This is a tough room. 
Youâre right about that.
I love the reference!
(I'm a huge HHGTTG fan.)
Some may enjoy reading this as we keep waiting for the mass corona virus death toll to start.
Coronavirus: Propaganda Must Stop
Coronavirus: Propaganda Must Stop
Donât give up yer day job. Youâd starve.
Donât lose your sense of humor in the crisis. We are still alive and need to remember to live.
I'm watching yesterday's news.
The Governor of California is calling for all Californians to shelter in place.
All non-essential businesses are to close down or at least limit their contact with the public.
...
Also, in my housing development, there were some landscapers trimming trees and a homeowner came out with a gun to confront them.
He claimed they were spreading COVID-19!
The police came out, and no one was hurt.
In my opinion, the guy with the gun may have been 5150'd, though I am just guessing.
Because a couple million dead and hospitals attempting to treat 20x their capacity wouldnât cause an economic disaster either⌠:person_facepalming:
Leave it to a options trader to only see the short term economic impact. Literally every point he makes is misrepresented and twisted to suit his message.
It is the nature of an exponential curve that, at any point on it, the rate of change earlier appears flat and the rate of change after that appears to skyrocket.
Weâre seeing that effect at work.
â It uses whatâs called a logarithmic scale â exponential growth at different rates will appear as straight lines of different steepness. The steeper the line, the faster the total number of coronavirus deaths is doubling.
The number of deaths from the illness known as Covid-19 provide one of the most reliable measurements of the pandemicâs impact around the worldâŚ.
=
Yep, that options trader was one sad wacko.
With all this âshelter in placeâ going on , how many babies do you suppose will be born in 9 or 10 months ?
Reports of âaccuracyâ of tests are essentially meaningless. It requires a statistics lesson. Some relevant concepts to answer your questions are sensitivity (true positive rate) and specificity (true negative rate).
Then also consider that a tests result must be interpreted correctly to be useful. Taking it as-is will surely be misleading. eg. a test has a probability of showing positive given that a person is truly sick, but that is not the same as the probability of a person being sick given that the test shows positive. The latter is what weâre ultimately interested in, and that depends on the prevalence of the disease and Bayesâ Theorem.
References would be helpful for any reports of test accuracy. Also keep in mind there are several Covid-19 tests, not just one, which undoubtedly have differing âaccuraciesâ.
It is a good question though, and the answer to the spirit of the question is that confidence is increased by multiple tests. I believe it is in the guidelines. This also means that the number of tests performed is not equal to the number of people tested.
It is incredible how many things are wrong with that article. I donât feel like addressing it all, but a common thread among those denying the seriousness of the situation is a focus on current absolute numbers of deaths, compared to influenza or other diseases, instead of rates, and completely missing the concept of the prevalence of a disease.
Given the higher fatality rate of Covid-19 than influenza, it will be worse if/when the prevalence becomes similar. That is what we want to avoid. Surely thatâs not hard to understand?
And even if the fatality rate were the same, the impact would be additive, not the same. Saying that there are similar or worse diseases is really no argument at all. It boggles my mind that it is mentioned at all, much less how often it is repeated.
Itâs interesting that Iâm not the only one who noticed that author is an options trader. What I donât get is why heâs complaining. Sure this terrible for the economy overall, but it has spiked volatility, which is great for trading.
I thought of that, but six feet of social distancing will make certain things very difficult for most people.
Mine is still intact, the trouble is some people donât get jokes (even if they are funny ) before the big crisis hit them, My advice is to just carry on regardless,itâs almost funny watching some people going round like headless chickens. Itâs also quite sad.
Nice. I can recognize Râs ggplot anywhere. 
The best resource Iâve found so far is: Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) - Our World in Data
Very comprehensive and nuanced, addressing many misconceptions and common/potential errors. Itâs a long page but I highly recommend the full (easy) read. The pop-out table of contents can be helpful for the time-constrained.
I got the (repeated) joke, and just didnât find it funny. Humor is a funny thingâŚ
It looks like the FDA has authorized a 45 minute diagnostic test (developed by a California-based company):
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/fda-greenlights-first-45-min-point-care-coronavirus-diagnostic
Hopefully this is the first of more test options.
Also, this is an interesting article (those who think the response so far is too much will probably disagree with it):
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20/health/coronavirus-response-must-adapt-frieden-analysis/index.html
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PHOUTON SAID
I got the (repeated) joke, and just didnât find it funny. Humor is a funny thingâŚ
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Same here. Like Einstein once said â Funny is relative. â
Well the joke was dropped 8 hours ago. But Kevin Zâs criticism of it 8 hours later is going strong at a count of 3.