Coronavirus Information...who do you trust?

[*michaelsean*]

(07-14-2020, 12:28 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Yeah, your calculations are off. To get the death rate, we need to calculate what percentage of people in each age group that tested positive, died. For that, we get these numbers from the Iowa website: https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/pages/case-counts

Total positive cases: 35,830

The percentages break down as such:
0-17: 5% or 1792 cases
18-40: 48% or 17,198 cases
41-60: 30% or 10,749 cases
61-80: 12% or 4300 cases
80+: 4% or 1433 cases

Then, we look at the deaths in Iowa, found here: https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/pages/outcome-analysis-deaths

So, a total of 755 deaths in Iowa as of the data this morning, which is a 2.1% death rate, overall. Because you only calculate the death rate based on the positive cases.

So here are how many deaths each age group had:
18-40: 3% or 23 deaths
41-60: 10% or 76 deaths (your number was 77, which could be discrepancy due to rounding, but I'll use the lower numbers to make you feel better)
61-80: 40% or 302 (your number was 305, I'll use the lower one)
81+: 47% or 354 (I came up with 355 due to rounding, but we'll use the lower one, again)

So what does that mean for the death rate in each age group? Well, here is how you actually calculate a death rate:
0-17: 0 deaths in 1792 cases (0/1792) means 0%
18-40: 23 deaths in 17,198 cases (23/17,198) means 0.1%. Pretty good, but a bit higher than what you had at 0.0006%.
41-60: 76 deaths in 10,749 cases (76/10,749) means 0.7%. Still pretty good, but again higher than your 0.003% rate.
61-80: 302 deaths in 4300 cases (302/4300) means 7.0%. That's a pretty good jump, there. 7 out of every 100 cases between the ages of 61-80.
80+: 354 deaths in 1433 cases (354/1433) means 24.7%, or about one-quarter of those over 80 die from COVID-19. A little higher than 0.2%.

So, I understand that not everyone uses statistics every day or really understands how to read them, let alone calculate them, so I get your underselling of the death rate. But this is how death rates are actually calculated for these sorts of things. A death rate is reflective of how likely something is to kill you, not how likely you are to die from it whether you may or may not come in contact with it. It's a statistic used to highlight how the disease itself can impact you if you contract it. The hope is that by seeing how this disease can impact you if you contract it, you will at least be smart about things. Especially if you happen to have an elderly relative you will at least wear a mask to protect them.

So 1% of the population of Iowa has contracted COVID. Not a lot.  Or a lot more people have contracted it than we know about and the death rate is far lower.  Which one do you think it is?  I notice people like to talk about all the unknown cases to show us how contagious it is, and known cases to show us how deadly it is.