SamSpade
Well-Known Member
I've been browsing around the Internet looking at hot spots and areas which are going down and areas not so fortunate - trying to see some correlation between increased testing and increased number of testing and I notice something that is - well - pointless.
In looking at how bad the virus has BEEN - cumulative numbers give you that. But we're dealing with a disease, not a crime spree. When you get 10 shootings yesterday, you don't breathe a sigh of relief that there were only 4 TODAY. DAILY data is relevant with disease, because it generally follows a pattern.
What people - what EVERYONE - wants to know is - where are we now? Eight months ago, almost no one was dying from this. We assume at SOME point in the future - that will be the case. It's not unreasonable. How many cases of Ebola or SARS do we get now? We want to know, is it getting better, or is it getting worse?
What I OFTEN see is county and state data only reporting cumulative numbers. The strange thing about such numbers is, if you're still getting a few new cases a day - or even ZERO - that graph always looks ominous. A great big ramp upward. But deaths or hospitalizations per day tell the real story (I'm not going to bother with "cases per day" - we all know by now that if we tested EVERYONE in a geography, the number of cases would ZOOM upward, because MANY people have the virus and not only don't know it, probably would never know it without a test).
ALMOST every where I browse I see - peak usually happened months ago. DEATHS per day is dropping off. Total hospitalizations - itself a lagging indicator because of the time spent in the hospital - is usually tapering off.
Looking at cumulative numbers is like counting the cars behind you in a traffic jam. Who cares? All that tells you is, you made it through a mess. What people WANT to know is, when will it end.
In looking at how bad the virus has BEEN - cumulative numbers give you that. But we're dealing with a disease, not a crime spree. When you get 10 shootings yesterday, you don't breathe a sigh of relief that there were only 4 TODAY. DAILY data is relevant with disease, because it generally follows a pattern.
What people - what EVERYONE - wants to know is - where are we now? Eight months ago, almost no one was dying from this. We assume at SOME point in the future - that will be the case. It's not unreasonable. How many cases of Ebola or SARS do we get now? We want to know, is it getting better, or is it getting worse?
What I OFTEN see is county and state data only reporting cumulative numbers. The strange thing about such numbers is, if you're still getting a few new cases a day - or even ZERO - that graph always looks ominous. A great big ramp upward. But deaths or hospitalizations per day tell the real story (I'm not going to bother with "cases per day" - we all know by now that if we tested EVERYONE in a geography, the number of cases would ZOOM upward, because MANY people have the virus and not only don't know it, probably would never know it without a test).
ALMOST every where I browse I see - peak usually happened months ago. DEATHS per day is dropping off. Total hospitalizations - itself a lagging indicator because of the time spent in the hospital - is usually tapering off.
Looking at cumulative numbers is like counting the cars behind you in a traffic jam. Who cares? All that tells you is, you made it through a mess. What people WANT to know is, when will it end.