There is no real substitute for case surveillance.

Cases in case surveillance means a count of actual diagnosed cases of a disease.

National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) What is Case Surveillance? Case surveillance is foundational to public health practice. It helps us to understand diseases and their spread and determine appropriate actions to control outbreaks. Case surveillance occurs each time public health agencies at the local, state, or national levels collect information about a case or person diagnosed with a disease or condition that poses a serious health threat to Americans. These diseases and conditions…
National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) What is Case Surveillance? Case surveillance is foundational to public health practice. It helps us to understand diseases and their spread and determine appropriate actions to control outbreaks. Case surveillance occurs each time public health agencies at the local, state, or national levels collect information about a case or person diagnosed with a disease or condition that poses a serious health threat to Americans. These diseases and conditions…
National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) What is Case Surveillance? Case surveillance is foundational to public health practice. It helps us to understand diseases and their spread and determine appropriate actions to control outbreaks. Case surveillance occurs each time public health agencies at the local, state, or national levels collect information about a case or person diagnosed with a disease or condition that poses a serious health threat to Americans. These diseases and conditions…

https://web.archive.org/web/20240421032403/https://www.cdc.gov/nndss/about/index.html

What does it mean when “cases” of a disease are reported? Cases in case surveillance means a count of actual diagnosed cases of a disease. Case counts never represent the true amount of infections, because there are always infections that are never diagnosed for a number of reasons. But case surveillance is a tool to have a good idea what’s going on, because it’s hard data of proven actual diagnosed cases of a disease. It’s not an estimation. It’s not speculation, it’s a case count of actual instances of diagnosed infections. There is no real substitute for case surveillance.
What does it mean when “cases” of a disease are reported? Cases in case surveillance means a count of actual diagnosed cases of a disease. Case counts never represent the true amount of infections, because there are always infections that are never diagnosed for a number of reasons. But case surveillance is a tool to have a good idea what’s going on, because it’s hard data of proven actual diagnosed cases of a disease. It’s not an estimation. It’s not speculation, it’s a case count of actual instances of diagnosed infections. There is no real substitute for case surveillance.

Case counts referred to actual case counts. And then that is used as a concrete way to extrapolate how prevalent a disease is, including all the cases not counted. If you don’t start with actual counted diagnosed cases, extrapolations are completely speculative. Anyone trying to say they can estimate what case counts might be, in the absence of case counts, is just guessing, no matter what metrics or data they’re using. Nothing is comparable to case counts because no clear line between for example case counts and wastewater measurements has ever been established in concrete scientific terms.

I realize it’s unpleasant to face the fact that we’re flying blind, and it’s tempting to want to latch onto anyone offering something — anything to grab onto. But most hype is not worth paying attention to, and Godot won’t be showing up anytime soon. We must live in reality.

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Case Surveillancehealthcareinfection controlinfectious diseasepandemicpublic health