This post came to me in a message and as a response to my “And I’m worried” blog post from Monday evening. I know the author, and we’ve agreed that no other identifying information will be shared.
Except for cutting the opening hello and setting up paragraph breaks, I’ve made no edits to what was written.
You absolutely shouldn’t be worried.
I am a scientist and up to my neck in this working with the pharmacy companies producing the vaccines. We model progression of Covid for countries all over the world where data is available.
Just be thankful we live in Pittsburgh. It’s very safe here unless you are a seeker of trouble/completely irresponsible, which I know you are not.
Also as a degreed mathematician too, I can tell you the positivity rate is statistically meaningless. To take it to the extreme to demonstrate, as Covid continues to go away, there will be very few people with symptoms, so many less getting tested. So then if a few in the small sampling are positive, the positivity rate is very large. It’s a silly statistic really.
There are much better ways to measure our state of well being. I didn’t want to post this publicly because as a scientist I don’t want this being twisted into political view, one way or the other. For the record, I’m an independent. I watch news reports with an objective eye, seeing a lot of misinformation. Makes me sad. Gosh, please emphasize to your students the importance of objectivity and reporting facts and not opinions.
Moretti's Musings 