Due to the exponential spread of an infectious disease in the initial phase, if a country with 10 mil shuts down on the same day as one with 100 mil they'll both have roughly the same number of infections. Which one is harder hit?
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Replying to @GidMK
I've already accepted (I think) that it's not useful in the first phase, but the countries in my graph are mostly over the peak.
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Replying to @cjsnowdon
But this is true of the whole pandemic. Two countries, similar initial numbers, same R0 at every stage will end up with the same total number of infections. Unless those numbers change, your output is the same number of infections. So which one is harder hit?
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Replying to @GidMK
I would say that a country that loses a third of its population has been harder hit than one that loses 0.3% of its population.
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Replying to @cjsnowdon
Sure. That's an obvious exaggeration of the reality. What about a country that loses 0.00025% vs 0.0003%, where the 0.0003 represents 100 deaths and the 0.00025 represents 10,000?
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Replying to @GidMK
We seem to agree that, at some point, the proportion of the population that die is more important than the absolute numbers. IMO, that point has been reached with COVID-19 when comparing, say, Sweden with Germany.
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Replying to @cjsnowdon
Every metric tells you something. Some are much less useful than others for direct comparisons
And I personally don't think you need deaths per million to know that Sweden is doing badly!1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @GidMK
That’s because you’re an epidemiologist. A naive observer could easily take the wrong message from this graph.pic.twitter.com/SVhJi8Kvkx
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Replying to @cjsnowdon
A naive observer could assume from the deaths per mil figure that India and Indonesia have virtually perfect reactions to the pandemic that every other country in the world should be emulating, or that San Marino is a death haven of doom
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Replying to @GidMK
I didn't include such countries in the graph that started this thread.
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I mean, that doesn't make the metric itself more reliable. US looks pretty excellent but that doesn't reflect the enormous issue that they have right now that's ongoing
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