Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
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While doing a google search for "reports of mortality declining," I stumbled across a March 30 news report/analysis of the newly-created IHME (Univ. of Washington) model. See report here: http://nautil.us/blog/be-wary-of-a-model-that-shows-a-decline-in-covid_19-deaths . Reading this showed how well or poorly IHME did in its earliest projections. I like the model but it turns out it didn't do very well early on. It missed too high for some states and regions and too low for others. Often, considerably so. The media (and a few forumites) picked up on those early projections, made their own analysis, and came up with conclusions that turned out to be flawed. In late March, IHME seriously overestimated mortality in southern states like Florida and Arkansas, and in the biggest state, California. Conversely, it drastically underestimated mortality in New York and other northern regions, including New Jersey and Michigan. See image below. The news media picked up on the negative projections for the South and predicted the region would suffer disproportionately. Naturally, some forumites picked up on that. As weeks passed and data came in indicating this wasn't true, the forumites asked for "more time" to receive data. When a week passed, and then another, and then two more, the data continued to show that it wasn't the South suffering disproportionately. It was the North. The media (and concerned forumites) haven't addressed this. The faulty projections and negative portrayals simply faded into the past, unacknowledged and without any effort to self-critique, clarify or contextualize. IHME continually revises its projections to take into account actual numbers and so forth, thus usually generating updates that get closer and closer to actual data. Despite it's early miscalls it has been a useful tool. Data keeps coming in, so nothing is final yet. But it does appear that NE USA has absorbed the hardest blows in round one. As I've noted previously, this probably isn't because the southern states did things better - there's probably an element of luck involved and other criteria might've been determinative, like air pollution, population density, etc. Certainly the northeast has excellent medical care. As for the google search to find media articles looking into the decline in mortality in the US? Nothing popped up in the first search. I'll try again later.
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< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 5/3/2020 2:45:02 PM >
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