04-04-2020, 02:43 PM
rgG wrote:
[quote=space-time]
[quote=Sarcany]
Remember: Stats lag about two weeks.
You're seeing numbers from March.
you mean these people were infected about two weeks ago? yes
or that they died two weeks ago? I doubt it, I think the statistics are up to date.
Yeah, I think the death tolls are about the only real time stats we can trust.
Nope. The two week lag in reporting test results implies a similar lag in reporting many deaths from the virus.
Per CDC guidance, while it is permissible to report a COVID-19 death without testing, "where possible, conduct appropriate laboratory testing using guidance provided by CDC or local health authorities." There are a lot of new deaths from "pneumonia" and "cardiac arrest." Those are not reported as COVID-19 deaths because the other symptoms didn't correspond perfectly and there was no test performed. Where testing is performed, it can take as much as 10 days (often less, but Doctors are still reporting as much as a 10-day lag) for the results to come back and then those results have to make it through the bureaucracy to get bundled into the stats.
So, it's appropriate to assume that the death stats are lagging by about two weeks.
This is one reason why they say that we won't know that we reached the "peak" until we're two weeks past it.