Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing

AW Admin said:

This is a really good background information article about the Coronavirus from The Atlantic. It's free to read.

Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing

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Thanks for linking this. The Atlantic has had some pretty good articles about this virus.

There was an interesting bit about how those researching this virus and its epidemiology are suddenly thrust into the spotlight and have huge twitter followings and so on when their work previous attracted little attention from anyone but their colleagues. They now live in a reality where their studies are being perused by the public and are being politicized before they're even properly peer reviewed. They're having a similar experience to climate scientists in that regard, but it's completely new to virologists, epidemiologists, and other biomedical researchers.

It's also difficult for people, even those of us with backgrounds in life science or medicine, to parse all of this information and to get a good sense of what the preponderance of data suggest at a given moment in time.

I don't know you guys but at least here in my country, the problem is not the new virus, the BIG problem is the FAKE NEWS and FAKE NUMBERS. Unfortunately this gives me a hard time because it becomes impossible know when the data is accurate and reliable, what the government is doing is when other people die for another circumstances, they're saying it was for the new virus and they pay to the families to follow that lie and well, sometimes is hard to find good sources of information

Rupert24 said:

I don't know you guys but at least here in my country, the problem is not the new virus, the BIG problem is the FAKE NEWS and FAKE NUMBERS. Unfortunately this gives me a hard time because it becomes impossible know when the data is accurate and reliable, what the government is doing is when other people die for another circumstances, they're saying it was for the new virus and they pay to the families to follow that lie and well, sometimes is hard to find good sources of information

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You're on the internet now, so just be discriminating in your searches. Look for any medical or science articles in reputable news sources like the one in the first post here, or This One which Helix posted this morning. Avoid the obviously politically motivated, using exactly the same level of intellectual rigour that bought you to AW with your writing questions, instead of seeing you stuck in a quagmire of nonsense "publishing sites" with an agenda to push or a scam to sell.

You can research. Do your research.

Rupert24 said:

I don't know you guys but at least here in my country, the problem is not the new virus, the BIG problem is the FAKE NEWS and FAKE NUMBERS. Unfortunately this gives me a hard time because it becomes impossible know when the data is accurate and reliable, what the government is doing is when other people die for another circumstances, they're saying it was for the new virus and they pay to the families to follow that lie and well, sometimes is hard to find good sources of information

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What benefit is there in inflating the number of deaths due to covid-19? Compare death stats before the pandemic with the current death stats. The excess deaths should give an idea of what's happening.

This piece from the Financial Times (UK) has some graphs that illustrate the increase in deaths: https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c (free access).

Rupert24 said:

I don't know you guys but at least here in my country, the problem is not the new virus, the BIG problem is the FAKE NEWS and FAKE NUMBERS. Unfortunately this gives me a hard time because it becomes impossible know when the data is accurate and reliable, what the government is doing is when other people die for another circumstances, they're saying it was for the new virus and they pay to the families to follow that lie and well, sometimes is hard to find good sources of information

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I don't know specifically what the situation is in Mexico, but there are people who are making that claim here in the US. Most experts, though, suspect the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths are under-reported. There are also going to be people whose deaths will be indirectly due to the crisis--people who couldn't obtain routine heath care and so had a condition that wasn't caught early enough, not to mention all those people who are afraid to go to emergency rooms when they are really ill. I don't think we're misattributing heart attacks and ordinary cases of pneumonia to Covid-19 here. We can test for it, and we can test for other conditions too, like influenza. And a lot of people who become ill here in the US still aren't getting tested at all. I am guessing that is the situation in Mexico too.

The true case numbers and fatalities won't be known for quite some time, but I suspect they will be revised upwards, not downwards. There are also people who are damaged by the virus, even after they recovered, and it's not clear what their long-term morbidity and mortality will be months or years later. Plus the overall rate of silent infections that didn't produce symptoms at all will probably have to be extrapolated, once we have better information on the actual percentages of "silent" or extremely mild cases.

The question we have to ask ourselves is do the people in power benefit more (in the short term, at least, which is how capitalist economies run) from over reporting cases and deaths versus under reporting them?