One shows the minimum scale of the problem - if it's big, that's a problem, even if it's no bigger than the value reported. E.g. if 10% tested positive, that'd be unambiguously worrying / news-worthy.
The other shows the maximum awareness of a problem. If it's big, you have no idea if awareness is low (many neutrals) or if incidence is low (many negatives). Everyone in SF could have COVID, and that 99.798% number could still be factually correct. Or it could be that only those .202% got it. There's no way to know from that number alone.
Second, the number of positive cases is an affirmative result from people that have taken, and failed, covid tests. Your metric takes people who have never taken a test and lumps them into "COVID negative," which is pretty self-evidently extremely misleading.
True, but the statistic is still useful with respect to comparisons to other locations in the country under the same reporting constraints.
> What's the issue with simply reversing that metric to show many people are COVID negative?
I need to do better.
I contend that if you are not taking a test it’s because you didn’t need a test.
It’s also misleading to report only case positivity. Some areas of the country allow only people who have active symptoms to get a test thereby skewing the results.
I understand this is your site and you built it, and it's hard to let that go. But, I would implore you to rethink it until you get the data needed to add real insights to the conversations, not misleading stats based on what you have now.
Another reason you might not take a test is that you don't know you need it.
Asymptotic transmission is real (per the CDC) so I’ll accept that as fact. Ultimately if you view yourself as a high risk then it should be a personal responsibility to protect yourself. I believe my family and I to be low risk - citizens should be free to decide their tolerance for risk and act accordingly. Other families across the country and world have similar feelings about health.
I’m frustrated watching small business owners get crushed, bad their employees lose their livelihood.
There is significant damage being done with shutdowns and lockdowns that is with great chance worse than this disease itself.
But I think your point is strong enough to be presented without exaggeration or misleading.
We can't make claims about how much of the population at large is healthy because we don't actually know who is healthy and who is covid-positive/infectious/asymptomatic (and this is precisely why there are indiscriminate mask mandates in SF and elsewhere)
"Simply reversing" that metric gets a number that mostly shows how many people have not been tested within 14 days and thus noone has any idea on their COVID status. It's negligent to imply that this means that they are or would be negative.
Furthermore, even the original data point seems not literally true - this is based on net new cases, which would exclude people who became a net new case 15 or more days ago but actually have received a positive test recently because they are, for example, in the hospital right now and have gotten a repeated test that shows that they are still positive.
I would argue that making factually true statements for which the obvious implication actually is not true is inappropriate - and if it's not by mistake (as it seems out of your other comments) then it's intentionally misleading and should be downvoted.
On your site, El Paso is still at around 98% negative tests, which makes it appear like everything is under control when in reality the hospitals were mostly overrun and had to send patients outside of the county.
There are three groups. Positive, negative, and untested. The untested group is the biggest, and you can't call them COVID negative, because there's really no reason. They're not (yet) either positive or negative.
No where on thecovidcomplex.com do I use the term "COVID negative".
I disagree with the statement that the number is meaningless. Media outlets are free to singularly report the number of positive cases. I see it all over mainstream media (CNN being the worst offender), Twitter, etc.
What's the issue with simply reversing that metric to show many people are COVID negative?
Final note, I'm happy to make updates based on additional data but public datasets are slim pickings. And I'm not in to tapping individual state/county datasets.
NYT publishes daily case counts and death counts across the United States by county.
edit: COVID negative is unequivocally the incorrect term to use. That was a mental mistake on my part. The specific term I use is “did not get a positive COVID test”.