Exhibit of shoddy analysis masquerading as insight. Plenty of reasons why Case Fatality Rates (CFR) may be low in new outbreak States, which has nothing to do with #COVID19 being "FAR LESS deadly."
1/4 Early US epidemic (eg, in NY,NJ,CT), testing capacity was limited resulting in fewer cases and was restricted to mostly hospitalized pts late in disease progression. Less precautions and limited knowhow / preparedness for disease management. All contributed to higher CFR.
2/4

The moving goal posts and lies of #COVID19 deniers:

- It's just NY problem, the rest of us have nothing to worry about.

- New cases are low around the country anyway.

- Don't look at the cases. Need to normalize by population.

- Number of new cases is still low compared to... - States are chasing hot spots. Ignore increasing cases count.

- Sure, new cases are increasing but it is all because of testing.

- US positive test rate is still low. COVID-19 epidemic is OVER.

- Some states are seeing rising positive rates but nothing to be concerned about.

Correlating mitigation policy onset/lifting w/ #coronavirus transmission leads to misleading conclusions if underlying consumer behavior & societal changes aren't considered. Where's the "second wave" some like to ask? Let's take Georgia as an example:
🧵 1/ 👇 Testing has been a fiasco (one of the States mixing PCR & AB results: theatlantic.com/health/archive…). Even then, as testing ramped, new cases finding has increased and positive rate has at best stayed flat recently.
2/

Discussions about #COVID19 focus on binary outcomes: Death & Recovery. But we know #coronavirus undertakes “ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes” (sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/h…). This has dramatic implication for the Quality of Life of those not fully recovered. 1/ We can think of the total number of people infected with #coronavirus being distributed on a health-related Quality of Life scale (0 = Death & 1 = Fully recovered). Significant majority fully recover. 2/

1/ This @WSJ sympathetic piece about Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis getting much attention. A couple of observations:
#COVID19
wsj.com/articles/the-b… 2/ "common denominator for everything that I was doing was that I was very interested in the methods—not necessarily the results but how exactly you do that, how exactly you try to avoid bias, how you avoid error.”
How ironic!
buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/stepha…

1/ What does #FlattenTheCurve mean for #NewYork.
3 likely scenarios for new #COVID19 cases finding:
a) Declines sharply (high containment)
b) Gradual decline (medium containment)
c) Flares up forming a bigger wave before declining (low containment) 2) a) Means beyond flattening, quashing the curve. Requires aggressive testing, tracing, and isolation of cases to arrest #coronavirus spread (like #SouthKorea). Highly unlikely given testing capacity/resources limitation & rampant community transmission.