3 ms·

Serious people measure death rates, not "cases". Cases is pretty arbitrary. If you want, you can do serological studies to estimate the proportion of a populat

by rsj_hn 5y ago

Serious people measure death rates, not "cases". Cases is pretty arbitrary. If you want, you can do serological studies to estimate the proportion of a population that was infected, but please don't think there is any value to "cases", and serological studies are generally done after a disease is over, because diseases hit different areas in different times. They spread over time, going from place to place, so one area with a low infection rate may simply not have been hit yet. A great example of this is Singapore, which everyone thought had licked the disease, when in reality it was just hit later. Similarly everyone was blaming New York, but even though New York made some mistakes with nursing homes, it's biggest crime was to be one of the places hit first. Similarly, after the disease burned through New York and started growing in Arizona, that didn't mean that suddenly New York had better policies than Arizona. That's why you wait until everything is over and then you do serological studies before jumping to conclusions. FYI lowest death rates (as of 3 days ago) are Vermont, Maine, Alaska, Hawaii. Hawaii is a bit of an outlier as it is an island that for a while had strict protocols limiting visitors. I suspect Hawaii merely delayed its day of reckoning, similar to Australia or New Zealand, but I could be wrong. Time will tell. Highest death rates are Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, Alabama. Massachusetts has a higher death rate than Florida. Does that mean it has worse policies? No you can't conclude that, it just means there are a lot of confounding variables and you can't conclude efficacy of policies like that. California has a higher death rate than Utah, does that mean it has worse policies? No, you can't conclude that either. That's not how you do science. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi... We'll need to wait until it's all over to get the final tally. Then we can also do serological studies to determine extent of infection.

tzs 5y ago
You are looking at death rates over the entire course of the pandemic so far. To see how measures against COVID affect deaths you need to look how rates change during the pandemic because measures taken changed over time. Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York all had a huge spike in deaths in the first couple of months of the pandemic. After that, their months were roughly in the middle of the pack compared to other states until vaccines. In the post vaccine months they have been bottom 20%, while Florida has been in the top 20%.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > To see how measures against COVID affect deaths you need to look how rates change during the pandemic because measures taken changed over time. The problem with this is that you're assuming the rates changed primarily or exclusively because measures changed (if they even did). There are bigger factors you're not considering. Take, for example, New York. It was one of the first epicenters of the pandemic in the US. Large numbers of people got infected early on, and decisions were made that actually contributed to the spread of the virus in some of the highest risk groups. As a result, lots of people got natural immunity or died in New York in the first waves, so there were fewer people to infect in the later waves. Anyway, the data has clearly established that in terms of the risk of any individual anywhere dying from COVID if they become infected, age, weight and metabolic comorbidities (namely diabetes) are the primary factors. You've been arguing that if you live somewhere where your risk of being infected in the first place is reduced by restrictions/preventative measures, that's a bigger factor. That's totally irrelevant to the discussion of individual risk when infected.

by rsj_hn 5y ago

tzs 5y ago

You are looking at death rates over the entire course of the pandemic so far. To see how measures against COVID affect deaths you need to look how rates change during the pandemic because measures taken changed over time. Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York all had a huge spike in deaths in the first couple of months of the pandemic. After that, their months were roughly in the middle of the pack compared to other states until vaccines. In the post vaccine months they have been bottom 20%, while Florida has been in the top 20%.

LurkingPenguin 5y ago
> To see how measures against COVID affect deaths you need to look how rates change during the pandemic because measures taken changed over time. The problem with this is that you're assuming the rates changed primarily or exclusively because measures changed (if they even did). There are bigger factors you're not considering. Take, for example, New York. It was one of the first epicenters of the pandemic in the US. Large numbers of people got infected early on, and decisions were made that actually contributed to the spread of the virus in some of the highest risk groups. As a result, lots of people got natural immunity or died in New York in the first waves, so there were fewer people to infect in the later waves. Anyway, the data has clearly established that in terms of the risk of any individual anywhere dying from COVID if they become infected, age, weight and metabolic comorbidities (namely diabetes) are the primary factors. You've been arguing that if you live somewhere where your risk of being infected in the first place is reduced by restrictions/preventative measures, that's a bigger factor. That's totally irrelevant to the discussion of individual risk when infected.