Yes. There is no doubt that the Feds put their thumb on the hospitalization scale through the CARES Act.
However, this gets back to the point I was making with Stephanie about the impacts of such sources of error on the overall data set. While the CARES Act incentivizes hospitals to maximize their recorded COVID cases, there have to be "c…
Yes. There is no doubt that the Feds put their thumb on the hospitalization scale through the CARES Act.
However, this gets back to the point I was making with Stephanie about the impacts of such sources of error on the overall data set. While the CARES Act incentivizes hospitals to maximize their recorded COVID cases, there have to be "cases" first. Which is to say that, even with the corruption of the level of hospitalizations, upward and downward trends in hospitalizations are still meaningful.
In fact, given the incentive to maximize hospitalizations, a relative comparison of hospitalization trends and broader case trends arguably becomes even more meaningful than it would otherwise, as the reported hospitalizations represent an "upper bound" to the underlying real-world situation. Thus, if hospitalizations are not keeping pace with rising case counts, or are even declining, the presence of a skew towards more hospitalizations means the level of virulence one can assess from that metric is in actuality lower than the data first suggests; if the hospitalization data as-is indicates low virulence, the probability of hospitalization over-statement suggests the actual virulence is even lower.
Which is why the recent promotion of anecdotal information over the empirical data is absolutely a flawed argument, and ultimately demonstrates the degree to which the Pandemic Panic Narrative is running on fumes. The "experts" are, it would seem, running out of ideas for pumping the fear factor.
Yes. There is no doubt that the Feds put their thumb on the hospitalization scale through the CARES Act.
However, this gets back to the point I was making with Stephanie about the impacts of such sources of error on the overall data set. While the CARES Act incentivizes hospitals to maximize their recorded COVID cases, there have to be "cases" first. Which is to say that, even with the corruption of the level of hospitalizations, upward and downward trends in hospitalizations are still meaningful.
In fact, given the incentive to maximize hospitalizations, a relative comparison of hospitalization trends and broader case trends arguably becomes even more meaningful than it would otherwise, as the reported hospitalizations represent an "upper bound" to the underlying real-world situation. Thus, if hospitalizations are not keeping pace with rising case counts, or are even declining, the presence of a skew towards more hospitalizations means the level of virulence one can assess from that metric is in actuality lower than the data first suggests; if the hospitalization data as-is indicates low virulence, the probability of hospitalization over-statement suggests the actual virulence is even lower.
Which is why the recent promotion of anecdotal information over the empirical data is absolutely a flawed argument, and ultimately demonstrates the degree to which the Pandemic Panic Narrative is running on fumes. The "experts" are, it would seem, running out of ideas for pumping the fear factor.