Benford’s Law and COVID-19 Reporting

Trust in the reported data of contagious diseases in real time is important for policy makers. Media and politicians have cast doubt on Chinese reported data on COVID-19 cases. We find Chinese confirmed infections match the distribution expected in Benford’s Law and are similar to that se...

وصف كامل

التفاصيل البيبلوغرافية
المؤلفون الرئيسيون: Koch, C, Okamura, K
التنسيق: Journal article
اللغة:English
منشور في: Elsevier 2020
الوصف
الملخص:Trust in the reported data of contagious diseases in real time is important for policy makers. Media and politicians have cast doubt on Chinese reported data on COVID-19 cases. We find Chinese confirmed infections match the distribution expected in Benford’s Law and are similar to that seen in the U.S. and Italy. We identify a more likely candidate for problems in the policy making process: Poor multilateral data sharing on testing and sampling.