The Atlantic

How to Think About Personal Risk When COVID Case Data Can’t Be Trusted

The numbers do still have some use, even if they’re less illuminating than before.
Source: Paul Spella / The Atlantic

Coronavirus cases are up more than 25 percent in the United States over the past two weeks—and those are just the ones we know about. Experts warn that the true size of the current outbreak could be 10, or even 14, times worse than the official counts suggest.

Take Hawaii, for example. Last week, the state reported about 900 new cases a day, but a spokesperson for Hawaii’s department of health, Brooks Baehr, warned that the true number could be “five, six, seven times” greater. “That would be an extra 4,500 to 6,500 new cases every day,” Baehr told the local news channel KHON2.

What exactly is the average

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