RSSI’m at a loss. I consider you (Ron) and Steve Sailer to be my brilliant guides in the statistics department. Yet, I am not clear on why you are NOT suggesting a “sampling” method of testing? I haven’t read your entire comments but I’ve been trying to keep an eye on Steve’s blog. When I need baseball stats (or any sports stats…) he da’ man. Steve was very happy that full population testing is in process for that town in Colorado. But, again, that is most likely not accurate for a nationwide measurement. Correct? I mean it is testing…but…maybe a slight example is, if I have 10 machine tool lines that run 100,000 parts apiece but only test a batch of 10,000 from machine 1…I really cannot tell you how accurate my 100,000 parts are, no?
Is “sampling” not an accurate method for epidemics? In my very basic high school stats class (or hell, maybe it was my basic college stats), it was suggested, to get an accurate read, when high volumes are involved, “sampling” is the only reliable method. Is this only for manufacturing and quality testing?
I think you make the point Ron…there is a overload of data but its useless. Then you explain how important it was to initiate a shelter-in-place and this doc should be lauded. How come?
My fear is, we are already in Oceania and we were fighting Eurasia (Iraq/China/Russia…take your pick), our new enemy is Eastasia (pandemics/China/etc) while our economy was already crumbling since Sept and my normal “go to” skeptics now are fully in line with big brother? Scares me…I went you and Steve back to being skeptical…