn't exactly a bad thing. Let's take Sweden for example. If their method for containment (develop herd immunity in the general population, isolate the elderly and immunocompromised, and social distance strictly to not overwhelm hospitals) is effective you'd expect a faster rate of new cases AND deaths. But if their method is the better solution they will have less total deaths by the end. But are they right? No one knows yet because we need time. Time is a difficult factor to work into these comparisons, which are often single snapshots rather than growth rates and inflections.

by knzhou 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

godelski 6y ago

While I mostly agree with you, I wouldn't call the comparison useless. I want to add a few additional things as well that add to the difficulty of these comparisons (and why these simple comparisons people are making are potentially wildly inaccurate) 1) Testing is all over the place and mostly done only on people that are hospitalized. This creates a huge selection bias in official numbers, especially when we're talking about a disease where we're seeing claims from 25-80% of carriers being asymptomatic. There's plenty of evidence to show that many people that suspect themselves (i.e. they show symptoms) are not getting tested because they aren't "sick enough". So all we can do is guess that official numbers are on the low side. This is part of why we see wildly different CFR numbers (as opposed to IFR) in different countries. (Obviously there are other factors as well, but this one captures effects like living conditions) 2) Deaths are being attributed in different ways. In some areas any pneumonia death is being counted while in others the person must have tested positive for covid. In America the attribution even varies by state. What makes this more complicated is that when the metric changes these tend to be deaths added on a single day (creating spikes). This makes it difficult to do 1 to 1 comparisons. 3) The disease's fatality rate drastically changes with the victim's age. There's strong evidence to show that if you're healthy and young that you have little to worry. But if you're relatively healthy and old you should be concerned. There are drastic differences in country's age, and thus this makes a big difference in comparisons. 4) The number of cases isn't exactly a bad thing. Let's take Sweden for example. If their method for containment (develop herd immunity in the general population, isolate the elderly and immunocompromised, and social distance strictly to not overwhelm hospitals) is effective you'd expect a faster rate of new cases AND deaths. But if their method is the better solution they will have less total deaths by the end. But are they right? No one knows yet because we need time. Time is a difficult factor to work into these comparisons, which are often single snapshots rather than growth rates and inflections.