Caught the teevee news last night babbling on about how the covid pandemic was exploding across Western Carolina. Cut to field reporter who's interviewing an official from Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville. Oh, yes, there are FOUR cases in the hospital currently, and they are taking up ABOUT half the ICU beds! ZERO cases in Haywood Community Hospital.
ZERO cases in Methodist (HUGANTUOUS hospital in Asheville).
Over the past week, we've got FOUR new cases in Haywood
county for a total of 109 since the beginning and ZERO deaths.
That's less than 1 case per day... so given the average length of sickness is less than 10 days, let's say _maybe_ 5 or 6 people who are actually currently sick. Hospitalizations aren't even announced.
And yet... the pandemic is somehow exploding. How do these newscasters live with themselves? I mean, when your job is to sit in front of a camera and just lie, lie, lie, day after
day... how do you possibly NOT go jump off a bridge?
@sda To be fair, just because the media is going overboard in your area doesn't mean cases aren't exploding elsewhere. Also, COVID has this tendency to be exponential, so if you are in an urban area (like Ashevlle) and enough people aren't following social distancing or wearing masks (I'm not there, so I wouldn't know), this could get ugly.
While this does sound alarmist, it's local TV news. How else would they make bank besides ad revenue? Zero-point energy using viewer stupidity as a catalyst?
@mathlover
To be "fair" the local news is reporting local conditions. Elsewhere is irrelevant to local facts. "Elsewhere" news is doing the exact same thing.
COVID has NEVER been exponential despite the mathemeticians desperate (like the news-fabricators) attempt to fit it into that fiction.
Ah, so alarmism is fine because that's the only tool they have to make a living. <sigh>
They'd make more from zero-point energy using newscaster stupidity as the catalyst.
@sda I'll concede economics doesn't excuse alarmism. You are right about that.
Please explain your position in the second paragraph regarding COVID not being exponential in growth. As a mathematics doctoral student whose parents are both medical doctors knowledgeable about epidemiology and involved in COVID mitigation in our area, I'm all ears.
@mathlovers
Glad to see you now understand why the COVID described as "exponential" is simple media disinformation / propaganda.
IFR is actually closer to ~0.01~0.1% which, after subtracting seasonal flu death attributed to COVID is actually less fatal than seasonal flu.
@sdas
The phrase "COVID grows exponentially" is a shortened form of the notion that, *in an ideal environment when there are no measures/mitigating factors being taken*, COVID will grow *initally* according to an exponential curve. This is true not just of COVID, but of any infectious disease introduced into an ideal environment where there is no native immunity.
If one were to assume that no one did anything and everyone carried on as normal, over time this curve would become sigmoidal rather than exponential. This would be because COVID would have infected everyone it could (which could mean everyone period in this hypothetical) and unless you think, say, 0.5~2% of those infected people dying is a good thing, I'd say that this end case scenario isn't something we would want to see.