5 ms·

>As a result, it will appear from this graph that deaths are always declining whether they are or not Most deaths are reported relatively quickly. If there we

by treis 6y ago

>As a result, it will appear from this graph that deaths are always declining whether they are or not Most deaths are reported relatively quickly. If there were, as an example, a 2x increase in deaths it would show on the graph within a few days. It would show as something like a 1.8x increase before trickling up to the full 2x over the following weeks.

peterwoerner 6y ago
Death lags new case by as much as a month (due to time from infection to death). So we won't really know if there is an increase an death due to the new cases for a number of weeks after we see a rise in cases.
- nostrebored 6y ago
  The death rate absolutely does respond more quickly than a month, and in a time series with this distribution the tail of the data is not the most important factor. We should be seeing increased deaths from this in places that have reopened weeks ago. The problem is, we accelerated deaths drastically due to insane public policies like housing the sick in close quarters with the elderly. In engineering, overengineering like this wastes time. In public health, it kills people. My expectation is that we'll see an increase in infection rate, a decrease in new deaths per day, and we'll have spikes associated with pockets of the elderly who were previously not impacted being exposed.
atoav 6y ago
Yeah, but the problem is the combination of these points: * A certain percentage of infections lead to death * Death usually only occurs one or two weeks in * Pandemics follow a logistic curve in their spread (and this curve has an exponential part) * Most infectious transmissions happen before one gets symptoms (otherwise staying at home once you cough would solve everything) This is why a sudden rise in deaths would indicate that a few weeks ago something went terribly wrong. This also means that a decline in deaths does not mean you are doing just fine right now — if anything, it means you did fine 1-2 weeks ago.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  And probably more like 2 to 3 weeks ago.

by treis 6y ago

peterwoerner 6y ago

Death lags new case by as much as a month (due to time from infection to death). So we won't really know if there is an increase an death due to the new cases for a number of weeks after we see a rise in cases.

nostrebored 6y ago
The death rate absolutely does respond more quickly than a month, and in a time series with this distribution the tail of the data is not the most important factor. We should be seeing increased deaths from this in places that have reopened weeks ago. The problem is, we accelerated deaths drastically due to insane public policies like housing the sick in close quarters with the elderly. In engineering, overengineering like this wastes time. In public health, it kills people. My expectation is that we'll see an increase in infection rate, a decrease in new deaths per day, and we'll have spikes associated with pockets of the elderly who were previously not impacted being exposed.

atoav 6y ago

Yeah, but the problem is the combination of these points: * A certain percentage of infections lead to death * Death usually only occurs one or two weeks in * Pandemics follow a logistic curve in their spread (and this curve has an exponential part) * Most infectious transmissions happen before one gets symptoms (otherwise staying at home once you cough would solve everything) This is why a sudden rise in deaths would indicate that a few weeks ago something went terribly wrong. This also means that a decline in deaths does not mean you are doing just fine right now — if anything, it means you did fine 1-2 weeks ago.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
And probably more like 2 to 3 weeks ago.