Re:The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
by notahacker on Saturday March 21, 2020 @08:03AM
(#22645951)
Yep. Ventilator usage [if available] and deaths are more reliable indicators, but they're also lagging ones [and even deaths aren't entirely consistently measured since many of the most severely affected patients exhibit comorbities, and many nations don't test the dead]
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Re:The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
by paganel on Saturday March 21, 2020 @10:54AM
(#22646885)
> deaths are more reliable indicators
They are more reliable than the simple number of cases but in the Italian province of Bergamo (and I suppose in neighbouring Brescia, too) lots of people have started dying before the ambulance even arrives at their homes. Those people will not show up on the official statistics of covid victims, at least not now.
A similar thing had started happening in Wuhan once the situation had become really dire, and the closest valid indicator people could find was to look at the number of incinerators and how busy they were (mostly looking at the number, because the incinerators were busy 24/7 anyway).