(05-23-2020 05:24 PM)Joprior23 Wrote: (05-23-2020 03:43 PM)Foreverandever Wrote: (05-23-2020 02:52 PM)smu89 Wrote: CNN is falsely reporting the CDCs best estimate?
Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
No, CNN is reporting what the CDC was told to estimate.
The data says otherwise. One is an estimate or guess heavily influenced by politics. One is actual cases and deaths, not some nefarious unknown you can shape, but actual hard numbers, that tell the story.
Have we tested 100% of the population? We have tested like .2% of the entire population. 6% is nowhere near what the final mortality rate will actually be.
1) Thank you for highlighting the fact that the U.S. got off to an extremely slow start with testing. President Trump refused the option of using the Defense Authorization Act to put the Defense Department to work on manufacturing and distributing Covid-19 test kits to every State and locality in the country. He could have done that, but he chose not to.
2) No one here has stated that the final Covid-19 mortality rate will be 6%. All we have said is that the current Covid-19 mortality rate for confirmed cases of Covid-19, based on available testing data is ~6%. The experts agree that the actual Covid-19 mortality rate will eventually be determined to be significantly lower than 6%.
The consensus appears to be that the actual mortality rate will be closer to 1%.
3) Those of us who respect the scientific method would agree that we don't yet know whether the actual mortality rate is going to turn out to be greater or less than 1%. We will simply have to wait and see, as the amount of testing increases.
============================================
Since you've shown interest in the epidemiology of Covid-19, you may wish to note the following:
There is a large grey area with respect to who is and isn't ill with Covid-19. Some people may test positive Covid-19 without having a symptomatic case, either because they have some natural immunity, or because they had a very mild exposure to Covid-19 virus.
It's like with the common cold. Some people have so few cold symptoms that they might not even be aware of having a cold - - for them, it might be sniffling and a scratchy throat, and they might attribute this to an allergy.
So it's not just (A) you have Covid-19 or (B) you don't. It's more like this:
A) Full fledged Covid-19.
B) Mild case of Covid-19 (positive test).
C) Asymptomatic but tests positive for Covid-19. Unlikely to have developed antibodies to Covid-19 virus, and unlikely to have had the Covid-19 illness, due to only being exposed to a few Covid-19 virus particles that were quickly sloughed off by immune system.
D) No apparent Covid-19 exposure (tests negative for Covid-19).
.
Epidemiological researchers will continue to compute mortality rates for Covid-19 based on the number of actual Covid-19 cases.
To be classified as a case, the minimum requirement will be a positive test for Covid-19, indicating exposure to the virus. These cases would include persons with the full Covid-19 illness, and some persons who may have had mild symptomatic cases of Covid-19 relatively similar to the common cold.
Persons classified as non-cases would include those who tested negative for Covid-19.
There will be a debate about how to classify asymptomatic cases that may or may not have been "carriers" or "hosts" of the virus who for some reason did not develop the illness (due to natural immunity, some drugs they were being prescribed that may have warded the virus off, etc.), despite testing positive for Covid-19.
Looking ahead,
epidemiologists will be computing separate mortality rates for three groups:
1) Covid-19 cases: Persons who tested positive for Covid-19 and developed at least a mild case of Covid-19 (some symptoms). These will be known as
"confirmed and symptomatic cases."
2) Persons who tested positive for Covid-19, including both cases and non-cases (those who were asymptomatic).
3) Hypothetical populations of
persons who are estimated to have had symptomatic cases, based on all available data, despite not yet having been tested.
These will be "estimated mortality rates." Early attempts to compute estimated mortality rates must be regarded as preliminary. Going forward, as more data become available, scientists will be able to do a much better job of estimating the various mortality rates total number of full cases, etc.
Some persons, such as yourself, may prefer one or the other type of mortality rate computation, or might be satisfied having all three options.
Either way, there won't be a single answer. There will be a mortality rate based on confirmed cases, there will be an estimated mortality rate based on a projected number of cases, and there will be a mortality rate based on the total number of persons who tested positive for Covid-19 [i]or were projected to have tested positive for Covid-19.
[/i]
That's how the scientists will approach the problem.
I hope this clarifies things. It appears that you have been trying to make the case, above, that it has to be either one way or the other, but
epidemiology is an advanced field of study that requires computing statistics like mortality rates using a variety of denominators, so as to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the pandemic.
/
CV19 Impact on the new Media deal with ESPN?
