I am sure that there will be something that correlates with COVID19 death rate better that the stringency of restrictions.
Finding it is important!
The entire world needs to know what to do the next time there is a serious viral threat.
1/8
Interesting replies led me to carefully analyze data in @youyanggu GitHub table. Alway more objective when one collects data, another analyses it.
Looking at data so first tidy table in Excel.
Color formatting is red-yellow-green low value to high.
2/8
Rather than make plots of one measure against another, we get the correlation coefficient of all pairs of measures.
Correlation coefficient, CC, of A to B is same as CC of B to A so table is symmetric. Correlation coefficient of A to A is always 1; it is whited out here.
3/8
The measures @youyanggu has collected are diverse. I fix names a bit.
We are most interested correlations of the COVID19 Death Rate “deaths per 100k” with other measures.
In top row we see a problem. High correlation of Death Rate & “Death Rate over Flu Death Rate”
No....
4/8
It is an artifact: the 2 measures are obviously related & so falsely correlated.
Another pair of measures are dependent. “Mar21 Unemployment” & “Apr21 Unemployment”. Their table entries are very similar for all measures.
We make a new table without two grayed out measures.
5/8
Now it gets interesting.
COVID-19 seems not depend on any of these measures.
Strongest is weak 0.359 correlation to Flu death rate.
Less correlation to all other measures including:
•Obesity
•Mar21Unemployment Rate
•Mean Temperature
I assume the Death Rate accurate...
6/8
@youyanggu please check.
The many strong correlations (positive & negative) make sense (if needed can explain).
Lack of correlation of COVID-19 Death Rate to all measures except Flu Death Rate is surprising.
Need more & better measures to explain deaths. Please send them.
7/8
Analysis of the level of the signal in each of 18 measures (use the Standard Deviation of Correlation Coefficient with other 17 measures) shows that Death Rate (Deaths per 100k) has least signal.
For COVID-19 Death Rate highest correlation is to Flu Death Rate, CC=0.359.
8/8
Presumably “Flu death rate” is an average over previous years?
Flu death rate is higher if more Obesity.
Flu death rate is lower if greater income, higher Percent 25plus with Bachelors degree, and more been vaccinated for COVID-19. Clearly no causation with COVID-19 dose.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.