ChattaTNVol
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2011
- Messages
- 4,911
- Likes
- 27,769
I don’t want to sound like I’m defending Dr. Fauci because the fact of the matter is I’ve never listened to him on any form of media nor have I paid any real attention to anything he may have said at some point or another. In this instance, since he reportedly said something about Tennessee, I decided to check it out. That to me is sort of the smart thing to do if you don’t want to get trapped into a bubble of your own making.
First let me give an example of what I’m going to focus on and this is not intended to be political but rather informative. Almost all general election polls suggest that Biden has a lead over Trump in the upcoming presidential election. There’s a tremendous amount of consistency in those numbers. I think there may be a catch though. This far out polling can often be volatile. In presidential primaries polls are notoriously volatile and can change dramatically from week to week. The reason for that is in a primary campaign many of the contestants aren’t well known. So name recognition and getting introduced to the candidates can and often do create a lot of polling volatility.
For the upcoming presidential election, in this case between two well-known candidates, you might want to consider what factors usually drive decision making when the rubber meets the road. In some of the media polls, the ones where they actually ask the questions, Trump holds a statistically significant lead over Biden in the questions of 1) Who do you consider best to handle the economy? and 2) Who do you consider the stronger leader? I’m not suggesting that those two questions are always determinative but often times they are. If you’re in the Biden camp I think you have to be concerned.
Now back to Dr. Fauci. His warning for some I think mostly border states, including Tennessee, was based on what I think he considers a leading indication of potential trouble, the Positivity Rate. In late spring our positivity rate in the state was held up as a model to the rest of the nation. It was around 6.5% meaning we were killing it in testing. The UT dashboard tracks the positivity rate for the prior 5 days and for the prior 5-day period before that. Currently the prior 5-day positivity rate is 10.4% and the previous period was 11.1%. Overall the positivity rate for testing in Tennessee from the beginning has increased from that 6.5% in late spring to 8.3% today. The tests results reported at the state level today was right at 10%. The number of tests we’re doing or at least reporting at the state level have been significantly less than recent weeks, tremendously less in the last couple of days.
County level data as reflected in the reporting from the UT dashboard with regards to transmission rates doesn’t really align with the state level data because of the lag in the state level reports. For example there’s a lot of more reported improvement at the county level than at the state level for many counties and the opposite for other counties. I think the county level data is more timely and I think Dr. Fauci is probably being briefed on that so again that leaves the positivity rate as his chief concern. 10% is the suggested tripwire or alarm level. If our positivity rate is near, at, or above 10% which it continues to be then people are going to take notice.
So why is our positivity rate so high? I think part of it could be just the way data reporting is managed between the counties and the state and another could be that there just aren’t that many people going in for tests. Contact tracing is I think the primary way to identify new test candidates after you have addressed the sort of isolated population sets but the increase in the number of active cases in the state has been sort of stalled in a range for over a week and with a declining transmission rate we just don’t have that many new candidates to test. The areas where we have higher transmission rates are far less dense from a population standpoint that our large metro centers so there’s maybe just not that many contacts to trace.
It seems to me that what Dr. Fauci was saying is that if your jurisdiction is at or above 10% positivity rate in testing then the risk for belatedly detecting a surge in the virus transmission rate and thus new cases is potentially significantly elevated and I don’t think any of the other professionals in the field would disagree with him. Therefore it’s incumbent upon us to understand why our positivity rate is in its current elevated state. jmo.
As a general rule I try to respect other people’s expertise. If I have conflicting information I’ll typically investigate to see why there could be a conflict but I don’t want to dismiss out of hand a contrary opinion to my own especially when my expertise may lie in a different field. I think that was one of Jesus’ beatitudes. Anyway, Dr. Fauci apparently is focused on the positivity rate as a leading indicator rather than on the headline numbers much the way an election strategist might be focusing on an opinion polls internal questions to forecast how things might pan out on election day. It’s often said that people vote their pocketbooks or as James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That being the case with elections if one was only focused on the top line numbers they might be in for a shocking surprise on election day. jmo.
I'll keep you guys posted on the positivity rate in Tennessee if it changes significantly one way or the other. The simple fact is that the experts are telling us to pay attention to it and not being an expert in that field I see no reason to dismiss that advice. jmo.
First let me give an example of what I’m going to focus on and this is not intended to be political but rather informative. Almost all general election polls suggest that Biden has a lead over Trump in the upcoming presidential election. There’s a tremendous amount of consistency in those numbers. I think there may be a catch though. This far out polling can often be volatile. In presidential primaries polls are notoriously volatile and can change dramatically from week to week. The reason for that is in a primary campaign many of the contestants aren’t well known. So name recognition and getting introduced to the candidates can and often do create a lot of polling volatility.
For the upcoming presidential election, in this case between two well-known candidates, you might want to consider what factors usually drive decision making when the rubber meets the road. In some of the media polls, the ones where they actually ask the questions, Trump holds a statistically significant lead over Biden in the questions of 1) Who do you consider best to handle the economy? and 2) Who do you consider the stronger leader? I’m not suggesting that those two questions are always determinative but often times they are. If you’re in the Biden camp I think you have to be concerned.
Now back to Dr. Fauci. His warning for some I think mostly border states, including Tennessee, was based on what I think he considers a leading indication of potential trouble, the Positivity Rate. In late spring our positivity rate in the state was held up as a model to the rest of the nation. It was around 6.5% meaning we were killing it in testing. The UT dashboard tracks the positivity rate for the prior 5 days and for the prior 5-day period before that. Currently the prior 5-day positivity rate is 10.4% and the previous period was 11.1%. Overall the positivity rate for testing in Tennessee from the beginning has increased from that 6.5% in late spring to 8.3% today. The tests results reported at the state level today was right at 10%. The number of tests we’re doing or at least reporting at the state level have been significantly less than recent weeks, tremendously less in the last couple of days.
County level data as reflected in the reporting from the UT dashboard with regards to transmission rates doesn’t really align with the state level data because of the lag in the state level reports. For example there’s a lot of more reported improvement at the county level than at the state level for many counties and the opposite for other counties. I think the county level data is more timely and I think Dr. Fauci is probably being briefed on that so again that leaves the positivity rate as his chief concern. 10% is the suggested tripwire or alarm level. If our positivity rate is near, at, or above 10% which it continues to be then people are going to take notice.
So why is our positivity rate so high? I think part of it could be just the way data reporting is managed between the counties and the state and another could be that there just aren’t that many people going in for tests. Contact tracing is I think the primary way to identify new test candidates after you have addressed the sort of isolated population sets but the increase in the number of active cases in the state has been sort of stalled in a range for over a week and with a declining transmission rate we just don’t have that many new candidates to test. The areas where we have higher transmission rates are far less dense from a population standpoint that our large metro centers so there’s maybe just not that many contacts to trace.
It seems to me that what Dr. Fauci was saying is that if your jurisdiction is at or above 10% positivity rate in testing then the risk for belatedly detecting a surge in the virus transmission rate and thus new cases is potentially significantly elevated and I don’t think any of the other professionals in the field would disagree with him. Therefore it’s incumbent upon us to understand why our positivity rate is in its current elevated state. jmo.
As a general rule I try to respect other people’s expertise. If I have conflicting information I’ll typically investigate to see why there could be a conflict but I don’t want to dismiss out of hand a contrary opinion to my own especially when my expertise may lie in a different field. I think that was one of Jesus’ beatitudes. Anyway, Dr. Fauci apparently is focused on the positivity rate as a leading indicator rather than on the headline numbers much the way an election strategist might be focusing on an opinion polls internal questions to forecast how things might pan out on election day. It’s often said that people vote their pocketbooks or as James Carville famously said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That being the case with elections if one was only focused on the top line numbers they might be in for a shocking surprise on election day. jmo.
I'll keep you guys posted on the positivity rate in Tennessee if it changes significantly one way or the other. The simple fact is that the experts are telling us to pay attention to it and not being an expert in that field I see no reason to dismiss that advice. jmo.
