All the good stuff, caveats, code, data sources and explanations are linked, some in Update III, and the most important in Update II, Update IV, Update V, Update VI, Update VII, Update VIII, Update IX, Bayes Theorem & Coronavirus, and the Sanity Check Perspective, so go to them first before asking what-about-this-and-that. Skip to the bottom for the latest model. Thanks to everybody emailing me sources, including Ted Poppke, Jeff Jorgensen, Jim Fedako, Joe Bastardi, Philip Pilkington, John Buckner, Harry Goff, John Goetz, Warren McGee. Sorry I’m slow answering emails.
I’ve Run Out Of WHO Jokes
WHO chief: Worst of coronavirus pandemic still ahead
The director of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned Monday that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is still ahead.
“Trust us. The worst is yet ahead of us,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a briefing.” Let’s prevent this tragedy. It’s a virus that many people still don’t understand.”
I’m willing to be corrected, but I do not believe Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (such a name!) is an idiot. Rising to his level in the absence of routine poisoning and hereditary aristocracy is far too difficult, practically impossible, for idiots. It does not follow he is brilliant or a genius, but I dispute the notion he does not know what he is saying.
He does. Ghebreyesus sees the same data (and much more than) I’ll show you below. He knows what is going on.
So why is he saying something he knows isn’t true?
Let’s let Naomi Oreskes answer that: “We Need Big Government to Save Us from the Pandemic.”
As coronavirus crisscrossed the globe in March, The Economist ran an editorial acknowledging the urgent need for a “big government” response but insisting that government must shrink back as soon as the crisis has passed. Their argument reflected the traditional conservative commitment to limited government. Conservatives going back to the 18th century have viewed government as a threat to liberty, and conservative economists in the 20th century linked the small government ideal to free-market capitalism. But the Covid-19 crisis makes utterly clear why some problems demand big government solutions, and why they can’t just be temporary.
Why they can’t just be temporary. As in permanent.
MSN agrees: “Government is everywhere now. Where does it go next?”
Americans are experiencing the biggest expansion of government authority in generations as elected leaders take unprecedented action to fight the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
The role of government has changed overnight, in ways no one imagined as this election year began. Despite a broad consensus behind this emergency surge in government spending and power, a huge debate over what government does and should do lies ahead.
Now that we have begged, pleaded and weepingly remonstrated with government to save us from catching a cold, it will be happy to step in to save us from all possible ills. Including imaginary ones.
It will next “save” us from global warming. The Coronavirus and Climate Change, the Great Crises of Our Time. Does not global warming kill? And kill your favorite victim group at higher rates?
I had pledged to keep politics out of these updates, but the numbers themselves have become political. It’s not possible to mention any figure without looking at the political motivation behind it.
It’s anyway obvious this crisis is about, or has become about, much more than people dying from a virus.
After 9/11, the TSA gave us confidence that we could safely travel again.
The long lines and security checks were a nuisance, but they instilled confidence.
After COVID-19, we will need something that instills confidence in public settings.
What will be the new TSA?
To which I replied, “We need Federal Thermometer Police. They will roam the streets and arrest people with fevers, or potential fevers. I will feel so safe.”
Juicing The Numbers
Last week we saw that we went from dying from, to dying with, to just plain dying. Even people who haven’t been tested are now classed as dying from coronavirus. This is juicing the numbers in the direction of the models. Whether this was intentional, to avoid confessing to the most colossal and costly blown forecast of all time, or this is more panicked over-reaction, I’ll let you decide. Either way, they did get a boost in the numbers from the re-definitions, which we’ll see below.
We saw yesterday that counting who dies of flu or any virus is not so straightforward, that it’s always the result of a statistical model. Every single flu death is not trumpeted from every media organ for months on end, but if they were, then we’d have counts similar to the way we have counts for coronavirus.
Something else strange in the numbers. Remember how every week I’d cut and paste the CDC’s update flu hospitalization and death estimates? Can’t do it anymore, because why? Because the CDC stopped reporting on them. This could be because of over-burdened government workers, or because flu deaths aren’t as sexy as coronavirus deaths (even though the totals are similar), or because something else is going on.
Here’s the flu deaths they have, broken down by age.
Flu deaths tail off earlier for the oldest, but fade away in routine fashion for younger. Probably the “missing” deaths are being classified as coronavirus. This might even be true.
Those dead aren’t with the flu, but they are recorded elsewhere, such as in pneumonia. This is up through 13 April.
The plunge at the very end is likely to be under-counts due to typical government delay. These can and will change, in these plots and in the others. Anyway, the spike in pneumonia is clear enough. Somewhat worse than a bad flu year.
Here’s flu deaths:
Don’t tell the media about 2017-18. There could be a retroactive panic. In any case, the flu deaths don’t look especially unusual, like pneumonia does.
Maybe there’s more of a signal in total all-cause deaths?
Again, the plunge is almost certainly due to delayed reporting. Ignore it. The steady increase upward is due to increased population: these numbers aren’t per capita.
Notice, though, that deaths started trending down starting January, as usual. Lockdowns began in mid-March. If these numbers are not everywhere adjusted, this will be, as I said the other day, evidence the lockdowns did not work as promised.
Whether or not that’s true, since pneumonia deaths are up, yet all deaths are down, it must mean people are being recorded as dying from other things at smaller rates than usual. Either coronavirus deaths are being juiced, or people aren’t dying of other things at the same old rates and being killed instead by coronavirus.
Given the other evidence, such as admissions by Birx about juicing, and the plots below, I’m going with some juicing.
Some American doctors agree. Here’s one: If a guy has seven things wrong with him, CHF included, and he dies as blood no longer circulates, he’s being class as a COVID-19 death.
It isn’t only in the US where the numbers are looking funny. France, too:
It’s already happening – France has stopped publishing the weekly mortality report in mid March – where (the lack of) excess mortality could readily be seen. Instead they created a new publication focused only on covid deaths.
I haven’t had a chance to do the same thing with other countries. A source gave me France’s weekly deaths through time just before this post went live.
But we do have the European all deaths (pdf):
The young are doing fine. The older have their typical yearly spike, about equal to a bad flu year. Of course, this data may also be preliminary, meaning the 2020 spike might swell as new reports come in. Wait and see. (The smoothed curves over the data are explained here.)
So far, however, the all-cause deaths don’t look especially huge here or in Europe. Meaning even if its corona and not CHF killing people, it’s still about the same number of dead.
The temptation to juice coronavirus deaths must be overwhelming! The models promised unimaginably huge numbers. We haven’t come anywhere close to them. Millions and millions and millions of lives the world over have been ruined, with more ruin on the way, as the result of trusting expert models. They have to find a way to bring actual numbers in line with models.
They’re running out of options, though. Dying with from dying from was a good move, and we saw it immediately pop up in the death counts. Dying with suspicion from dying with was also clever enough, and we saw that, too.
What else is left, though? Only one thing.
If “dying from” is defined as dying with presence of COVID-19 antibodies, then once we reach herd immunity, which it seems is close in many places, then about 80% of all deaths can be classified as coronavirus deaths. Not that they’d do that! Heaven forfend! This is humor.
Here’s some more sanity. He’ll be ignored. He isn’t shouting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-qk-nenbt0&feature=emb_logo
Global Model
I’m sick of repeating it, but these are models of reports, not actual cases and deaths.
Reported totals:
New total reported cases 2.8 million; new reported deaths 218 thousand. Last week: “New reported case total: 2.3 million. New reported death total: 167,000.” So this week a small boost, perhaps from the juicing, which we’ll see more strongly in the US data.
Do not concentrate on reported cases! These are hugely under-measured, as I’ll prove to you below.
Reported daily cases:
It’s on the way down, more or less, with the variability we’d expect in a global effort in testing. Some countries, like Singapore, have ramped up testing because of local circumstances (suspicion of foreign workers, etc.), which gives rise to new reported cases.
But it must be that many cases were already there but not measured. It’s not that the disease is necessarily spreading into virgin territory. We’ve already seen many reports of sampling measurements from planned studies showing people with antibodies who never even knew they had the disease.
Then we have this, which is the reported deaths divided by reported cases:
Now it’s either the case that case fatality rate really is near 7%—which is absurd—or something is wrong with the numbers. There is. Two things are happening. True cases are massively under-counted, and deaths are over-ascribed.
This will be partly recognized by our leaders, unfortunately, and could lead to new testing efforts. Which will make it falsely appear that the extent of the virus is accelerating. When it’s already there and we’re finally measuring it. Politically speaking, if they need to juice numbers, this is how they’ll do it.
Daily reported deaths:
Yes, numbers so far align well enough with the model. Expect variability to remain high, though, for at least a week to ten days. Spikes in either direction will happen. Our naive model is just too simple to capture that kind of detail.
What about the third peak promised by WHO, Fauci, and others? Guaranteed! Go back up and look at the cycle in all deaths, which begins to swell in fall every year. It will swell again in this coming fall.
And every fall until the crack of doom. They will always and forever have an excuse to protect us.
USA! USA! USA!
Reported totals:
Total cases 850 thousand; total deaths 45 thousand. Last week, before the juicing, it was “700 thousand reported cases (likely will rise with new testing). And about 33 thousand reported deaths.” Another boost, but not a huge boost. We’ll see why in the dailies.
Daily reported cases:
This Fauci is calling for “tripling” of testing, which can only boost these dailies. And make it seem like there’s a genuine increase occurring. Oh my! The daily reported cases are up! It must mean the disease is spreading! No. It could also mean, and probably does given all the other evidence we now have from sampling, that the disease was already there, and we just now have measured it.
Watch for this, though. I’ll likely report on this in a separate post, to ensure the point doesn’t get lost.
Daily reported deaths:
You can see the re-spikes after both re-definitions of deaths. We’re now on the way back down, even after all these. The weather is still crap (a precise meteorological term) in the Northeast, and the forecast for the next week is continued to increasing crappiness.
This is one delayed spring! This extra-nasty weather (remember I told you many wise epidemiologists put weather into their models) is prolonging this. People need to get out into the virus killing sunshine and germicidal air. The same things that whack the flu every year. And will surely whack the coronavirus.
The government can’t take credit for sunshine and outdoor air. Which is maybe why they’re discouraging it? Nah, that’s too cynical, even for me.
Anyway, here’s the reported deaths divided by reported cases:
Again, either the case fatality rate is whackingly huge and increasing, or most cases aren’t being measured, or deaths are being juiced, or both.
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I knew they were juicing deaths all the way back beginning on April 7. My spidey sense was tingling the instant I saw the shape of that morning’s charts, which was about 1-2 days before the first news of recording “deaths with” starting popping up.
It was blatantly obvious that very first day they were manipulating and it’s still blatantly obvious today.
And the most disturbing thing is that when anyone asks they get the gangster response: “And what are you gonna do about it?”
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I completely subscribe to the “juicing” argument, however, one potential weakness to it is a need to debunk the (inevitable) forthcoming claim that the reduced deaths from other causes are mostly or entirely attributable to the reduction in activity caused by the lock-downs, e.g., traffic fatalities. I’m hoping that Mr. Briggs is giving some thought to a statistically sound method to debunk that claim that will be digestible to the general public.
The WHO director can be smart enough to not end up dead but a complete idiot when it comes to disease. He can also be smart enough to trash the entire planet using fear of a virus. He doesn’t have to know anything about viruses to use them as weapons of fear with a stupid populace.
Not only do we have people as sheep, oil crashed, so Naomi is on her second pint of Nancy’s special ice cream, celebrating the death of fossil fuels. I assume she does not realize that fossil fuels and glass bottles have uses she may not be aware of. Or that people are that stupid. I guess when Netflix twinkles off, the net dies and winter comes and those seeds they thought would magically grow into refrigerator-ready veggies have given them nothing, they might realize they erred. Too late, but isn’t it always?
The brand of toilet paper you buy, if there is any on the shelf at the store, is political. If you even use toilet paper is political. You can’t keep politics out of that which is inherently, 100% political. You’d have a post a paragraph long saying there’s a virus and we’re scared and need our binkies (which Gretchen the Great of Michigan probably declared non-essential, so trying chewing on an old sock. She hasn’t come for those yet).
Federal Thermometer Police are fine with me. I’ve run a “low-grade” fever once in 40 years and my temperature is below average. I’m free to run around wherever I want. (That’s how Typhoid Mary thrived, by the way. Looking innocent.)
“Even people who haven’t been tested are now classed as dying from coronavirus.“ Remind the AGW crowd of this ALL THE TIME. The party of science, my ***. The party of “all the lies, all of the time”. Should sell the Dems that and tell them to be proud. I could get rich.
It’s quite easy to do “cause of death”. You list primary and all secondary and you never give the media the numbers separately. Therefore, the cause of death is smoking, drinking, Covid, and a robust sex life. Add that last one a lot and no one will ever question any of this. Reporters have a compulsion to report that last one—use it on as many certificates as possible.
I think the CDC always stops flu numbers now as the flu season is officially over. Sorry, no conspiracy there. You know what we need for flu? A sexy sponge virus model like Covid has. Seems to have worked well for Covid.
How to Lie with Statistics. Buy it, read it.
There is no such thing as “excess mortality”. Another 100% unscientific notion.
This was always a test of how stupid humans are. We are in the top 5% of complete stupidity, according to preliminary results.
JR Ewing: So what are we going to do about it? NOTHING, so why are we discussing it????? They are completely correct to use that answer.
“And every fall until the crack of doom.”
Yes, I’ve been wondering about this. Especially because the downstream fallout from the current situation will still be present at that time. They’re gonna run into each other.
Can it be possible that our “leaders” would dare to start it all over again?
If they don’t they’ll have to admit just exactly how &%&(^%(& up this all was; FUBB I think it’s labeled.
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Does anybody know about the rate of false positives the tests produce? There must be false positives, even if the rate might be low. Enough testing will give huge numbers even in a healthy popunlation.
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A factoid from the state of PA regarding the flu.
From the website:
“Influenza activity has decreased significantly, so the Bureau of Epidemiology will stop updating this flu activity webpage and last posted report is for week 13 that ended on 28 March, 2020. The report will be updated when flu activity increases with the beginning of the next flu season.”
https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/Flu/Pages/2019-20-Flu.aspx
The page does indeed show a sharp drop in confirmed cases, however, 2019-2020 is unusual in showing a cliff-like drop in flu cases in late winter. More interestingly, ER visits with “flu-like symptoms” were still at very significant levels at the time the state stopped counting.
While one could argue those “flu-like symptoms” were due to COVID-19, about 80% of people tested for COVID-19 tested negative in PA. Since those tests have pretty much been reserved for those showing symptoms, one wonders what those 80% were suffering from if it wasn’t the flu or COVID-19.
Great summary of the macro stats.
Any assessment of the recent, not-yet-peer reviewed Stanford study, or similar studies starting as antibody testing becomes more widely available? The Stanford study appears flawed, but how much is unclear.
If the prevalence of the virus in the population is order(s) of magnitude greater than currently believed/known, and mortality a fraction of what has been thought, the implications are stunning… or, maybe, precautions taken will be found rational….
Karl,
I don’t know specific rates, but as the initial role for testing was to see if people were infected and then to isolate them, the test would have been geared towards avoiding false negatives. The corollary of this would have been a higher false positive rate, which would have been accepted given the perceived relative damage (false positive much less damaging than a false negative.
With regard to the tests themselves, PCR testing for viral RNA, the initial protocol developed by CDC contained a number of controls to provide a high level of confidence and avoid false positives in the test reaction. However, with all sampling regimes, the potential for cross-contamination prior to the testing remained and there is no discrimination between viral RNA and infectious viral particles with such a test – it is likely that some positive results are simply from contaminating viral RNA and did not represent an infection.
The more recent focus is on antibody testing to determine who has been exposed to the virus and these have more inherent issues with discrimination between COVID-19 and other corona viruses. There is likely to be a much wider variation in the testing antibodies being used than the primers used for the PCR-RNA test simply because of the was that antibodies are developed. What this means is that there will be different error rates depending on the source of the testing kit. Anecdotally, I have read reports that antibody testing kits are proving difficult to provide the sensitivity needed to detect antibodies in small blood samples (finger prick samples, for example) which would result in more false negatives. This may lead to tweaking of the test interpretation which would lead to a higher false positive result.
Bottom line, the focus to date has not been on avoiding false positives so I expect that the rate is not insignificant to the overall numbers.
Not sure if they are real or not, but the numbers for England today somehow found 43 extra deaths from March, and 101 from 1-12 April, so an additional 144. There’s also another 71 from 12-16 April. So 215 out of today’s announced total of 778 (28%) go back up to 29 days. Let’s hope its a spring cleaning exercise, and not a bit of manipulation to reinforce the “three more weeks” we have to endure this farrago.
You’ll notice Briggs stopped making the H1N1 comparisons two weeks ago (last mention that I recall here: https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/30182/). Why? Because they were either ignorant or disingenuous to begin with. Briggs even created a logical fallacy to make his case that it was irrational to fear covid-19 and not H1N1 (https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/30013/#comment-185011). If you don’t see why comparing the first three months of a pandemic to previous pandemic totals is a fallacy, just picture going back to the third month of the bubonic plague or HIV or the Spanish flu, getting a death count, quadrupling it and calling it your estimate. That’s what Briggs did, and that death count was surpassed within 2 and a half weeks (before the adjustment in US reporting). Not that this will be as bad as any of those extreme pandemics; it won’t. But it’s a fallacy never the less.
As to why Americans have been more concerned with covid-19 than H1N1, it’s simple. The estimated *pace* of death is much higher with covid-19. Here, the estimated US deaths by the CDC from H1N1 from mid-April to mid-October 2009 (6 months) was “~3,900” (650/month average):
https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates/April_October_17.htm
Note they were not all tested. Deaths in pandemics frequently have to be estimated early on when the spread outpaces the capacity for testing. Also this:
“May 4
CDC shifted from reporting confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 to reporting both confirmed and probable cases of 2009 H1N1.”
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-pandemic-timeline.html
These are common practices, but Briggs claims it’s unfair because it runs against his narrative.
The first covid-19 death in the US was February 29th. The death count is already over 28,000 less than two months later. That’s a pace of over 14,000 per month. That is a much faster pace of death. About 20X faster, actually. Even if you think covid are over counted (and again note that not all H1N1 deaths were tested), and even if the H1N1 deaths cited above occurred mostly just the first three months, the pace of death for covid-19 is still many multiples of H1N1 during its early months. If Briggs were more interested in being a competent statistician than a political pundit, he would acknowledge this. And he sort of has, by stopping those comparisons. But why admit a bad argument when you can silently sweep it under the rug?
Thankfully, the daily deaths are declining now. But if Briggs were honest, he’d say something like, “I think many people overestimated this, but we won’t know until it’s done and the final numbers come in. There is also proof in my writing that I underestimated it, because I made predictions that were quickly falsified. But I still disagree with the policies to combat it because of x, y, and z.”
“Thankfully, the daily deaths are declining now. But if Briggs were honest…”
Comparing your comments with his throughout this whole adventure, I’d say this is the sort of thing about which analogies of logs and specks were spoken.
Dave: So 10,000 people dying over 6 months is fine, but over 2 months is just wrong and we have to DO SOMETHING? I fail to understand why pace is important. Why do people not understand that dead is dead, whether this month or in June? Some irrational belief that you might outrun a virus in that period of time? Flattening the peak saves virtually no lives and makes it living hell for several months instead of just getting it over with. It’s better to lock people in their little jail houses for months and they still die?
Karl, Rob,
In the Stanford study, low prevalence was assumed, so specificity (false positive) is a bigger issue. Once you have close to 50/50 prevalence of something, both specificity and sensitivity are equally important.
If you test, say, 1000 people and your specificity is 99%, that means 10 people will still show as positive, even if nobody in your sample is actually infected.
If you are not careful with your specificity, your overall positive rate would appear to be high, thus appearing to reduce overall mortality, even if it’s not the case. It’s counter-intuitive, but true nonetheless. Sensitivity (false neg.) is an issue when we measure the rate of re-infection over time, or immunity and such.
Although the study had some selection bias for sure, it looks like less than 5% of Santa Clara population has been exposed. Similar to what they found in LA and some Euro countries. The results will lower the true mortality rate (assuming 100% specificity), but it would be better if we found out that something like 50% of population was exposed.
Anyway, more research is needed.
Dear Doctor,
What you call the mortality “rate” in the last graph is actually the mortality percentage (deaths/cases). A rate is like speed, distance/time, or something/time. Deaths per day is a rate.
Mortality (or case fatality) percentage per day is not a rate but an artifact of redefinition and ignorance of the actual number of cases. I know you get that but even so reporting it as a “rate” is misleading and/or bogus.
More to the point, the death rate, deaths per day, has peaked and is going down (decelerating) even though the Gnatsies are now reporting anything as a Chi-19 death including deaths from rickets, Old Timers, blunt force trauma, and Globners Disease*.
The peak has passed. The cumulative curve has inflected. The viral spiral is downward. It’s over. Time to get off the couch and go back to work. You can do it. Don’t procrastinate. It’s a Hup Ho world so get out there and pull your weight.
By the way, economic collapse causes excess and unnecessary deaths. If only one life is saved, it will be worth it to end the Lockdown Drag Out and fire up the engine of Wealth Creation.
*Shortness of pants. Firesign Theater 1971.
The Great Leap Forward comes to the FUSA.
Comfort and safety are now mandatory.
Pulling rickshaw carts for a bowl of rice a day for mean girl SJW man buns.
Enjoy the new management comrades.
All the discussion about the deaths, statistics, testing accuracy misses the main point. If government officials have the right to shut down businesses and destroy people’s lives because some other people might get sick and die, then what is the exact criteria that would trigger the shutdown? If would need to be auditable and free of political juicing, and written into a constitutional amendment for all to see. Otherwise it’s all just political smoke from a bunch of ice-holes.
pK – good points and I would add that if these unconstitutional measures abridging our rights are upheld by the courts, the next logical step would be that state governors can legally suspend the judiciary.
Sheri;
“Dave: So 10,000 people dying over 6 months is fine, but over 2 months is just wrong and we have to DO SOMETHING? I fail to understand why pace is important. ”
Mmmm, perhaps because a health system set up to cope with 30k flu cases p.a. has a problem ADDDING another flu season in a couple of months. Especially in a naive, unexposed population. Especially when we have so little data on the disease. Especially when person-to-person transmission is very easy.
Of course, the majority of deaths are among the aged, unproductive & disposable, so there’s that. Trust Darwin to cull the herd.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Iaffo and Dave,
Way to FREAK OUT, dudes. Your super-compassionate raging paranoia is so admirable. You care sooooo much!
Did you think taking a hammer and sickle to the economy is what compassionate people do? Are you ready for the coming mass starvation? Do you think YOU will be the new Commissar in a plush dacha dipping caviar while the serfs eat their pets?
Maybe Needle Park Nancy will share some of her ice cream with you. Maybe you can get a job as a club-wielding prison guard at one of the new re-education camps. Of course, you’ll have to show up on time and perform a function — or else you’ll be the inmate. Beware: basement trolling on the Net with the computer your Mom bought you is not adequate training for an actual job.
The compassion of Liberals is like the cheese on the Moon. From a distance of 250,000 miles it looks edible, but from close up it is dust.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
Ah yes, the “mercy” of ending the whole world’s productive labor out of an insane panic.
Because dying of depression and starvation is so much more merciful than catching the flu. And you know best for everyone.
This “analysis” is one of the most insanely idiotic things I’ve ever read:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/
Apparently the authors of the article have never heard of selection bias.
Also, their shocking conclusion is … if we test more people, we’ll find more cases!
I appreciate your recent reluctance in describing gummint employees “going back to work.” I prefer accuracy, as in “going back to their employment” as it’s statistically more accurate to describe them as being “employed” rather than “working.”
The video should be compulsory viewing for all of the political ruling class, however I doubt they would have the patience to endure it.
What you call the mortality “rate” in the last graph is actually the mortality percentage (deaths/cases). A rate is like speed, distance/time, or something/time. Deaths per day is a rate.
The denominator in a “rate” doesn’t have to be time.
A “rate” is a ratio of differing units.
$2/gallon of gasoline is a rate.
http://www.eduplace.com/math/mathsteps/6/e/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_(mathematics)
https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/rate.html
You dimwit. The percentage of deaths to cases is plotted over time as if it was a time-dependent feature of the virus. But it’s not; it’s a function of unknown cases becoming known.
We’re all waiting for the “curve” to “flatten” so we can resume our lives. Which curve? What does “flatten” mean mathematically? Those questions may be obscure, but they are surely time-dependent.
Let’s not play trollish gotcha while society disintegrates. The outcome of Great Depression is not trivial. The peak has passed. You are out of danger. Go outside and Get a Job!
“Beware: basement trolling on the Net with the computer your Mom bought you is not adequate training for an actual job.”
“You dimwit.” Uncle Mike.
Your ad homs certainly bolster the credibility of your rants.
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@laffo
in re: ad homs and rants
The Senility is strong with this one.
Very interesting. FIY, France didn’t hide the numbers. They did the opposite : published day by day and departement by dep. the numbers, which they usually don’t do :
see https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/4470857
where we notice a short excess of mortality, which will probably disappear in the next days.
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How did you produce the all-cause death graph? I’m on the CDC trying to reproduce the graph myself.
Yancey,
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData16.csv
It’s been linked in several posts, too. This file changes weekly.
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