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Comment by vondur | Hacker News Reader

They don’t mention hospitalization or deaths. Those are the two to keep track of. I’m guessing far more people are getting tested than previously, hence the larger numbers.

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It took me 10 minutes to get over my shock at your comment. Information entirely refuting your "guess" that the larger numbers are due to more people being tested is available at your fingertips. It takes about a second to google, click and read this information. I think you may be the victim of propaganda. You would do well to rethink your information sources and implicit biases.

> I’m guessing far more people are getting tested than previously, hence the larger numbers.

Nationally that may be a contributing factor, but in hotspot states, the % of tests which are positive has actually gone up significantly: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states and select Florida or Arizona

Daily covid hospitalizations have doubled over the past month in Texas.

https://www.tmc.edu/coronavirus-updates/tmc-daily-new-covid-...

The % of tests that are coming back positive is increasing, which is a good indication that the growth we're seeing is due to a growth in infections, and not just growth in testing

Those are immune to the sampling rate bias, but they are lagging indicators. Based on the recent widespread failures to socially distance (e.g. George Floyd protests, campaign rallys, etc), I suspect those lagging charts will start trending upwards.

You can also correct for the sampling rate bias by looking at the number of cases per 100,000 tests (or similar). Does anyone have a link tracking that? EDIT: percentage positive tests: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/individual-states

Areas with BLM actions have not seen an increase in rates of infection.

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/black-lives-matter-prote...

That seems... very suspicious. I doubt that the virus cares what the reason for a large gathering is. I don't think the BLM actions were using proper social distancing. But what does that leave? People who went haven't bothered to get tested since? Everybody wore masks, and that's way more effective than we thought? The gatherings were outside, and the Vitamin D is saving everyone?

There have been epi efforts to oversample people in the blm protests specifically to examine its impact on infection rates and find it didn't matter. They didn't have an explanation but suspected it had to do with the protests mostly being outdoors.

I suspect being outdoors makes a huge difference.

If the protests were a hotspot for new infections the states that are doing contract tracing should show that. I haven’t seen any evidence of it.

The deaths are increasing too. 2500+ people passed away yesterday (June 25) in the US.

From all causes? Covid number is lower

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

That can't be from all causes, there are around 8,000 deaths per day in the US from all causes.

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