Sunday, March 8, 2020

Coronavirus Data Is Still Misleading. Here's What the Latest Numbers Don't Tell You

What happens as more and more testing kits are delivered into an existing high-prevalence setting? Prevalence starts getting counted as incidence, and that could send people running for the hills.

Think about prevalence as the gold that was sitting in the Sierras in early 1848, and incidence as the collection of eureka moments thereafter.

Just because gold diggers discover more and more gold in the Sierras doesn't mean gold is spreading.

What is spreading is the word about gold, which attracts more gold diggers, who discover more gold, forming a self-reinforcing frenzy.

As more cases are serologically confirmed, perceptions of a spreading plague will spread, triggering demand for more testing, which will lead to more confirmed cases in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Imagine the specter of this potentially absurd situation: The background prevalence of endemic coronavirus may be falling as the flu season fades, but the bad news bearers keep pointing to the rising incidence of test-affirmed coronavirus.

If SARS CoV2 turns out to be just a Kafka-esque guest who has been among us for the 2019 to 2020 flu season, then at some point the meticulously recorded and earnestly reported "Incidence growth" of coronavirus will stall and fall-thereby releasing the spellbound public from self-captivity and other forms of quarantine.

https://www.worth.com/coronavirus-data-is-still-misleading-heres-what-the-latest-numbers-dont-tell-you/

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