Looking over the statistics Trump put out yesterday I have some issues.  The same I had when Birx put out numbers a month ago.

"Nationwide, more than 850 counties, or nearly 30 percent of our country, have reported no new cases in the last seven days."

 This is true.  Here we can see that number is actually 905.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b...

 This is good, however its nice to know over half had zero cases to begin with.

 But even more important is how useful is it to compare by number of states?  Isn't percentage of population the actual concern since the virus is not isolated to a region or state?

 For instance of the 850 counties with zero new cases, when all combined they make up about 5.8% of the total US population.  

 So we have 30% of the "Country" that reports no new cases. and also using the same counties 5.8% of the US population has no new cases.

 This doesn't mean that things aren't improving.  It just means, to me, that the math can be presented to make things look a certain way.  I prefer to make weekly charts and overlay them by state so the trends can be seen in direct comparison.  

 This is new-case reporting of living humans.

 I agree about the math.  The issue regarding the total US population versus number of cases starts to delve into the ethics of preserving human life.  It's too easy to just create another formula, like comparing the R0 of SARS-COV-2 to other diseases, now all the sudden we will have millions dead in a year.

 So the closing of business, schools etc,. to me, is more of an ethics approach than a mathematical one.

Ed L. wrote on 04/20/20 at 09:06:32:




High risk, low risk didn't even matter - I lost over 1/2, I'm still under where I was when I first opened the account in 2018.
I should have not touched it at all - I'd have made up 1/2 of the loss now I've made up ~25% of the loss. Almost entirely by luck.

Cool.
Srinath.

I got it straightened out through his insurance so didn't take a hit. Still was upsetting listening him try to fast talk his way out of his mistake. Numbers are just tools which can be used a lot of ways.

"Isn't that a bit naive? I mean any numbers that Trump gives on anything are going to be bullshite, it's in his dna"


 It's the math, not the person I was addressing, for instance the next sentence read:

"The same I had when Birx put out numbers a month ago."


 I don't consider Trump to be accurate on most issues, but for this particular thread I was looking at the math overall, no matter who said it.