Population Statistics for Explaining the Impacts of COVID-19: Unusual Time Call for Usual Measures

Abstract

Epidemics and other health crises impact the way we measure, understand, and teach population statistics. The discipline of demography has had a significant impact on the development of useful techniques in the rapid assessment of changing population dynamics. While the COVID 19 pandemic represents the current crisis impacting all nations in different ways, these tools are equally useful in the face of other health emergencies such as flooding, famine, and other types of population instability. Using measures of mortality, hospitalization, and infection for the current COVID 19 epidemic, concepts such as the difference between relative risk and absolute risk, measures that have caused considerable confusion reporting, will be explained, and guidelines provided to allow students to calculate these statistics in a classroom situation. The COVID 19 pandemic represents the latest in a long series of population health events. Still, the tools and techniques of demography play a vital role in understanding how these processes affect unique populations in different ways.