Is the daily focus on local COVID-19 positive tested cases an important and publicly useful data indicator or, does it lend more to the hyperbolic treatment of the disease by media and politicians?
While she gives out the numbers daily for the Texas of the North, the province of Alberta, Canada, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, pointed out two things to Albertans in mid-April: A high, or rising, number of cases often is because of doing more and more testing and, the percentage rate of positive tests for Wuhan virus among those tested has remained fairly constant.
As testing has expanded in Texas, with almost 400,000 tested, the percentage of positive tests had trended downward toward 8-percent from around 10. Combine this reality with studies around the country showing that the actual rate of those who have had the WuFlu are likely much greater than what testing rates show, is the focus on numbers of cases in a city, county, or state useful for much other than statistical purposes?
I am all for giving information out immediately but human experience shows how information without proper context is used for bad purposes by manipulators and often leads people to take consequential poor decisions – think buying up all the toilet paper leaving those with need unable to locate such as a mild example.
deaths in Texas ascribed to COVID-19 are not even a tenth of the state’s annual death rate from influenza
State and local health departments rarely push out to media influenza numbers saving such for outbreaks that are taxing local health providers. With the Wuhan virus however, government authorities are pushing out numbers daily absent of valuable context that has resulted in many people believing a run-away disease is laying waste to humanity like the Black Death bubonic plague of the 14th Century. In reality, deaths in Texas ascribed to COVID-19 are not yet even a tenth of the state’s annual death rate from influenza and, that’s over a period of time equal to a third of a year.
Are daily local COVID-19 case number proclamations useful?
While she gives out the numbers daily for the Texas of the North, the province of Alberta, Canada, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, pointed out two things to Albertans in mid-April: A high, or rising, number of cases often is because of doing more and more testing and, the percentage rate of positive tests for Wuhan virus among those tested has remained fairly constant.
As testing has expanded in Texas, with almost 400,000 tested, the percentage of positive tests had trended downward toward 8-percent from around 10. Combine this reality with studies around the country showing that the actual rate of those who have had the WuFlu are likely much greater than what testing rates show, is the focus on numbers of cases in a city, county, or state useful for much other than statistical purposes?
I am all for giving information out immediately but human experience shows how information without proper context is used for bad purposes by manipulators and often leads people to take consequential poor decisions – think buying up all the toilet paper leaving those with need unable to locate such as a mild example.
deaths in Texas ascribed to COVID-19 are not even a tenth of the state’s annual death rate from influenza