Until we start comparing apples to apples, we will get this continuing disparity on projections and the severity of the virus. The more data we acquire from testing, the clearer the picture will become.
This elementary fact has been the topic of a lot of analysis and discussion @ FR. (Wastoute was actually the first one who began advocating it awhile ago.) But, no matter how often it's pointed out - and now being echoed by a range of medical professionals, including Dr Birx a few days ago - there's still a lot of confusion regarding various statistical projections.
So, we're left with this core analytical truth, but then we have endless repetition of false analyses, no matter how often they are pointed out. In many ways, the ongoing debate is like "inside baseball" or the game within the game.
It doesn't matter if you actually believe it's an extinction event or 'just the flu'. Rather, what's relevant is how much one can flog a certain position in order to drive media attention and perhaps manipulate political opinion. I mean, take me for example: I could just as easily drive a twitter account either way for fun or profit.
FR actually condones this behavior itself, since it would be easy enough to establish a policy that mandated using only valid statistical measures. That is, any thread or any poster who kept insisting on posting "cases" as some kind of important, meaningful factor would be warned, then bounced. Sure, maybe throw in pseudo-stats as a reference example of media manipulation, but otherwise, it's simply a designed effort to undermine the president.
Oh, I get that many here might not necessarily be sleeper cells and many are actually posting in good faith, but they might be unaware of how/why they are being manipulated into advancing an adversarial agenda. Look no further than all the questionable web sites running so-called stats - they should be universally banned. The only true number is the one being collected from actual data sources. Wiki has it's political issues, but in terms of straight-up, no debate data, they are an excellent source.
I think we should credit you. AFAIK you were the first to “see the wrinkle in the spread sheet”. You were right about Italy. They are “clearly at the top”, their #new deaths leveled off days ago. Turns out ten days was enough. We are at ten days and look. We are flattening out. Space. It turns out space has saved us. The USA is so big we have umpteen small epidemics not one big one. I don’t believe anyone could have predicted we would be so lucky. We will still have “hot spots” as each urban center heads “up the hill” in the next two weeks. Semantic, YOU should take the credit, you saw it first.
Until we start comparing apples to apples, we will get this continuing disparity on projections and the severity of the virus. The more data we acquire from testing, the clearer the picture will become.