10-01-2020, 02:11 PM
(10-01-2020, 11:56 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I am aware they claim the "actual" cases are lower. I am arguing that there is no way to know, there are too many unknowns, and it basically amounts to speculation.
There is no absolute fact, I agree. But neither can we absolutely rely on confirmed cases or or confirmed deaths. We know we don't capture all actual cases because not everyone is tested. And we know not all COVID-related deaths are recorded as such. So, regardless of whether we use the confirmed numbers or combine those with serological test data, excess deaths data and work on correlating case and death data, either way we have a bunch of assumptions. Note that it's the same with unemployment data and GDP numbers, there are a lot of assumptions and projections involved
there as well.
In the end, each one of us can naturally choose which numbers to use. (I do use confirmed cases for my daily summaries because on the daily level there is no better data available.)