Your method of normalization seems too strong to me. Suppose there are two groups of people getting tested: 1. those that have good reason to believe they have Covid (symptoms or extended contact with known case) and 2. those people who have no good reason to believe they have Covid (no symptoms, no known extended contact). Your method seems to assume all tests are of group 2 variety, and therefore more tests -> more +'s. However, for those in group 1, the causality can go the opposite... it's because there are more symptomatic people that we have more tests, so that is truly a signal of more cases. So, to me, to normalize properly we would need to know the split between groups 1 & 2. My anecdotal evidence would say there is a ton of group 2 vs. group 1 (and thus your method is pretty good), but I don't know if we have data for that.
Scariants smariants. Here's something to ponder. Astra-Zeneca vaccine was trialed in UK, South Africa, Brazil. The new variants were discovered for the first time in UK, South Africa and Brazil, and nowhere else. Alarm bells ringing? Calm down, correlation does not prove causality (nobody has bothered about that dictum very much during this panicdemic). Here's my hypothesis: To accompany the trials, genomic sequencing was massively increased in the trial countries, so much so that UK did the most genomic sequencing of anywhere worldwide. I haven't confirmed this, but in my opinion, the scariant hysteria has been caused by "Seek, and ye shall find". Very similar to the PCR fiasco fueling the "cases" hysteria. Final thought: would it have been better for humankind NOT to have had the half-understood technology with which to frighten itself?
Your method of normalization seems too strong to me. Suppose there are two groups of people getting tested: 1. those that have good reason to believe they have Covid (symptoms or extended contact with known case) and 2. those people who have no good reason to believe they have Covid (no symptoms, no known extended contact). Your method seems to assume all tests are of group 2 variety, and therefore more tests -> more +'s. However, for those in group 1, the causality can go the opposite... it's because there are more symptomatic people that we have more tests, so that is truly a signal of more cases. So, to me, to normalize properly we would need to know the split between groups 1 & 2. My anecdotal evidence would say there is a ton of group 2 vs. group 1 (and thus your method is pretty good), but I don't know if we have data for that.
Scariants smariants. Here's something to ponder. Astra-Zeneca vaccine was trialed in UK, South Africa, Brazil. The new variants were discovered for the first time in UK, South Africa and Brazil, and nowhere else. Alarm bells ringing? Calm down, correlation does not prove causality (nobody has bothered about that dictum very much during this panicdemic). Here's my hypothesis: To accompany the trials, genomic sequencing was massively increased in the trial countries, so much so that UK did the most genomic sequencing of anywhere worldwide. I haven't confirmed this, but in my opinion, the scariant hysteria has been caused by "Seek, and ye shall find". Very similar to the PCR fiasco fueling the "cases" hysteria. Final thought: would it have been better for humankind NOT to have had the half-understood technology with which to frighten itself?