LETTER: Coronavirus statistics can be misleading
The Review-Journal’s Thursday headline “Latino community hardest hit by coronavirus in Clark County” was very misleading. According to the latest data, Clark County has 702,000 Hispanic or Latino residents — 31.4 percent of the total population. So why is Dr. Fermin Leguen saying this population is the hardest hit by the virus when his own statistics say that 27 percent of confirmed cases are Hispanics? That’s 4.4 percentage points below their population distribition.
The other issue I have is that total new coronavirus cases and deaths are reported on a daily basis, but the more important number in gauging how we are doing is the number of new hospitalizations. That information is not available on a daily basis. Why not? Because it’s positive news?
With more testing, we are going to show an increase in new cases because we are testing more people. Any number of deaths is sad and tragic. But getting the complete picture will help people make better decisions as the quarantine is lifted.
