Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy
(Post 2046485)
sportsguy typing for coachk who has access to hospital testing data, and who both got into a heated breakfast discussion, sportsguy looking for a slice of the data to prove a point, and coachk describing the data slice is not possible, and the temperature fell back to count chocula :popcorn:
counts yes at any one particular point in time, relative percentages, maybe. . depends upon the bias of the population being tested and the weight of that population, and the stage of the pandemic. . .
Looking at actual hospital data over the last two months by week, CoachK's hospital has three high level classifications of patients being testing, based upon the source of the testing order:
asymptomatic,
symptomatic,
no patient history, state sponsored free testing
All have gone up due the increased transmissibility of omicron, BUT the rates of change of the three groups exhibit much different rates, and from very different starting points.
asymptomatic and no patient history have both doubled, though off different and lower percentages from a month ago.
symptomatic has gone up 80% but off a base of twice the percentage of the prior two groups.
The first reason for the symptomatic to be significantly higher is due to a required checklist to be passed to have reasonable confidence in a meaningful test. The second reason is that with the advent of home rapid tests, more known positives are requesting a PCR test for employers and treatment knowledge. . which comes through the symptomatic patient classification.
Which percent most closely represents random sampling of the population? the no patient information classification. .
Which group has more than 50% of the testing counts? the symptomatic group. . . add them all together and you get an average number weighted by patient classification and count of tests performed.
And to add to the analysis, the testing counts have doubled in total, but not all groups have doubled in testing counts. . .
So, without this type of detailed data available on a weekly basis, and without statistics training, we would recommend that people really stop trying to out research each other with the whataboutism of this report vs that report. All you are doing is to argue what you have read either first or last, and from there what you believe to be factual to feel informed, and to feel knowledgable in the information age with your inherent biases. . .
We of course respect and give thanks to the medical community of the doctors/nurses on this site, and working with the near real time data at hospitals, trying to do no harm and help every patient in the order in which they appear. . . always with incomplete information.
sportsguy and coachk
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