Have you seen it? According to Pew Research ~80% of people have seen fake covid news at some point.
But fake news and “misleading reporting” often use the same data as accurate reporting
So how can the same data be used to say something totally different? … Well it’s similar to how the media can manipulate with photo angles… I’ll explain.
If you’ve never read the book “How to Lie with Statistics,” or even if you have, now would be a good time to pick it up. We’re seeing this play out on an epic scale, whether it’s sheer incompetence and data illiteracy or mal-intent.
Top 5 Ways People are Lying (or Lying to themselves) with the Data
- The False Scale — Cumulative / Linear Graphs that…
The Punchline: The numbers don’t match the narrative.
Did you know most Texas hospitals are below normal capacity? And, in fact, Texas has one of the lowest fatality rates and flattest curves in the Nation?
This chart shows Houston ICU Capacity on 6/16 and 7/19. Per TMC they are below normal ICU and have “No” to “Moderate” concern.
And, what if I told you that total hospital usage has actually been flat despite reporting 7,000 more COVID cases in the hospital? How is that possible?
This is part 2 of the summary article found here.
Let’s get more detailed …
But First a Caveat: When discussing what the data tells us, I’ll be referring to the overwhelming majority, data scientists would call it“TP90” — or where 90% of the data falls. Also, most studies won’t complete peer review for a while, it takes time. So yes, most information on Covid 19 is in-process. If things are retracted or material errors found as things progress, I’ll update the conclusions — i.e. follow the science. I hope you will join me in doing that as well, keeping an open mind.
The Forecast
Summary: Expect…
The Punchline: We got it wrong and now we’re largely tracking it wrong...
Did you know the “new cases” in daily reports are actually “old infections newly reported”??? Most of what is reported is old news and not indicative of what is happening or how we are trending.
We must look at “Date of Onset” to do ACCURATE trend analysis, but the CDC stopped reporting onset data in April.
Using our own Data from the CDC, we can see that while 45,000 cases were reported on March 23, in reality we already had 140,000 positive tests that had yet to…
It started when my friend sent me a text in early March saying “Experts are saying millions of people will die in the U.S. alone.” That was enough for me to say, that sounds scary if true, but doesn’t smell right, let’s look at the data and build a model to see.
I used to run modeling, planning and analysis teams as a Finance Executive at Amazon.com, and I routinely oversaw models in subject matter that I was not an expert in. So I’ll be the first to say I’m not an Epidemiologist and I don’t pretend to be one…
Josh Ketter
Josh is a retired CFO. He’s been to all 7 Continents and is on a mission to visit every country. His writings focus on an analytical point of view.
