: Coronavirus pandemic: How to make sense of the numbers #IndiaNEWS When people fall seriously ill from the new coronavirus, death rates become a highly personal matter. Yet we talk about them in the

Coronavirus pandemic: How to make sense of the numbers #IndiaNEWS
When people fall seriously ill from the new coronavirus, death rates become a highly personal matter. Yet we talk about them in the most impersonal of ways: with numbers.We are told, for instance, that the case-fatality ratio from Covid-19 is 1%-2% â€“ or is it 0.66%, or 3.28%? And that there could be 100,000 to 240,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States by mid-June, or perhaps far fewer.I trained in medicine and now work as a philosopher of science. Over the past several years, Iâ€™ve been trying to understand how epidemiological evidence influences thinking in health care. Epidemiological data are critical in deciding public health action, such as when to ease up on social distancing.But how should we think about the ever-shifting Covid-19 statistics as individuals and as public health decision-makers? Answering this question requires diving deeper into the meaning of the numbers.What it all meansEpidemiological numbers like infection rates and death counts have been a grim presence in this pandemic, represented by circular tumors growing outward on maps.The case-fatality ratio is the proportion of deaths from Covid-19 among those infected. In the three weeks leading up to April 7, the United States counted 11,014 Covid-19 deaths and 368,909 confirmed cases, for a case-fatality ratio of 11,014/368,909 = 3.0%.As individuals, we...Read more

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