Lets start with the top line number: 154,000 Covid Deaths
1) I love to check numbers and make sure that they seam reasonable. As I explained in a previous post, in the last weeks 21 we have 183,000 deaths above average. In the last 21 weeks the death rate has increase 16%. That means if this was an average year those 183,000 people would be alive. This is important because if this was a much smaller number say 20,000 then you could argue that the death certificates were just miss classified at the local level as Covid when they were really some other cause.
2) CDC, St Johns Hopkins and an organization worldometer all count US Covid deaths independently and they all have roughly the same number of deaths. The CDC reports out slower, while Worldometer is close to real time but the are in a European time zone. All 3 report roughly 154,000 deaths.
3) Because of the CARES Act, Hospitals are paid an extra 20% to treat patients.
Because of all 3 of these reasons the 154,000 looks to be reasonable. In fact Scientific America looked at the number of deaths and concluded that they are probably UNDER reported.
Next, the number of cases: 4.6 million in the US
1) Again, 3 separate organizations come up with the same count.
2) But this is kind of a BS number. This is the number of people that test positive for covid. What we really need here is how many people actually have covid.
3) There is no way that I know of to double check this in another way to verify this number. Not only does the every day citizen like me have trouble double checking numbers, the organizations counting this up would experience similar issues.
4) As you and other people have reported, there could be some (or many) glitches at the local level that can be interfering with a quality count.
Over all I would look at the 4.6 million cases with some suspicion, these could be off by 5%, 10%, who really knows for sure?
The third number that is important is Mortality Rate:
It is calculated by taking the total number of deaths and dividing by the total number of cases. I am pretty confident in the number of deaths, but I'm very uncertain about the actual total number of cases. But understand this: If the total number of deaths is constant and we decrease the number of cases it will mathematically increase the mortality rate. All 3 numbers work together. As we get better at treating Covid, the mortality rate should decline. If the number of cases increase and we overwhelm our hospitals the mortality rate will increase.
So in total: The total deaths number is probably in the ballpark. The total positive tests is probably inflated, but we don't really have a magnitude of the error. We wish we knew the total number of actual cases instead of positive test. The Mortality Rate will change over time depending on the conditions.
Facts really do help'
THE WHOLE World got the behind the DEM'S for this virus to rock Trump and remove all his good work. Dang those Dem are smart as hell.