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Comment by x87678r | Hacker News Reader

Its crazy they didn't talk about testing. In April if you were a 25 year old with a mild cough you couldn't get a test even if you begged for one. Now you can get a test easily, its little wonder the denominator has gone up a lot.

Edit: Yeah I see its hospitalized and they tried to control. I'm not convinced its a useful study but at least dont upvote this.

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Important to note that their findings are of hospitalized patients. Even back in April, nearly all admitted patients were being tested.

It could also be that back in April not all patients that should have been hospitalised were indeed hospitalised (for lack of beds/doctors), presumably the threshold for "you should be admitted into the hospital" was higher in April compared to lets say July or August. As such, a lower "hospitalisation threshold" for July or August (compared to April) should have indeed caused a lower death-rate.

The criteria for being admitted was also stricter back then at least in NYC.

The studies here attempt to sidestep the question of testing by measuring only hospitalized patients, adjusting for age and health conditions to try and rule out the "otherwise healthy people couldn't get into the hospital before" hypothesis.

Yeah I had started lying to both get tests, and get results back quicker

There was no sacrifice at the expense of other people that needed a scarce resource more, only complete mismanagement and disorganization

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