I’m desperate for good news about the Coronavirus. I’m Jealous of New Zealand, Iceland, Taiwan, and South Korea. Maybe I just want to live on an island somewhere. As I link to those, I’m well aware of the size and diversity of the US posing a greater challenge for us. But good news is a double edged sword. If it seems like we’ve won the fight, then it discourages us from keeping up with preventative measures that work. Examples:
But it’s also important that good news about the virus is real. If we’re making decisions about the health of our community (and our own actions), it needs to be based on accurate information that’s not meant to mislead. Recently, a few charts were shared with me that are very misleading. I’m making this post to address them. I believe they were shared to counter the “fear” about the virus from the "media". When that “fear” diminishes, the current economic restrictions seem worse than the virus. The charts are all based off Ohio’s data. They were shared on 8/1/2020. The data is recent as of 7/31/2020. To be clear- all numbers are real from the Ohio department of health. I’m happy that, despite all the issues around gathering this data quickly, we can acknowledge this data is as close as we can get to what’s going on (i.e., the numbers aren’t “fake”). Before looking at the data, we have to know it’s lagging behind the actual spread. That’s the nature of the game. We find out who’s infected after the infection happens. Days to weeks after. With my past micro testing, results took 3-5 days for incubation. When I worked with customer complaints, we didn’t receive those until months after we made the product. I’ve learned there are a lot of ways to interpret lagging data, and there are constant calls to wait for more data before action. There’s loads of hospital and government bureaucracy the data goes through before it’s reported. There will be noise (I mean statistical noise, many of these cases are individually tragic):
But overall, I generally trust the experts that have dedicated their career to medicine and public service. I definitely trust them more than friends and family arm-chair quarterbacking the situation. The first chart discusses new cases. The blue bars are the most striking element on the chart for me. They’re distinct from all the line graphs. And they’re going down! Actual case onset is going down! This is great right? But what is "actual case onset"? For the purposes of this chart: when someone tests positive, they get lumped into the first day they started feeling symptoms or came in contact with a known carrier. If someone started feeling symptoms on those days, but haven’t gotten tested or haven’t gotten test results back, they’re not added to that date yet. As it takes time for people to get tested and get their results, recent days will always appear to have fewer cases. It’s like the makers of this chart purposely picked the earliest day they could to show a downward trend. As the virus is spreading, actual case onset is increasing. Full data for "actual case onset" lags by at least 2 weeks. The chart makes it look like only ~100 cases started on 7/30/2020. That number will inevitably rise as more data comes in. EDIT ON 8/11/2020- I just checked Ohio's official website. That number is now at 979 for 7/30/2020 The next most prominent element is the bright yellow line. This is the main point of the graph. Net new cases. The chart maker takes the amount of new reported cases (brown line) and subtracts the amount of new “presumed recovered” cases (green line). How does “net new cases” help us understand the spread of the virus? It’s a deceptive way of talking about Active cases. Active cases tell us how many people in the state are infected. On 8/1/2020, that number was ~20000. The yellow line shows a combination of how fast the spread is, and how many people were infected a month ago (long enough to be considered "presumed recovered"). Cool, but not really helpful. When the concern is virus spread, you want to know if more people are getting it this week compared to last week. 7/30/2020 and 7/31/2020 were the 1st and 4th highest new case counts in Ohio, the two most recent days on this chart. We've had high case spread for a month. Net new case count does not give an accurate picture of the spread. The last element on the chart is the death count. The red blips next to the blue columns. This is a visual representation of what’s been known since the virus first made its way to the states. 1-2% fatality rate for people with serious enough conditions to get tested. That means since April- Covid-19 is on pace as the 3rd leading cause of death in Ohio. Growing case counts won’t help that stat. The second chart shows cases and deaths by age. This chart emphasizes that the people who die are more likely to be older. It comes with a hint of "they were going to die anyway so their death isn’t as important". This is supposed to make younger people feel better. But it hides how:
The last chart discusses hospital data. There’s open beds and ventilators in the state. That's great! But communicable diseases spread in local hot spots. Data from the entire state isn't too helpful here. It doesn't help my parents in Cleveland if there are open beds in Portsmouth, Marietta, or Springfield. That's why Ohio is going with the county color scheme now.
I'd love to have an answer for what the state (or country) could do to make the virus go away. I don't get to work with people closest to studying the virus's impacts, so my recommendations are moot. I just want our individual decisions (wear masks, socially distance, avoiding crowded indoor spaces, how to talk with others about the virus) to be based on an accurate representation of the problem.
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