On Tue, 07 Apr 2020 21:26:18 -0700, 2G wrote:

Actually mortality data is skewed, too. I listened to Dr. Deborah Birx
today explain that many deaths are being attributed to COVID-19 when
they may be another cause such as ordinary flu. Seasonal flu deaths are
way down year-over-year which makes you wonder about this.

There's another cause of mortality skew as well: during a pandemic
hospital staff can be busy enough that actually recording/reporting
deaths can be delayed by more than a day: its simply seen as not so
important as looking after patients. This is happening here (UK) so
probably happens in others countries as well.

Source: it was mentioned in a discussion about COVID-19 statistics on Tim
Harford's "More or Less" program on BBC Radio 4 this morning.

This repeats tomorrow night at 21:00 BST or can be downloaded:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02...odes/downloads

Tim Harford is an economist. His programs look at the statistics of real-
life events and what can skew them, so this program, which covers CV
statistics and the probability of other solar systems to ours existing in
our galaxy, is fairly typical in content and analysis.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org