Good Morning:
Yesterday Wednesday April 22, 2020 was a TWO Green Arrow Day.
At first glance the most puzzling was the number of recorded recoveries. The recorded recoveries, based on what we know, are only those that have two negative blood tests at least 24 hours apart. The self-diagnosed recoveries don’t get recorded in the table because there really isn’t a process to collect, tabulate and report that data as we have discussed in previous posts.
Each day we get several questions and in general we look for a pattern or the most common ones to address. We like to do some research and support our findings through some third party source. Several readers have asked about the impact of testing and the somewhat fluid definitions of cause of death, who gets tested and similar type queries.
All of the data in the large top of spreadsheet tables are based on third party sources; Worldometer, CNN and others. The tables below in the spreadsheet calculate information and probably unique to this newsletter.
We do it this way to decipher trends. Each category has some built-in biases but by using a table, we can see trends even if some of the definitions are fluid.
For example:
1) Number of new cases: Not so long ago there was a limited number of tests because of the lack of resources. As the availability of tests increase, there will be more tests performed and there will certainly be more new cases.
2) Deaths: The number of COVID 19 deaths appears to be expanded and now includes “probable” in the recorded numbers. NYC recently retroactively added deaths to their total based on probable.
3) Recoveries: Again, this is based on “blood test” recoveries as opposed to “self-determined” recoveries.
4) In all the categories the statistics are based on “blood test” diagnoses, in other words the denominator.
The encouraging news is that while the definitions seem to be skewing to counting more in the stats, the general trends are more than favorable. Said another way had the definitions been firm from the beginning, the trends would be even more favorable then the charts show.
The denominator is based on “blood tests” and only the patients that “feel” sick or believe they have the symptoms get a blood test. The fact that the percentage of people testing negative is so high means that more people believe they might have COVID 19 but in reality don’t.
We also know with several studies (Stanford, USC and Boston) that the denominator could be as much as 50 times higher. Those studies may or may not be representative, but universally, all creditable sources know that many more people contract the virus and have little to know symptoms. These cases are not counted in the denominator.
If indeed those studies are indicative, then the “real” denominator might be 20 to 50 million Americans. This we know, the denominator used doesn’t include those that didn’t take a test. One way to address this is to perform a series of random testing and extrapolate from those results to get a more realistic denominator.
We will keep using published data for the tables, even though there are biases, and use the daily commentary to illustrate these, insights beyond the numbers and some theoretical calculations such as our “Theoretical Recoveries” which shows that 44% of those that contracted the “blood test” cases have recovered.
Enjoy your day.