In conversations I continue to hear people compare Covid-19 deaths to other causes such as car crashes or seasonal flu. STOP! Comparisons are statistically invalid such as comparing a years worth of vehicular deaths to 2 months of Covid deaths. While I have made arguments why these comparisons don’t work, they have fallen on deaf ears. Today I found this exact data in this article from The New Atlantis Journal of Technology and Society:
This article and chart shows that normalized for population and “time” Covid-19 is like nothing we have every seen. Ignore future predictions such as mine as no one can tell the future, all we can do is look at today and decide what we think. So the Covid-19 spike shown in the chart says it all:
We have never seen a one week increase in deaths like this, EVER.
We have to chose what to do this information. Do we want to reopen the country? Well lets look at that. Ohio says they want to reopen May 1st, 10 days from now. Here is Ohio’s trend for new cases:
How about the US as a whole:
Clearly cases are not declining, the curve is not flattening. Opening without testing and exposure tracking will only make these charts worse. So make your decision from data not emotion.
The question you need to ask is what data do I have and what confidence do I have in that data. Understand all data you are reading has some bias in the data and seek to understand that bias before coming to a conclusion. Think deeply about what you read and hear!
As this article says, its not cowardice suggesting people should take precautions it is respect for our fellow humans. New York is seeing more daily deaths from the virus than all other sources combined, seems like a fact worth considering before demanding we “open the country”.
The Tao of Todd 