I've tried to get a question answered lately that for some reason, the usual on-line sources of information seem unable to accommodate. The are some pretty accomplished folks here, and some with strong medical backgrounds. I suspect that this will devolve into the usual mess eventually but....here goes. From my reading on the subject, at least in the United States... the death rate from this COVID 19 infection is about 1 death in 10,000 infections. Somebody asked me today if that 1 in 10K death rate was enough to justify calling this a pandemic. I simply didn't know, so I attempted to look it up. From what I was able to find, the death rate isn't the determining factor of how a pandemic is defined, it is the infection rate and then the geographic areas involved. Assuming that's accurate, then this is indeed a pandemic. It is most certainly a pandemic when you consider the death rate in other countries which do not have the level of care that we do here. The next question I was asked was about the dramatic differences between death numbers in blue states and red states, ie...why is Florida so comparatively low and New York so high? I have been told that almost every death in the blue states has been counted as Covid-related because there is a financial incentive to-do-so for the hospitals involved. I could not find any information to help me with that one online either, can anybody here shed some light on the subject with some, hopefully, first-hand knowledge of the subject?
Last edited by Lloyd3; 05/11/20 07:21 PM.
