I dunno, this feels like an excuse for the media to not even bother to aim for rigorousness when evaluating coronavirus numbers. And there are some fairly basic mistakes being made.
One basic mistake is in not accounting for tests. If a state doubles its testing it is going to see far more cases. Many articles about big spikes don't even bother noting when they were caused by tests increasing. The math isn't hard. It's a basic failure to provide context.
Another mistake is not understanding lags in the data. If someone gets infected, it will likely take ~2 weeks before they get symptoms, get tested, and the test shows up in the data. Yet many articles assume that cases will *instantly* rise when regulations are changed.
It's not a question of innumeracy because the math isn't complicated.
It's more in the category of "too good to check", with not bothering to be rigorous when the surface (but perhaps misleading upon even mild scrutiny) interpretation of the data meets a certain narrative.
It's more in the category of "too good to check", with not bothering to be rigorous when the surface (but perhaps misleading upon even mild scrutiny) interpretation of the data meets a certain narrative.
