Quote Originally Posted by Chief Arrowhead View Post
Hi Burney. Don't get me started on the numerator! I fully expect to see the headline "Chute fails to open, Skydiver killed by Covid-19." I deliberately omitted that to focus on the denominator. Did you know that hospitals here receive more federal compensation if the cause of death is listed as Covid-19?

Data is always raw, it's how you apply it to determine policy and action. So we now have more data, raw data, that indicates the the denominator (# of cases) is way way low. Some anecdotal, yes, but the Stanford study is clinical. I'll spare you the report and link a news article:

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/0...d-study-finds/

Even Gov. Cuomo is finding out that NYC has many times more "cases" than he has used to lockdown the whole state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/n...s-test-ny.html

There are several admittedly anecdotal occurrences like the Boston Homeless one.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/17/us/bo...eak/index.html


Our decision to lockdown the whole country was based on raw data, but was imperfect as you said. WE have better data now. Let's base our policy and action on what we know now, not what we had a month ago. Open it up. Tightly restrict who goes in Senior retirement villages or any plce with over 70's. Raise awareness of high risk folks who have co-morbidities and let them know what precautions to take. That's my opinion based on what we know on May 4th.
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion, but governments can be forgiven for exercising the precautionary principle when faced with raw data of a pandemic that undeniably has caused a serious spike in mortality in other countries. And the flipside of that, of course, is that it's a brave government that then abandons that precautionary principle in the face of other raw data.
It's not an easy call and anyone who is required to make it has my sympathy.