Originally Posted by
lazygun37
Dear God, Rob. I haven't changed my numbers and my arguments once, and yes, I actually do read the papers I cite before I cite them. And of course I had noticed the total number of deaths on the page you linked -- but as we had been discussing *daily death counts* and that number is *total deaths*, it seemed you couldn't possibly be referring to it (because it makes no sense).
Look, do you seriously think that your method doesn't agree with other numbers because "they revise the numbers slightly to correct for reporting error"? If so, you're completely missing the point. Could you just take a deep breath and read the following paragraph with something resembling an open mind before you start typing furiously at me again?
The way the CDC is collecting data is that they receive *dated* reports of COVID-19 related deaths every day. But not just from *that* day. So, on Monday, for example, they'll get dated reports coming in of deaths that occurred on Monday, of deaths that occurred the day before (Sunday), the day before that (Saturday), etc etc. As the CDC site I quoted *explicitly* states, these reports tend to come in for up to at least 1-2 weeks or so. So if you're going to work out a "daily death count", you simply *CANNOT* take the total number of deaths that were known on, say Monday, and subtract from it the total number of deaths that were known on Sunday. Because the deaths that were reported in this time interval includes deaths that happened on Sunday, on Saturday, on Friday etc etc. This isn't a "reporting error". It's just how reporting works. And it explains why your number is way too high -- because the deaths that were counted that day included deaths that occurred on multiple days.
Look, I actually think you know perfectly well that your position is just ridiculous here. I don't even know why you're trying to defend it. Even I don't think it's all that important a point -- it just shows that you were wrong about the peak possibly having already happened. But it's exactly this sort of shit that pisses me off so much throughout this thread. It's bad enough that people throw around numbers they don't understand and misinterpret them to make whatever point they're trying to make. But fuck, what is it with people that nobody can ever acknowledge even the most obvious and blatant outright mistakes? We're all human, we all fuck up. I'd like to think that if you showed me such a clear-cut error I've made, I'd be big enough to acknowledge it.