[FRIAM] What Is the Real Coronavirus Toll in Each State? - The New York Times

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

https://rt.live/ 

helps to illustrate some of Rachel's hair-on-fire.   NOT because the
absolute numbers are (or will be) outrageous, but because the *rates*
are high.    Take a look at the states who have R0 > 1.0 ... all
midwest-plains.  

If you have a small town with 0 cases, it is natural to not be "too
worried" even if there are three or four small towns within 20 miles who
have a case or two...   their relative social distance from the
international airport/high-density urban *hot spots* means they are
*late* to the party AND the relatively small *absolute* numbers means
their perception of the problem is lower.   AND in fact, they might be
able to tolerate higher rates BECAUSE of the perception.   If 5 people
in your community of 100 die of COVID19 maybe that is easier to accept
than if 5000 out of your 100,000 die?

I think these subtleties/subjectives that get lost in the raw statistics
are important but I don't know how to quantify them off the top of my head.

- Steve

On 5/6/20 9:24 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hi, Everybody
>
> This article greatly puzzled me because it seemed to eviscerate it
> self in the last few paragraphs. 
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-death-toll-us.html
>
>
> My main concern here is the degree to which I am being deluded by my
> addiction to the Rachel Maddow Show.  She is in HairOnFire mode about
> an impending epidemic in the plains states.  She is particularly
> caustic about the bad judgement of plains states governors.  But if
> the times charts are right, one can see (sort of) why those governors
> are not as alarmed as we smarty-pantses think they ought to be.  There
> aren’t that many people dying full stop, even tho people ARE dying of
> covid.  (Not to mention that most of the people who are dying of covid
> are poorish people working in meet packing plants.)  What is this New
> Abnormal we seem to find ourselves in?
>
> N
>
>
> .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
> unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200506/91b9c08b/attachment.html>