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> and the virus is now in retreat, a large-scale study of more than 100,000 volunteers showed on Monday. This seems irresponsible by Reuters. Saying the "virus
by piker 6y ago
> and the virus is now in retreat, a large-scale study of more than 100,000 volunteers showed on Monday.
This seems irresponsible by Reuters. Saying the "virus is in retreat" implies that there's some non-zero threshold below which the virus will be eradicated with the passage of time. There is still a massive number of community cases (almost 1000 per 100k according to the article) which threaten to exponentiate again as restrictions are eased.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoI'm resigned to the fact that the replication rate is going to oscillate around one. Every time it gets higher people panic and start shutting down. When it gets lower everybody is clamouring to restart everything. Our inability to see past the end of next week isn't doing us any favours. God knows how we are going to deal with climate change.
- jlokier 6y agoWhat determines retreat/threat is the rate of exponential change. The exponential appears to have gone negative, and that looks like retreat to me. (1000 per 100k is not as significant as it sounds, as 1 per 100k is a similar level of threat if the exponential is positive. That's just a time lag difference of a few weeks.) For responsibility, you could think of it another way. Saying the "virus is in retreat" implies "lockdown is working - yay!" and might encourage the people currently voting on near-future regional restrictions to carry on because it appears to be working. Right now, some MPs are threatening to block the government from implementing targeted, regional restrictions for the next couple of months, so the government is having to negotiate for lesser restrictions. Perhaps the Reuters headline will encourage them to keep up the restrictions for a while longer.