If you are like me, your day (still) begins and ends with seeking to get ‘daily updates’ on COVID-19.
If you step back and examine how places like John Hopkins and Columbia are using daily infection & death rates, they are able to forecast the rate of infection and death (so far done predominantly by county).
But, each forecast also has different underlying assumptions for infection–mostly driven by social distancing practices in place and how long social distancing has been in effect. New underlying assumptions are emerging as vaccine rollouts proceed.
The articles are not always great at stating their underlying assumptions (which is a concern), but for you, the curious learner, is an important thing to realize. It makes you ask better questions of the data presented. The and the are especially interesting when you start to think about both from the statistics standpoint.
There are currently 924,107 staffed hospital beds in the US (American Hospital Association, 2020). Occupancy rate of beds pre-Coronavirus was not found. The current US population is estimated to be approximately 329 million (United States Census Bureau, 2020).
What do you think? What is your experience one year after this first began?
