The Virus – Waiting For Change In Pattern – Estimation Not Required

I’m kind of over the reporting of coronavirus until something changes in the pattern.  I took a break yesterday in hopes that it would.  But apart from the totals still rising, nothing has altered significantly in the structure of the outcomes.  

We are still on track for a 2 million reported cases in around another 8 days.  The corresponding ratio of all other statistics remains the same – deaths to recoveries, critical cases to not so critical.  

Forget about flattening the curve.  It’s a red-herring.  Whether the curve is tall or not so tall, the same number of people’s lives will be affected.  Whether hospitals are overwhelmed by a few dozen or a few thousand cases won’t make much difference – they will still be overwhelmed.

One thing I will say is that there has been increasing talk of including estimated as well as diagnosed cases in the overall case count – due to the generally low rate of testing being carried out globally distorting the case figure downwards – and supposedly with the aim of saving lives.  ‘How does that work?’ you may well ask.  How, indeed.

Well, it seems that if the true (estimated?) spread of The Virus were known, people might react to that information rather more seriously and take a more cautious approach.  All very well, on the surface.  But it would also lead to the calculation of death rate from The Virus (using the more common ‘total cases’ method) as being much lower than it actually is – causing the opposite reaction to that desired.  And who but the most hare-brained would be happy at the prospect of ‘estimated’ data creeping into medical assessments, in particular?  And where would that end?  Better to be persuaded by the higher death rates from the more logical closed cases method. Any unidentified case will either eventually become a diagnosed case, with a definite outcome, or it will not matter.