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Old Posted Feb 18, 2022, 5:10 PM
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biguc biguc is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123 View Post
Didn't they drop the restrictions around the peak?

If the restrictions were suppressing transmission a lot, and they were dropped around the peak, there would be a big resurgence in transmission.
Yeah, it looked like they were coming off the peak. Opening seems to have bumped them back up and prolonged the peak. Daily case counts have since apparently declined.

Denmark's case count looks like a huge outlier. That's a testament to their testing--they seem to have run the best testing program on earth.

Since ending restrictions, their testing rates have evidently dropped. This makes sense. Rapid antigen testing there--like it remains here in Germany--was a routine practice to get around some restrictions. If you tested positive, you'd take a PCR test for confirmation, and isolate until you got your results. Without restrictions, there's no reason to take a test besides curiosity, minding your own health, or your greater sense of personal responsibility. And even if you do test positive on a rapid antigen, you don't have to take a PCR test--that positive result will never show up in official stats.

So testing has declined. But positivity rates have actually increased. Here's another a testament to the efficacy of Danish testing: their positivity rates are increasing, Berlin's are declining, and yet Berlin's positivity rates are still higher. Our measured case counts, by the way, never touched Denmark's, and are actually declining.

So what is really going on with Danish case counts? Who knows. Positivity rates are a pretty reliable indicator of where things are going, but with fewer people testing, those who do test may be biased for actually being sick.

Different testing regimes, country to country, are just one reason not to make gross generalizations about the causes and effects of different policies. If the UK isn't testing at the same rate as Germany, and if they've introduced policies that changed testing rates, and if there are meaningful cultural difference around personal space, and if, if, if. Pile on the hypotheticals and good luck finding any comparable causal relationship between policy and case counts.

Of course, that only matters if the case counts even bear out the hypothesis. Here we've got people saying the low, flat curves of US and UK case counts are the result of openness, and the high, spikey curves of France, Germany, and Denmark are the result of curve flattening. It makes no goddamn sense on the face of it.
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