The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention post statistics on the pandemic, including new diagnoses in the US by date. The numbers are presented readably here, and in a manner more suited to processing here. I have been looking at the web page most days of the last ten, hoping to see the rate of new diagnoses slowing. It does seem to be slowing. In the four-day interval beginning March 19, the new diagnoses increased 2.9 times, and the same for the interval beginning March 20. But the rate for the interval beginning March 26 was under 2, and for the periods beginning March 29 and 30 it was around 1.7.
In the absence of sufficient testing, it is hard to know what to make of these numbers. If testing becomes available at a rate to cover enough of the population, there will be many diagnoses of the asymptomatic, and a sudden jump in the number of new diagnoses and, for a few days, the four-day rate of increase. In the meantime, I know nothing to do but guess that the testing has been consistently spotty over the last month, and that the ratio of diagnosed to undiagnosed cases is more or less steady. If so, it appears that the social distancing is having an effect.
I would think a math based random testing strategy would yield valid statistics .... but I’m probably quite wrong since my understanding of math is limited to what I remember from K-12 courses ... however, I suspect some sort of politically motivated manipulation of current numbers ....
ReplyDeleteA random testing strategy might tell a lot. In the absence of testing capacity, the medical business seems to be mostly testing those who have symptoms and those who have been in contact with them. If we had the capacity to test at the scale of South Korea, we could learn a lot and likely turn things around faster.
DeleteThere is an aphorism on the internet to the effect that one should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. The incompetence of the US response seems pretty clear.