Thank you. You too. I keep commenting about the pandemic to mostly radio silence because it's how I think things through. I hope you will continue to comment.
I think that both death rate and rate of critical illness are important metrics, but that the latter is overall more meaningful. Another interesting metric that I have gleaned from the reporting is the moment when the number of cases that have completed their course exceeds the number of new cases reported. This is a tipping point in containment of a pandemic. South Korea hit that point on March 13. Astoundingly, that was LESS THAN A MONTH from their first reported case! If that's as meaningful as I think it is, that could mean that if the US continues the really aggressive containment efforts, we could be past the tipping point by mid to late April.
Interestingly, that is also the point at which death rate calculations become meaningful. There is still the iceberg problem - not knowing how many milder cases were not diagnosed. But you are past the problem where the deaths/cases formula is corrupted by the fact that the denominator is full of new cases for which the outcome is uncertain but the numerator contains only people who have already died. This results in a significant under count of the death rate.
An interesting metric related to number of tests is percent of tests that turn up positive. Obviously only meaningful within a limited sample with a similar set of criteria for testing, but still predictive. For instance, when Minnesota started getting batches of new test kits and began working on folks who were moderately sick but with no vector of infection, the number of positive results was about 2.5%. When the next batch of tests was processed, the percentage was similar.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2020-03-22 06:40 pm (UTC)I think that both death rate and rate of critical illness are important metrics, but that the latter is overall more meaningful. Another interesting metric that I have gleaned from the reporting is the moment when the number of cases that have completed their course exceeds the number of new cases reported. This is a tipping point in containment of a pandemic. South Korea hit that point on March 13. Astoundingly, that was LESS THAN A MONTH from their first reported case! If that's as meaningful as I think it is, that could mean that if the US continues the really aggressive containment efforts, we could be past the tipping point by mid to late April.
Interestingly, that is also the point at which death rate calculations become meaningful. There is still the iceberg problem - not knowing how many milder cases were not diagnosed. But you are past the problem where the deaths/cases formula is corrupted by the fact that the denominator is full of new cases for which the outcome is uncertain but the numerator contains only people who have already died. This results in a significant under count of the death rate.
An interesting metric related to number of tests is percent of tests that turn up positive. Obviously only meaningful within a limited sample with a similar set of criteria for testing, but still predictive. For instance, when Minnesota started getting batches of new test kits and began working on folks who were moderately sick but with no vector of infection, the number of positive results was about 2.5%. When the next batch of tests was processed, the percentage was similar.