April 15, 2020 By Andrea Widburg
New York City's Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly added 4,000
deaths to the city's roster of Wuhan virus deaths. He did this even though
there are no tests proving that these 4,000 people died because of the virus.
The mayor claims he made the change to increase statistical accuracy, but he
may have been acting upon baser motives.
One problem with getting a handle on the Wuhan virus is
that we have no accurate count telling how many people have become sick with or
died from it, whether at home or abroad. Different countries use different
tests; different tests have various rates of fake results, both positive and
negative; and not everyone is or can be tested. Moreover, in different places,
people are classified as Wuhan virus deaths if they tested positive for the
virus regardless of what killed them.
We know that there may be people who have the virus but
don’t know it, people who are sick with something that may or may not be the
virus, and people who die from causes that can be attributed to the virus,
although without any real certainty. Antibody tests are useful for providing
some mathematical probability about the virus’s prevalence in a given
population, but the tests also don’t home in on the exact number of people who
are or have been ill.
Put another way, virus counts around the world are
subject to a lot of guesswork.........New York City added nearly 4,000 people who never tested
positive for the coronavirus to its death toll Tuesday, bringing
coronavirus-related deaths in the city to around 10,000 people........To Read More.....
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