Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Meanwhile, as time goes on, the death rate may become a poorer comparison point, because of possible increased used ot treatments which decrease deaths in seriously ill patients. But in that case, the absolute death rate not falling much implies that it might have gone up had it not been for new treatments becoming available.
I've heard that ICU admissions are a good tracking metric, although I'm not sure where to find that data. It's still a trailing indicator (about 3 weeks from infection to ICU admission v. 4 weeks from infection to deaths) and I think it still suffers from distortions involving the overall health/age of the population where hot spots are, so not sure how much better it actually is.
Another thing to look at within the US is the percentage of positive tests. That's actually rising right now, which is worrying since overall number of tests is also increasing. There are also data issues here, since different localities count differently (i.e. if one person is tested multiple times, do you count that as one person tested, or multiple tests?)