There’s what appears to be an excellent covid data tracking page here from the NY Times.
But data from John Hopkins. We ought to go straight there for it I guess. But here’s this link for right now.
The ‘bias’ is how it’s presented without any definition of what a ‘case’ is. We don’t know if it was decided on the basis of 40 PCR cycles or what? Makes an enormous difference.
And how it is presented by default it appears as a story of enormous increases in cases – alarming. Apparently meant to be alarming.
But when you turn to death rates, which at least are there, you find figures like 0.5 deaths per Hundred Thousand!
It doesn’t mean much if you’re calling everyone with a cold a ‘case’ and no one is dying does it?
But overall it is interesting, very interesting in many ways not least that it shows the ubiquity of the virus: which was/is to be expected. It bears out the well known, decades old epidemiological knowledge of the behaviour of viruses. Despite and regardless of anything man tries to do.
It shows the total similarily of experience everywhere despite differences in govt approaches.
Another part of the ‘bias’ perhaps is that there is no background, or context setting: i.e. we don’t know how these death rates fit in with normal death rates on the average. And we don’t know if they represent additions to the accumulated all cause death rates beyond the norm or do they exist along with all others within the normal bounds?
And, of course, as always, we know nothing about the presence and nature of comorbidities. Which you’d think everyone would be demanding to know, unless you expect people to be frightened to want to know. But if you were old and it were killing (at 0.5 per 100,000) only the old wouldn’t you want to know? Or only the obese? Or only the diabetic? Or only the Hypertense? Or only the anxiety ridden?
That’s context and we are as usual told nothing but are presented with figures intended to cause alarm.
Nor or we, of course, told anything at all about treatment. It makes an enormous amount of difference to severity and death rates if there’s immediate early home treatment we are assured by numerous doctors working ICU with the disease. Some countries are adopting strategies that account for this: India, say. Others are deliberately making it illegal: Australia, say.
These charts make no mention either way.
So these charts from John Hopkins and the presentation wrapped around them by the New York Times and the presentation wrapped around that by Taki mag serve as a good archive of the parlous state of the ‘best’ information available to us in the midst of this ‘global emergency’.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-cases.html?campaign_id=3&emc=edit_mbau_20210914&instance_id=40298&nl=morning-briefing%3A-australia-edition®i_id=171787137&segment_id=68815&te=1&user_id=6cce961ee819bbac14fe1229c213f5eb