
Covid-19 Leaderboard (US counties) - 323454
https://rocky-hamlet-54713.herokuapp.com/
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dredmorbius
A key issue with confirmed cases is that reported results have far more to say
about testing practices than underlying ground truth. A confirmed case
requires an infected individual, a test, and a positive result.

(False positives are rare, false negatives fairly common.)

At county-level resolution, I'd argue that direct comparisons are at best
difficult, and may be effectively meaningless. Rapid rises in values may
indicate outbreaks ... or more intense monitoring. Low results, especially in
populated counties, are a very likely _warning_ sign -- the outbreak can now
be presumed nearly universal. As a rule of thumb, you might rank US state
public health effectiveness by dates of first detection of community spread of
COVID-19, earlier being better.

Death rates are far more reliable true measures than monitoring, though they
both lag infections (by about three weeks, though confirmed cases by less,
possibly only one week), and are far thinner -- about 1% of all infections 3
weeks ago given typical course of illness.

The reliability comes from the fact that bodies are far less convenient to
hide, and a far smaller and targeted testing target.

Test results, coverage, and negative:positive ratios (higher is better,
suggesting better coverage) are all highly useful, as is case severity mix --
more mild cases suggests more complete testing.

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323454
Good point. I'll add a doubling period for deaths and confirmed cases so you
can compare. Do you know of any good data sources for getting the number of
negative test results in a locale?

