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So after reading a misleading meme on the internet I was compelled to compare the COVID situation in Canada over the past few months to that in the USA. This is what I notice.
The Canadian stock market has crashed by a thousand points since the beginning of the year and COVID cases in Canada have **increased** 700% since mid june... Compared to america where the stock market has **increased** by 3,000 points since the beginning of the year (thatsa 33% increase) and covid cases has **dropped** by more than 50% since the beginning of july.
The issue with lockdowns is they look great to everyone who is too ignorant to understand whats going on, but they devastate the economy and do no good because the second you let up the lock down no one has immunity and the virus spreads like it is new. So in the long run you get hit hard in the wallet AND in terms of the infection. Meanwhile the americans approach may have resulted in more infection early on but fewer in the long term and without damaging the economy along the way.
@freemo Active cases US: 77 per 10,000. Active cases Canada: 2 per 10,000.
Also your metric that the US doing better purely because the value of the stock market hasn't declined is pretty silly. There's mass unemployment and hunger in the US and a lot of people can't pay their bills, don't have medical care. Look at US labor participation rates, if you can find them, because unemployment rates are calculated to shield a lot. US economy is in the shitter rn.
@bryanreynolds Thats not how you properly analyze statistics. For one you cant look at numbers, they must be "normalized" (adjusted according to the base rate) to be meaningful.. Second, since we are looking at the effectiveness of a policy change (ending lockdown quickly) you would the valid and accurate measurement would be the percentage rate of change of infected cases, not the absolute numbers. It is the only way you can show actual causality against a policy change as well as adjust for the population size and other factors.
I am not saying the US is doing better "purely because of the value of the stock market".. I am stating they are doing better because since lockdown was let up there was a 50% decrease in the rate of infection while Canada had a 700% increase in rate of infection after letting up lockdown. The stock market is simply an added bonus on top of that.
@freemo So I work in data science, and giving you population-adjusted active case rates is a great way to measure to measure virus activity in a country, albeit with the caveat that most lab reporting in the US has a significant lag of a week or more. That's all I'll say on the matter, because your first paragraph made me laugh ๐
@bryanreynolds My claim was not "measure to measure virus activity".. What we are trying to measure is if a policy change from strict lockdown to early and quick locking up is an effective policy change (what USA did).. vs if the canadian policy of implementing strict lock down over a longer period with an extremely gradual reopening is more effective.
For that, as you should know as a data-scientist, means you employ causality tests like the granger causality test. For that you would not compare the numbers in the way you did instead you would compare the rate of change in the virus following the change in policy, which is what I did.