You’re not saying true things. Why are you spreading this disinformation despite everyone correcting you? They’ve been randomly sampling. R values are randomly sampled.
So. Are you saying that the R number given by the government is derived from data only from random sampling, and that other test statistics do not feed into the estimate at all?
I’m not a statistician or epidemiologist and I find that very hard to believe. But I will honestly be happy to have learned something if you can teach me otherwise.
My understanding was that longitudinal studies using random sampling were used to check and correct the numbers derived from the actual test numbers for the real population. That meant the longitudinal studies would have been even more important early on when access to testing was poor, because the sample distribution was obviously skewed wrt the whole population.
Again, I really would appreciate a substantial rebuttal, link or otherwise.
Thanks