20 ms·

Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

498 points by davedx 7y ago

dannyw 7y ago
How much can we trust the data coming out of China?
- mothsonasloth 7y ago
  We can't but it doesn't matter anymore, the data from South Korea, Italy and Japan will be the most interesting for the next week or so. Then I would imagine each country will be gathering a lot more data as it spreads further in another generation.
  - distantaidenn 7y ago
    I wouldn't put too much faith in the data coming out of Japan at the moment. People are being told to only report to doctors if they are showing serious symptoms associated with the illness. Japan has a "gaman" (perseverance) culture, so I'm worried a lot of cases are gonna be people sitting at home trying to power through what they think is just the run of the mill flu.
  - munkiefish 7y ago
    Indonesia on the other hand seems to have decided not to tell the world or their people how many cases there have been - when clearly they must have some by now.
- lucian1900 7y ago
  How much can we trust the data coming from the American CDC? Why exactly would you distrust China, besides racism?
  - mattmoose21 7y ago
    lol
  - Terretta 7y ago
    The governing construct has nothing to do with race. A government that detains initial sources of ‘rumors’ of untreatable pneumonia should be trusted about as, say, a social network company governance that deletes non-proganda-aligned informational posts about spread of that pneumonia, or an election year government that reduced infectious disease control budgets and says nothing to see here move along. Nothing to do with race.
  - fullstop 7y ago
    > Why exactly would you distrust China, besides racism? Because, historically, they have not been trustworthy with this sort of thing? Not trusting the Chinese government is way different than not trusting a Chinese person.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    Not OP, but: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coron... I personally have trust that at least in the US, a whistleblower would speak out to media if the official announcement doesn't agree with the records s/he can see. Maybe this is also blind faith that the system still works in the US. Who knows if Trump has installed loyalists that deep, who will only report good news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/johnny-mcentee-trump-purge-civil-service-deep-state https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/johnny-mcent...
    - iknowalot 7y ago
      US government has been lying to its population for centuries. For example, all of the bioweapons testing on the domestic US population was done without consent and no whistleblower came forth until the programs were declassified. On the world stage, the US may lie more than China, review our last dozen or so manufactured narratives to engage in regime change...mostly propaganda. We don't seem to use the same ruler to measure the honesty of both countries. Historically speaking, a lot more people end up dead when the US lies. See Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Vietnam, Syria, Korea, a lot of South/Central American countries, etc....
  - vonquant 7y ago
    Oh let me see, perhaps it has something to do with China being a one-party state with a ripe history of human rights atrocities and pervasive censorship. Just look at SARS for an example of where trusting the official information from China made for a terrible idea.
    - lucian1900 7y ago
      And the US isn't a two party state with a ripe history (and present) of human rights atrocities and pervasive censorship? Your view of China is almost entirely defined by US media, owned by capitalists. Perhaps consider they have an incentive to lie.
      - marcosdumay 7y ago
        There is a discontinuity there. A two party system is many orders of magnitude more reliable than a single party system, even if not ideal. The US also has a much smaller history of hiding facts and persecuting the Press.
        lucian1900 7y ago
        The two US parties are almost completely identical in behaviour. They have both continued brutal imperialism. They have both demonised countries that opposed said imperialism and persecuted the few in the US (press or otherwise) that were also opposed. There is also no democratic control of the people over the US press, it's privately owned by only a few. The press has an extremely long history of hiding and fabricating facts, particularly against anti-capitalists. More importantly, there is no democratic control over production and distribution. It is almost all privately owned. The US's history of brutality and manipulation is unmatched.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Maybe because the virus was downplayed from the beginning and the doctors who discovered it, were punished and told to be quiet instead of getting support? Now sure, the chinese government changed their tactic, but it would take a while for me, to trust them on anything.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  They might be 'massaging' the numbers, or maybe they aren't, but considering the importance of the issue for China and the world, and how many eyes are watching, their interest is still to report factual trends and overall situation. At this point they cannot afford to claim that everything is fine if it isn't. I'm more worried about Iran than China.
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    > their interest is still to report factual trends and overall situation Unfortunately it isn't. They are trying to put people back to work and reopen trade because of the damage it is doing to their economy, and massaging the numbers is one crucial element of making that happen.
    - mytailorisrich 7y ago
      This is FUD. They are not in a vacuum. Business and travel will resume only if the situation is demonstrably resolved, or close to. They cannot afford to fake it and re-open factories and lift quarantines just for mass contamination to occur, which would be very public and screw them internationally for good. Edit: Everyone, from all impacted countries say that they are still open for business because they don't want everything to stop and people to be spooked. The country is not all under quarantine. That has nothing to do with faking numbers.
      - microcolonel 7y ago
        Dude, they are literally releasing videos from officials telling some businesspeople that they're still open for business. Don't shoot the messenger, I know it's a dumb idea, but how surprised can you be that the CCP is trying to do something dumb after all the dumb things they've done? Maybe instead of declaring something "FUD", which to me sounds like you're saying I'm here in bad faith, consider that I meant what I said.
        qzx_pierri 7y ago
- samvher 7y ago
  Not a direct answer to your question but related: https://www.vox.com/2020/1/27/21082354/coronavirus-outbreak-wuhan-china-early-on-lancet https://www.vox.com/2020/1/27/21082354/coronavirus-outbreak-... TL;DR: The beginning was not great, but it seems better now.
- ggreer 7y ago
  Let's look at China's flu death stats to get an idea of how honest the government tends to be. From a 2018 article in a CCP-owned newspaper[1]: > The total number of flu deaths last year was 144, compared with 56 in 2016 and 41 in 2017. A recent article in The Global Times (a tabloid owned by the CCP's official newspaper) gives similar figures.[2] So China lies about flu deaths by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Who knows how much they're juking the stats on covid-19 deaths. 1. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/22/WS5c6f11daa3106c65c34eaaf7.html https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/22/WS5c6f11daa3106c65... 2. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml
  - oefrha 7y ago
    Can’t you see the word “reported” next to the stats? Most flu hospitalizations and deaths aren’t reported. I encourage you to read U.S. CDC’s explanations on how they estimate flu hospitalizations and deaths. Only a small percentage is ever reported even in the U.S. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm
    - ggreer 7y ago
      In the same article about 144 reported flu deaths, they cite the comparable Hong Kong flu stats (226 dead) despite Hong Kong having 0.5% of the population of China. Nowhere in that article do they mention differences in methodologies of reported vs estimated. My point is that if the China CDC is counting covid-19 cases the way they count flu cases, that means the actual numbers are much worse. They underreport the number of flu cases by a factor of 50. eg: They claim 700,000 cases in 2018, which is less than 0.1% of the population. (In developed countries, around 5% of the population gets the flu each year.) Then they juke the stats to claim fewer flu deaths than there actually are (144 deaths instead of 150,000). I don't think the numbers for covid-19 are off by two orders of magnitude, but my point is that the China CDC loves to publish numbers that amount to outright lies.
      - oefrha 7y ago
        > Yes, my point is blah blah Yes, and that’s a ridiculous “point” however you interpret it.
- chippy 7y ago
  The line within China is that they made a big mistake with the figures initially, but those responsible (e.g. Wuhan officials) have been dealt with and everything is now more truthful.
tarkin2 7y ago
It's symptoms are pneumonia-like and it mainly kills the elderly. Is this is a new strain of pneumonia? If so, this seems like an overreaction? Edit: Not sure what the downvotes are about. I asked a question. So you can't fight it with drugs, it's highly contagious, hard to initially detect, its long-term effects are unknown, most have recovered and it's largely fatal to the elderly or those with existing conditions.
- consp 7y ago
  A 1% death rate in people without known complications (even 0.2% which seems pervasive in every age group) is orders of magnitude higher than for instance flu. And it spreads easily and is contagious before symptoms. Sounds like something you should be aware of.
  - nik_s 7y ago
    Actually, multiple orders of magnitude...The Flu has a mortality rate of 2 per 100k [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm [edited - reformatted numbers to avoid localization issues]
    - LegitShady 7y ago
      Commas and decimals are not interchangeable
      - collyw 7y ago
        They are if you switch between Spanish and English.
        LegitShady 7y ago
        Don't design planes.
      - d3ckard 7y ago
        And US doesn’t set worldwide standards for their use.
adeptus 7y ago
We need real data, not theories. Hopefully we'll get it soon.
- ajross 7y ago
  This article literally is data.
  - JshWright 7y ago
    It's incomplete data, that is being combined in ways to give certain impressions, that aren't necessarily backed by actual medical science.
    - ajross 7y ago
      Gah, the data in this article is literally medical science. It's reporting on a paper from the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology, which it even links you to directly. Now, maybe this science is wrong. If you want to make that argument, though, you need to make it with evidence. You don't get to dismiss it like that without doing your own science.
      - JshWright 7y ago
        The way the data is sliced and diced is not necessarily meaningful. Looks at the mortality rates based on those simple categories can paint a misleading picture.
ericb 7y ago
Does anyone have a system for keeping on top of the latest studies and preprints? I get study links second-hand on social media sites, but I'd like to watch them closer.
- theseadroid 7y ago
  I find this subreddit more scientific based than even many epidemiologists I follow: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/
- mattkrause 7y ago
  Most new biology papers (in general, not just for coronavirus) are posted to bioarXiv. Bear in mind that these are unreviewed and, given the importance (and trendiness) many of them have been rushed out. There are also strong career incentives to make sensational claims that go viral. Definitely worth reading if you've got some relevant background, but keep your skeptical hat on too.
  - gdy 7y ago
    "that go viral" :)
moultano 7y ago
This is the email I sent my team last night. We should consider working from home. You may all have seen the news by now. A patient was just diagnosed with COVID-19 at UC Davis after having no known contact with anyone travelling. Importantly, they were diagnosed after being intubated already for 7 days. It is suspected that this is the first known case of public transmission of the virus in the US. From what we know about the incubation times and progression of the illness, that means they contracted it sometime between 14-21 days ago. This is the letter UC Davis sent to their staff. If the virus has already been in the wild in California for 3 weeks, it seems likely to me that it has or will reach the bay area, and given the limited testing capability that has been reported, we may not know until the first cases end up in the ICU, weeks after exposure. The death rate for young healthy people is relatively low, around 0.2%. It is much higher for older people, who it kills in double digit percentages. Still, 20% of the people it infects need intensive hospital care. Many epidemiologists now suspect that it is likely to become endemic, and that 40-70% of the world's population will contract it. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vac... So what can we do? The most important thing to keep the death rate low is to reduce the burden on the hospital system so that they don't end up with more cases needing critical care than they can handle. And the most important thing for reducing the burden on hospitals is to slow the spread of the virus, so that even if it ends up infecting all of us, it doesn't infect all of us at once. We're fortunate enough that aside from impromptu collaboration and whiteboarding, all of our concrete tasks can be done at home. Most workers will not be in this situation, and will have to come to work to keep the economy running. For those of you familiar with random graph theory, the average number of edges in a graph has an exponential effect on its diameter, and so the best thing we can do is to avoid as much contact as we can. https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~novozhil/Teaching/767%20Data/chapter_3.pdf https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~novozhil/Teaching/767%20Data/ch... For people coming to the office, the WHO has a document on getting your workplace ready for COVID-19 that I'd encourage you to read and internalize. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/getting-workplace-ready-for-covid-19.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/getting... I'm already conveniently WFH with a cold, which I hope is just a cold, but I think we should consider making this the norm, at least until we have more clarity on what the situation is.
Gormisdomai 7y ago
Isn't the preexisting conditions table incredibly uninformative and heavily confounded by the fact that a lot of these conditions are far more prevalent in elderly people?
- JKCalhoun 7y ago
  Possibly. Or possibly the reason the disease is more fatal for elderly — they are more likely to have these preexisting conditions.
- epmaybe 7y ago
  I think it helps point out that there is probably an underreporting and selection bias in the cases of coronavirus that get reported, precisely because healthy patients with coronavirus probably won't go to the hospital, and if they do they just treat for a pneumonia without doing coronavirus testing (what's the indication to make the cost worthwhile?).
  - oefrha 7y ago
    > what's the indication to make the cost worthwhile? That sentence doesn’t quite parse, but in China COVID-19 is treated for free whereas for regular pneumonia you have to pay whatever out of pocket cost after insurance coverage.
    - epmaybe 7y ago
      I meant that in a healthy patient with good access to health care, who presumably would not suffer tremendously from COVID-19, and be treated the same regardless of whether they had that or influenza, why get testing? It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist. In the US, at least, I doubt that the cost of care would change whether or not it is COVID-19 vs influenza pneumonia versus bacterial pneumonia.
eecc 7y ago
People, if you haven’t yet go get the seasonal flu vaccine. Reduces burden on strained ops and your risk of getting double tapped
- LandR 7y ago
  Isn't this something you can only get if you are in at risk group? I can't go to my doctor and just get a flu shot, I don't think?
  - mc32 7y ago
    Everyone except very young children are encouraged to get the vaccine. You can get them at clinics, hospitals or chain pharmacies.
  - 3001 7y ago
    Yes, you can
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    You can in normal countries
  - ncallaway 7y ago
    That tends to only be the case when there's some limit on flu shot production. The normal case is that you can walk into most CVS or other pharmacy, ask for a flu shot, and walk out having been immunized within 15 minutes. Even if you're not a high risk, getting a flu shot is an important preventative measure for any high risk individuals you may come in contact with.
  - eecc 7y ago
    In NL, I literally did just that: I walked in, asked if it was still worthwhile and the doc said “sure, we haven’t peaked on the flu yet. Want one?” I said “yeah” and we were done in 5 min max. I guess it’s somehow got to do with living in a country with some leftovers of the Socialist hellhole it used to be... /s
    - 7y ago
dustingetz 7y ago
The death rate seems to not consider subclinical cases which did not escalate to the point of getting tested, which is probably the majority of cases
oefrha 7y ago
This page only has death rates, not number of cases for each group, so it only tells half of the story. See Table 1 of the actual paper for complete stats (source of the stats on the linked page). http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51#Table1 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  And screencapped image: https://imgur.com/a/Ve5gT3O https://imgur.com/a/Ve5gT3O (posted by me)
  - citilife 7y ago
    Seems like the larger correlation in deaths is related to societal status - farmers, laborers, and retirees have much higher death rates.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      Farmers — likely crappy rural healthcare. Retirees — obviously age-skewed.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Quite possibly also: arriving sicker. Hypothesis: If you're a rural / non-urban farmer, under quarantine and travel restrictions, you don't go to a hospital unless you're already very sick. One of the real challenges here is in separating data artefacts from ground truth. Testing, surveillance, self-presentation, doctor-lobbying (by the patient or family) can all influence that. This makes all data already somewhat suspect, before any overt manipulations are considered (and makes those manipulations all the more toxic to a full understanding). And of course, there are numerous other factors. Farmers may well have poorer overall health (nutrition, behavioural risk factors (smoking, drink), preexisting conditions, latent or opportunistic infection, etc., etc.). All of which I'm very openly speculating on -- these are hypotheses which would have to be demonstrated through clinical assessment or systematic observation. Note that "systematic" and "complete" aren't the same -- if you are following a defensible sampling method, then 100% coverage isn't necessary. But you'd want to capture samples from other populations. The overall prevalence of COVID-19 within even Wuhan City and Hubei Province is still low, based on assessed cases (clinical symptoms or the more accurate PCR genetic screen for the SARS-nCoV-2 virus), still under 1%. Which means that population sampling would be unlikely to detect many cases without something on the order of many hundreds, possibly thousands, of samples. You're looking for an accurate central-tendency descriptor of a ~1:100 event. Knowing what the actual exposure rate has been would be useful. Whether it's sufficiently useful to come up with a comprehensive large-scale sampling methodology is another question. Note that it's not merely the sampling size, but the selection and successful measurement from each of the selected individuals for sampling which is necessary. (I've some statistics background, and some healthcare background. Enough to know basics of sampling, error, and bias. Epidemiological public health monitoring is beyond my pay grade however.)
billygoat 7y ago
I really would like to know if smoking is implicated. Are there any smoker/nonsmoker stats anywhere?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Yes, though that's mostly rolled up in the gender statistics. Men are far more likely smokers than women in China. Mentioned in TFA.
  - Spare_account 7y ago
    Is the F in 'TFA' what I think it is?
    - severine 7y ago
      Fine is fine.
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        Sometimes some of the letters are different.
    - Simon_says 7y ago
      Yes, you're right. It's "featured".
    - rkuykendall-com 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM > RTFM is an initialism for the expression "read the fucking manual". > RTFA ("read the fucking/featured article"—common on news forums such as Fark.com[6] and Slashdot, where using "TFA" instead of "the article" has become a meme)
- bart_spoon 7y ago
  I don't know of any studies looking specifically at smoking vs non-smoking, but its been highly speculated to be a strong risk factor. Apparently, there is a big gap in prevalence of smoking between men and women in China (close 50% for men, closer to 5% for women), which is thought to be at least partially an explanation for the differences in deaths (2/3rds of deaths were male, 1/3 were female).
sciinfo 7y ago
There seems to be many cases of young patients dying in Iran. Either because there are way more cases than being officially reported or (hopefully not) the virus has mutated to affect the young more, or both. The first hypothesis is likely based on the number of infections found in international travellers who went to Iran. We still cannot rule out the second hypothesis though. A 23-year-old woman soccer player: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/faadg4/a_23_year_old_iranian_woman_soccer_player_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/faadg4/a_23_ye... A male nurse talking of 8 deaths in one night during his shift. 23-year-old female (same case?), 29- and 30-year-old males, 50-year-old female among them. (1-minute clip) EDIT: It's just n=8, but 37.5% dying at age 30 or below is most likely drawn from a different distribution from 0.6% among the 70,000+ cases in the largest Chinese study (where the worldometers data comes from). EDIT 2: Based on a link in a sibling comment, only 7 deaths among 20-29 yo and 18 deaths among 30-39 yo in the n=44,672 Chinese report. https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1232779487647031302 https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1232779487647031302 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51#Table1 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...
- adventured 7y ago
  Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned of Covid early on, was also only 34 years old.
  - sciinfo 7y ago
    Doctors and nurses are exposed to a much higher viral load than most people. In Wuhan, they may also overwork and have insufficient sleep.
    - railsgirls112 7y ago
      Good thing no younger adults in the western world are overworked and under rested ;)
    - riyadparvez 7y ago
      > higher viral load What is "higher viral load"? Isn't it binary - you are either infected or not?
nik_s 7y ago
The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/(infected + dead)) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. In a disease that is exponentially growing, a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead)). Based on the available data [1], we are closer to 7.8% than 2% mortality, which is closer to the final mortality rate of SARS of 9.6% [2]. Nevertheless, I think all these statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt - I doubt that the numbers we are seeing are of very high quality, given the political and cultural pressures in China to underreport, the lack of test kits, corona virus deaths being attributed to other diseases, ... On the flip side, it's very likely that mild cases will never be reported, which in turn would decrease the mortality rate. [1] https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... [edit: corrected the formula - thank you @anhner and @11thEarlOfMar for spotting the mistake] [edit: indicated that there's also a chance of under-reporting mild cases - my edit coincided with @Tenoke's post - sorry for noticing this late @Tenoke]
- anhner 7y ago
  I don't understand your first argument. Surely increasing the denominator would lower the mortality percent? Also does the total number of infected not include the dead?
  - nik_s 7y ago
    Indeed, you are right - I corrected the formulas.
  - m3kw9 7y ago
    But the infected who isn’t dead may or may not die at the end. So using infected as the denominator is not accurate. But using just the recovered as denim Arie is also incorrect unless you have enough samples. Using China’s figures are wildly inaccurate because of lack of tests and transparency. So maybe a better complex model can be derived from current datas
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
JetBen 7y ago
Such a shame we can't trust anything the Chinese gov't says. These stats are likely all bogus.
zebrafish 7y ago
i know it's passe to rail on the media, but i think the hyperconnectedness of everyone is causing the amount of panic i'm sensing out there to significantly outweigh the risks wrt covid-19.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  I agree. The Chinese went hysterical when the outbreak was first noticed, and I heard a lot about it spontaneously when wishing people happy new year. Hysteria continued right up to the point where... everyone went back to work. I think the government got unlucky that the outbreak coincided with a major holiday. And while shutting things down was a good idea in many ways, it also meant that people were stuck at home with nothing to do but freak out. So that's what everybody did.
  - toron123 7y ago
    There is another possibility that the situation is much, much worse and Chinese are just telling part of the truth. Look how spreading is much worse in Korea than what Chinese says happens in China.
    - tinza123 7y ago
      They may not be simply compared like that, because of the different measures taken. China did shutdown the entire country basically, cities with millions of people won't allow anyone to come in / out, and almost all shops / stores shut down.
- moultano 7y ago
  What gives you the impression that the risk is small?
- el_cujo 7y ago
  If you look at it from the point of view of "am I going to die from corona virus?" then yes, the panic is overblown (for most people anyway). The real fear is that enough people are going to get sick and have to stay home (to eventually recover) that it will severely disrupt the world, ranging from economic markets to supply of food/drugs at grocery stores. I'm not necessarily saying I buy into that doomsday/prepper hype, but seeing news like Japan recommending school closures definitely makes me worry.
Iv 7y ago
Ok, time for a rant. If you looked at that table and went like "Oh, just 0.2% for me, great! No need to worry!" you are a terrible person. Even just at 0.2%, a billion people infected would result in more casualties than most recent conflicts. Eradicating diseases is possibly the most noble, the most obviously good behavior that humans can have. And here we have the opposite, people spreading it because of carelessness, because it is likely to not impact them too much, because their holiday plans are too important. Damn. And damned Hollywood for making people think that an epidemic has to kill a high percentage to be deadly. I am less afraid of hearing of an Ebola outbreak than about a new strain of seasonal virus that did not have any opportunities to combine with others yet.
- jaas 7y ago
  "If you looked at that table and went like "Oh, just 0.2% for me, great! No need to worry!" you are a terrible person." Or, with a bit more empathy, they just haven't put it in the right context yet. Any death from this is unfortunate, but many things can kill you and many people have accepted a low mortality percentage for lots of things. They may just initially perceive that smallish number as another one among many (e.g. the normal flu, biking). It may be a big number compared to other stuff, but it looks small and I can see how people might be dismissive. That doesn't make them terrible people, they just don't (yet?) have the perspective that you do.
- henriquemaia 7y ago
  I disagree. you're not a terrible person for thinking that. There's only so much you can do, and the disease and the deaths it leaves in its wake is totally out of the reach of your intention or actions. Worrying about something like that does not award you good person points. Actually, contributing to the general panic is far worse in terms of your real impact on what's going on. So, in this sense, you may be an actually worse person to think like you're proposing.
toptal 7y ago
So it’s just a coincidence that Dr. Li Wenliang, who was 34, died and he only had a 0.2% chance of dying? I find this too much of a coincidence. There is no way these numbers can be correct.
- fullstop 7y ago
  My tinfoil hat wonders if he actually died from other causes.
  - petschge 7y ago
    Causes like not eating and drinking enough and not sleeping enough while already pretty sick?
- kemotep 7y ago
  Just because the statistical probability of something happening is very low does not mean that it is physically impossible. Flipping a coin 100 times and having the results all be heads is extremely low but still physically possible. We can be skeptical about China's official numbers but just because something is statistically unlikely to happen and it happens does not mean immediately that there is foul play.
- emiliobumachar 7y ago
  There's reporting bias. Would you have heard of him if he had survived?
  - mr-ron 7y ago
    He was in the news well before he died: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001359040/police-arrest-doctor-who-predicted-coronavirus https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001359040/police-ar...
rkachowski 7y ago
what css artifact is causing the last "e" in "Rate" to be consistently out of the bold formatting?
- swader999 7y ago
 Asking the real questions right here.
- jfk13 7y ago
 Not CSS's fault, it's just how the document is marked-up: *Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) ... The fact that it happens consistently is probably a result of copy-and-paste (or equivalently, it's wrong in a report-generating template of some kind that produced each section).
 - downerending 7y ago
 Looks like a WYSIWYG wreck.
checker659 7y ago
I wish there was statistics available on mortality for people taking immunosuppressants (secondary immunosuppression).
- blueant 7y ago
  Very interesting point, although this population should be very small (people with transplants or treating rheumatic deseases with biologicals).
- tathatsnice 7y ago
  I am also interested in this. If you find information on this, please post it here.
yogthos 7y ago
Imagine if people would get as excited about actual problems like global warming and the unfolding mass extinction as they do about a new mild flu.
- swader999 7y ago
  Exponential vs logistic growth. This is far more of a threat.
  - yogthos 7y ago
    This virus is not a threat to long term survival of the human species by any stretch of imagination. Meanwhile the collapse of our biosphere is an existential threat. What's more, we know that we have a very short window to make any meaningful changes to prevent the worst outcomes including our extinction. Yet, we're still completely reliant on fossil fuels, and the industry is actually being subsidized right now. Thinking that this is more of a threat because it's happening now as opposed to a few decades in the future is sheer idiocy.
- dharma1 7y ago
  Timescale, and immediacy of the threat. Humans are not good at long timescale thinking. BTW I don't think these things need to be mutually exclusive. We should take action against all kinds of threats
  - yogthos 7y ago
    Obviously we should take action against all kinds of threats. My point is that the reaction to this virus is completely disproportional to the level of the threat. Meanwhile, lack of reaction to an actual existential threat we're facing in the near future is utterly terrifying.
throwitaway6666 7y ago
Let me preface this in saying I'm no way a racist, race realist, or any such thing. I'm currently living and working in China and I've be inundated with many rumours and hearsay from Chinese people to ex-pats living here about the virus. I've heard a rumour where the virus has had a greater impact on people of Asian descent rather than Caucasians and Africans due to genetic differences. Has there been any proof or confirmation of this? I've seen obnoxious ex-pats walking around Shanghai without masks claiming that they'll be fine because it's Asians that need to be worried about the virus.
golergka 7y ago
So, it seems as if smoking actually prevents infection, or something along the lines of it?
thanatropism 7y ago
I expected something disaggregate. This would make a great alternative to titanic.csv to teach an intro class.
jxramos 7y ago
This is a really great format. I particularly appreciate the proactive interpretative pitfall warning. Would that all publications be so upfront. > The percentage shown below does NOT represent in any way the
Fnoord 7y ago
Zero infants or children between 0-9 have died. The article mentions: > In general, relatively few cases are seen among children. How come? My expectation would be something akin to an elderly range.
dredmorbius 7y ago
A related item that's been languishing in HN's submissions queue: "Mapping Coronavirus, Responsibly" https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/mapping-coronavirus-responsibly/ https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/ma... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427334 This looks at the geographic distribution of COVID-19, and ways of accurately (and non-emotionally) conveying that information. Existing infographics have tended to hide information as much as they reveal it.
qwerty456127 7y ago
Given 0.2% chance to die I see no reason to care, I probably have higher chances to die in a car accident on any given day. Even if I were 80 years old I still would see no reason to worry about the 14.8% chance to die as I would probably have comparable chances to get a hear attack and die on any given day anyway.
killface 7y ago
I'm curious about the dramatically increased mortality rate with diabetes. Given America's situation, especially with insulin prices at a perverse high, that could be catastrophic.

498 points by davedx 7y ago

dannyw 7y ago

How much can we trust the data coming out of China?

mothsonasloth 7y ago
We can't but it doesn't matter anymore, the data from South Korea, Italy and Japan will be the most interesting for the next week or so. Then I would imagine each country will be gathering a lot more data as it spreads further in another generation.
- distantaidenn 7y ago
  I wouldn't put too much faith in the data coming out of Japan at the moment. People are being told to only report to doctors if they are showing serious symptoms associated with the illness. Japan has a "gaman" (perseverance) culture, so I'm worried a lot of cases are gonna be people sitting at home trying to power through what they think is just the run of the mill flu.
- munkiefish 7y ago
  Indonesia on the other hand seems to have decided not to tell the world or their people how many cases there have been - when clearly they must have some by now.
lucian1900 7y ago
How much can we trust the data coming from the American CDC? Why exactly would you distrust China, besides racism?
- mattmoose21 7y ago
  lol
- Terretta 7y ago
  The governing construct has nothing to do with race. A government that detains initial sources of ‘rumors’ of untreatable pneumonia should be trusted about as, say, a social network company governance that deletes non-proganda-aligned informational posts about spread of that pneumonia, or an election year government that reduced infectious disease control budgets and says nothing to see here move along. Nothing to do with race.
- fullstop 7y ago
  > Why exactly would you distrust China, besides racism? Because, historically, they have not been trustworthy with this sort of thing? Not trusting the Chinese government is way different than not trusting a Chinese person.
- netsharc 7y ago
  Not OP, but: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coron... I personally have trust that at least in the US, a whistleblower would speak out to media if the official announcement doesn't agree with the records s/he can see. Maybe this is also blind faith that the system still works in the US. Who knows if Trump has installed loyalists that deep, who will only report good news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/johnny-mcentee-trump-purge-civil-service-deep-state https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/26/johnny-mcent...
  - iknowalot 7y ago
    US government has been lying to its population for centuries. For example, all of the bioweapons testing on the domestic US population was done without consent and no whistleblower came forth until the programs were declassified. On the world stage, the US may lie more than China, review our last dozen or so manufactured narratives to engage in regime change...mostly propaganda. We don't seem to use the same ruler to measure the honesty of both countries. Historically speaking, a lot more people end up dead when the US lies. See Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Vietnam, Syria, Korea, a lot of South/Central American countries, etc....
- vonquant 7y ago
  Oh let me see, perhaps it has something to do with China being a one-party state with a ripe history of human rights atrocities and pervasive censorship. Just look at SARS for an example of where trusting the official information from China made for a terrible idea.
  - lucian1900 7y ago
    And the US isn't a two party state with a ripe history (and present) of human rights atrocities and pervasive censorship? Your view of China is almost entirely defined by US media, owned by capitalists. Perhaps consider they have an incentive to lie.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      There is a discontinuity there. A two party system is many orders of magnitude more reliable than a single party system, even if not ideal. The US also has a much smaller history of hiding facts and persecuting the Press.
      - lucian1900 7y ago
        The two US parties are almost completely identical in behaviour. They have both continued brutal imperialism. They have both demonised countries that opposed said imperialism and persecuted the few in the US (press or otherwise) that were also opposed. There is also no democratic control of the people over the US press, it's privately owned by only a few. The press has an extremely long history of hiding and fabricating facts, particularly against anti-capitalists. More importantly, there is no democratic control over production and distribution. It is almost all privately owned. The US's history of brutality and manipulation is unmatched.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Maybe because the virus was downplayed from the beginning and the doctors who discovered it, were punished and told to be quiet instead of getting support? Now sure, the chinese government changed their tactic, but it would take a while for me, to trust them on anything.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
They might be 'massaging' the numbers, or maybe they aren't, but considering the importance of the issue for China and the world, and how many eyes are watching, their interest is still to report factual trends and overall situation. At this point they cannot afford to claim that everything is fine if it isn't. I'm more worried about Iran than China.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > their interest is still to report factual trends and overall situation Unfortunately it isn't. They are trying to put people back to work and reopen trade because of the damage it is doing to their economy, and massaging the numbers is one crucial element of making that happen.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    This is FUD. They are not in a vacuum. Business and travel will resume only if the situation is demonstrably resolved, or close to. They cannot afford to fake it and re-open factories and lift quarantines just for mass contamination to occur, which would be very public and screw them internationally for good. Edit: Everyone, from all impacted countries say that they are still open for business because they don't want everything to stop and people to be spooked. The country is not all under quarantine. That has nothing to do with faking numbers.
    - microcolonel 7y ago
      Dude, they are literally releasing videos from officials telling some businesspeople that they're still open for business. Don't shoot the messenger, I know it's a dumb idea, but how surprised can you be that the CCP is trying to do something dumb after all the dumb things they've done? Maybe instead of declaring something "FUD", which to me sounds like you're saying I'm here in bad faith, consider that I meant what I said.
      - qzx_pierri 7y ago
samvher 7y ago
Not a direct answer to your question but related: https://www.vox.com/2020/1/27/21082354/coronavirus-outbreak-wuhan-china-early-on-lancet https://www.vox.com/2020/1/27/21082354/coronavirus-outbreak-... TL;DR: The beginning was not great, but it seems better now.
ggreer 7y ago
Let's look at China's flu death stats to get an idea of how honest the government tends to be. From a 2018 article in a CCP-owned newspaper[1]: > The total number of flu deaths last year was 144, compared with 56 in 2016 and 41 in 2017. A recent article in The Global Times (a tabloid owned by the CCP's official newspaper) gives similar figures.[2] So China lies about flu deaths by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Who knows how much they're juking the stats on covid-19 deaths. 1. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/22/WS5c6f11daa3106c65c34eaaf7.html https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/22/WS5c6f11daa3106c65... 2. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml
- oefrha 7y ago
  Can’t you see the word “reported” next to the stats? Most flu hospitalizations and deaths aren’t reported. I encourage you to read U.S. CDC’s explanations on how they estimate flu hospitalizations and deaths. Only a small percentage is ever reported even in the U.S. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/how-cdc-estimates.htm
  - ggreer 7y ago
    In the same article about 144 reported flu deaths, they cite the comparable Hong Kong flu stats (226 dead) despite Hong Kong having 0.5% of the population of China. Nowhere in that article do they mention differences in methodologies of reported vs estimated. My point is that if the China CDC is counting covid-19 cases the way they count flu cases, that means the actual numbers are much worse. They underreport the number of flu cases by a factor of 50. eg: They claim 700,000 cases in 2018, which is less than 0.1% of the population. (In developed countries, around 5% of the population gets the flu each year.) Then they juke the stats to claim fewer flu deaths than there actually are (144 deaths instead of 150,000). I don't think the numbers for covid-19 are off by two orders of magnitude, but my point is that the China CDC loves to publish numbers that amount to outright lies.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      > Yes, my point is blah blah Yes, and that’s a ridiculous “point” however you interpret it.
chippy 7y ago
The line within China is that they made a big mistake with the figures initially, but those responsible (e.g. Wuhan officials) have been dealt with and everything is now more truthful.

tarkin2 7y ago

It's symptoms are pneumonia-like and it mainly kills the elderly. Is this is a new strain of pneumonia? If so, this seems like an overreaction? Edit: Not sure what the downvotes are about. I asked a question. So you can't fight it with drugs, it's highly contagious, hard to initially detect, its long-term effects are unknown, most have recovered and it's largely fatal to the elderly or those with existing conditions.

consp 7y ago
A 1% death rate in people without known complications (even 0.2% which seems pervasive in every age group) is orders of magnitude higher than for instance flu. And it spreads easily and is contagious before symptoms. Sounds like something you should be aware of.
- nik_s 7y ago
  Actually, multiple orders of magnitude...The Flu has a mortality rate of 2 per 100k [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm [edited - reformatted numbers to avoid localization issues]
  - LegitShady 7y ago
    Commas and decimals are not interchangeable
    - collyw 7y ago
      They are if you switch between Spanish and English.
      - LegitShady 7y ago
        Don't design planes.
    - d3ckard 7y ago
      And US doesn’t set worldwide standards for their use.

adeptus 7y ago

We need real data, not theories. Hopefully we'll get it soon.

ajross 7y ago
This article literally is data.
- JshWright 7y ago
  It's incomplete data, that is being combined in ways to give certain impressions, that aren't necessarily backed by actual medical science.
  - ajross 7y ago
    Gah, the data in this article is literally medical science. It's reporting on a paper from the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology, which it even links you to directly. Now, maybe this science is wrong. If you want to make that argument, though, you need to make it with evidence. You don't get to dismiss it like that without doing your own science.
    - JshWright 7y ago
      The way the data is sliced and diced is not necessarily meaningful. Looks at the mortality rates based on those simple categories can paint a misleading picture.

ericb 7y ago

Does anyone have a system for keeping on top of the latest studies and preprints? I get study links second-hand on social media sites, but I'd like to watch them closer.

theseadroid 7y ago
I find this subreddit more scientific based than even many epidemiologists I follow: https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/ https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/
mattkrause 7y ago
Most new biology papers (in general, not just for coronavirus) are posted to bioarXiv. Bear in mind that these are unreviewed and, given the importance (and trendiness) many of them have been rushed out. There are also strong career incentives to make sensational claims that go viral. Definitely worth reading if you've got some relevant background, but keep your skeptical hat on too.
- gdy 7y ago
  "that go viral" :)

moultano 7y ago

This is the email I sent my team last night. We should consider working from home. You may all have seen the news by now. A patient was just diagnosed with COVID-19 at UC Davis after having no known contact with anyone travelling. Importantly, they were diagnosed after being intubated already for 7 days. It is suspected that this is the first known case of public transmission of the virus in the US. From what we know about the incubation times and progression of the illness, that means they contracted it sometime between 14-21 days ago. This is the letter UC Davis sent to their staff. If the virus has already been in the wild in California for 3 weeks, it seems likely to me that it has or will reach the bay area, and given the limited testing capability that has been reported, we may not know until the first cases end up in the ICU, weeks after exposure. The death rate for young healthy people is relatively low, around 0.2%. It is much higher for older people, who it kills in double digit percentages. Still, 20% of the people it infects need intensive hospital care. Many epidemiologists now suspect that it is likely to become endemic, and that 40-70% of the world's population will contract it. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vac... So what can we do? The most important thing to keep the death rate low is to reduce the burden on the hospital system so that they don't end up with more cases needing critical care than they can handle. And the most important thing for reducing the burden on hospitals is to slow the spread of the virus, so that even if it ends up infecting all of us, it doesn't infect all of us at once. We're fortunate enough that aside from impromptu collaboration and whiteboarding, all of our concrete tasks can be done at home. Most workers will not be in this situation, and will have to come to work to keep the economy running. For those of you familiar with random graph theory, the average number of edges in a graph has an exponential effect on its diameter, and so the best thing we can do is to avoid as much contact as we can. https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~novozhil/Teaching/767%20Data/chapter_3.pdf https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~novozhil/Teaching/767%20Data/ch... For people coming to the office, the WHO has a document on getting your workplace ready for COVID-19 that I'd encourage you to read and internalize. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/getting-workplace-ready-for-covid-19.pdf https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/getting... I'm already conveniently WFH with a cold, which I hope is just a cold, but I think we should consider making this the norm, at least until we have more clarity on what the situation is.

Gormisdomai 7y ago

Isn't the preexisting conditions table incredibly uninformative and heavily confounded by the fact that a lot of these conditions are far more prevalent in elderly people?

JKCalhoun 7y ago
Possibly. Or possibly the reason the disease is more fatal for elderly — they are more likely to have these preexisting conditions.
epmaybe 7y ago
I think it helps point out that there is probably an underreporting and selection bias in the cases of coronavirus that get reported, precisely because healthy patients with coronavirus probably won't go to the hospital, and if they do they just treat for a pneumonia without doing coronavirus testing (what's the indication to make the cost worthwhile?).
- oefrha 7y ago
  > what's the indication to make the cost worthwhile? That sentence doesn’t quite parse, but in China COVID-19 is treated for free whereas for regular pneumonia you have to pay whatever out of pocket cost after insurance coverage.
  - epmaybe 7y ago
    I meant that in a healthy patient with good access to health care, who presumably would not suffer tremendously from COVID-19, and be treated the same regardless of whether they had that or influenza, why get testing? It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the gist. In the US, at least, I doubt that the cost of care would change whether or not it is COVID-19 vs influenza pneumonia versus bacterial pneumonia.

eecc 7y ago

People, if you haven’t yet go get the seasonal flu vaccine. Reduces burden on strained ops and your risk of getting double tapped

LandR 7y ago
Isn't this something you can only get if you are in at risk group? I can't go to my doctor and just get a flu shot, I don't think?
- mc32 7y ago
  Everyone except very young children are encouraged to get the vaccine. You can get them at clinics, hospitals or chain pharmacies.
- 3001 7y ago
  Yes, you can
- LegitShady 7y ago
  You can in normal countries
- ncallaway 7y ago
  That tends to only be the case when there's some limit on flu shot production. The normal case is that you can walk into most CVS or other pharmacy, ask for a flu shot, and walk out having been immunized within 15 minutes. Even if you're not a high risk, getting a flu shot is an important preventative measure for any high risk individuals you may come in contact with.
- eecc 7y ago
  In NL, I literally did just that: I walked in, asked if it was still worthwhile and the doc said “sure, we haven’t peaked on the flu yet. Want one?” I said “yeah” and we were done in 5 min max. I guess it’s somehow got to do with living in a country with some leftovers of the Socialist hellhole it used to be... /s
  - 7y ago

dustingetz 7y ago

The death rate seems to not consider subclinical cases which did not escalate to the point of getting tested, which is probably the majority of cases

oefrha 7y ago

This page only has death rates, not number of cases for each group, so it only tells half of the story. See Table 1 of the actual paper for complete stats (source of the stats on the linked page). http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51#Table1 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...

dredmorbius 7y ago
And screencapped image: https://imgur.com/a/Ve5gT3O https://imgur.com/a/Ve5gT3O (posted by me)
- citilife 7y ago
  Seems like the larger correlation in deaths is related to societal status - farmers, laborers, and retirees have much higher death rates.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    Farmers — likely crappy rural healthcare. Retirees — obviously age-skewed.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Quite possibly also: arriving sicker. Hypothesis: If you're a rural / non-urban farmer, under quarantine and travel restrictions, you don't go to a hospital unless you're already very sick. One of the real challenges here is in separating data artefacts from ground truth. Testing, surveillance, self-presentation, doctor-lobbying (by the patient or family) can all influence that. This makes all data already somewhat suspect, before any overt manipulations are considered (and makes those manipulations all the more toxic to a full understanding). And of course, there are numerous other factors. Farmers may well have poorer overall health (nutrition, behavioural risk factors (smoking, drink), preexisting conditions, latent or opportunistic infection, etc., etc.). All of which I'm very openly speculating on -- these are hypotheses which would have to be demonstrated through clinical assessment or systematic observation. Note that "systematic" and "complete" aren't the same -- if you are following a defensible sampling method, then 100% coverage isn't necessary. But you'd want to capture samples from other populations. The overall prevalence of COVID-19 within even Wuhan City and Hubei Province is still low, based on assessed cases (clinical symptoms or the more accurate PCR genetic screen for the SARS-nCoV-2 virus), still under 1%. Which means that population sampling would be unlikely to detect many cases without something on the order of many hundreds, possibly thousands, of samples. You're looking for an accurate central-tendency descriptor of a ~1:100 event. Knowing what the actual exposure rate has been would be useful. Whether it's sufficiently useful to come up with a comprehensive large-scale sampling methodology is another question. Note that it's not merely the sampling size, but the selection and successful measurement from each of the selected individuals for sampling which is necessary. (I've some statistics background, and some healthcare background. Enough to know basics of sampling, error, and bias. Epidemiological public health monitoring is beyond my pay grade however.)

billygoat 7y ago

I really would like to know if smoking is implicated. Are there any smoker/nonsmoker stats anywhere?

dredmorbius 7y ago
Yes, though that's mostly rolled up in the gender statistics. Men are far more likely smokers than women in China. Mentioned in TFA.
- Spare_account 7y ago
  Is the F in 'TFA' what I think it is?
  - severine 7y ago
    Fine is fine.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      Sometimes some of the letters are different.
  - Simon_says 7y ago
    Yes, you're right. It's "featured".
  - rkuykendall-com 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM > RTFM is an initialism for the expression "read the fucking manual". > RTFA ("read the fucking/featured article"—common on news forums such as Fark.com[6] and Slashdot, where using "TFA" instead of "the article" has become a meme)
bart_spoon 7y ago
I don't know of any studies looking specifically at smoking vs non-smoking, but its been highly speculated to be a strong risk factor. Apparently, there is a big gap in prevalence of smoking between men and women in China (close 50% for men, closer to 5% for women), which is thought to be at least partially an explanation for the differences in deaths (2/3rds of deaths were male, 1/3 were female).

sciinfo 7y ago

There seems to be many cases of young patients dying in Iran. Either because there are way more cases than being officially reported or (hopefully not) the virus has mutated to affect the young more, or both. The first hypothesis is likely based on the number of infections found in international travellers who went to Iran. We still cannot rule out the second hypothesis though. A 23-year-old woman soccer player: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/faadg4/a_23_year_old_iranian_woman_soccer_player_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/faadg4/a_23_ye... A male nurse talking of 8 deaths in one night during his shift. 23-year-old female (same case?), 29- and 30-year-old males, 50-year-old female among them. (1-minute clip) EDIT: It's just n=8, but 37.5% dying at age 30 or below is most likely drawn from a different distribution from 0.6% among the 70,000+ cases in the largest Chinese study (where the worldometers data comes from). EDIT 2: Based on a link in a sibling comment, only 7 deaths among 20-29 yo and 18 deaths among 30-39 yo in the n=44,672 Chinese report. https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1232779487647031302 https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1232779487647031302 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9a9b-fea8db1a8f51#Table1 http://weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/id/e53946e2-c6c4-41e9-9...

adventured 7y ago
Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned of Covid early on, was also only 34 years old.
- sciinfo 7y ago
  Doctors and nurses are exposed to a much higher viral load than most people. In Wuhan, they may also overwork and have insufficient sleep.
  - railsgirls112 7y ago
    Good thing no younger adults in the western world are overworked and under rested ;)
  - riyadparvez 7y ago
    > higher viral load What is "higher viral load"? Isn't it binary - you are either infected or not?

nik_s 7y ago

The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/(infected + dead)) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. In a disease that is exponentially growing, a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead)). Based on the available data [1], we are closer to 7.8% than 2% mortality, which is closer to the final mortality rate of SARS of 9.6% [2]. Nevertheless, I think all these statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt - I doubt that the numbers we are seeing are of very high quality, given the political and cultural pressures in China to underreport, the lack of test kits, corona virus deaths being attributed to other diseases, ... On the flip side, it's very likely that mild cases will never be reported, which in turn would decrease the mortality rate. [1] https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... [edit: corrected the formula - thank you @anhner and @11thEarlOfMar for spotting the mistake] [edit: indicated that there's also a chance of under-reporting mild cases - my edit coincided with @Tenoke's post - sorry for noticing this late @Tenoke]

anhner 7y ago
I don't understand your first argument. Surely increasing the denominator would lower the mortality percent? Also does the total number of infected not include the dead?
- nik_s 7y ago
  Indeed, you are right - I corrected the formulas.
- m3kw9 7y ago
  But the infected who isn’t dead may or may not die at the end. So using infected as the denominator is not accurate. But using just the recovered as denim Arie is also incorrect unless you have enough samples. Using China’s figures are wildly inaccurate because of lack of tests and transparency. So maybe a better complex model can be derived from current datas

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

JetBen 7y ago

Such a shame we can't trust anything the Chinese gov't says. These stats are likely all bogus.

zebrafish 7y ago

i know it's passe to rail on the media, but i think the hyperconnectedness of everyone is causing the amount of panic i'm sensing out there to significantly outweigh the risks wrt covid-19.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
I agree. The Chinese went hysterical when the outbreak was first noticed, and I heard a lot about it spontaneously when wishing people happy new year. Hysteria continued right up to the point where... everyone went back to work. I think the government got unlucky that the outbreak coincided with a major holiday. And while shutting things down was a good idea in many ways, it also meant that people were stuck at home with nothing to do but freak out. So that's what everybody did.
- toron123 7y ago
  There is another possibility that the situation is much, much worse and Chinese are just telling part of the truth. Look how spreading is much worse in Korea than what Chinese says happens in China.
  - tinza123 7y ago
    They may not be simply compared like that, because of the different measures taken. China did shutdown the entire country basically, cities with millions of people won't allow anyone to come in / out, and almost all shops / stores shut down.
moultano 7y ago
What gives you the impression that the risk is small?
el_cujo 7y ago
If you look at it from the point of view of "am I going to die from corona virus?" then yes, the panic is overblown (for most people anyway). The real fear is that enough people are going to get sick and have to stay home (to eventually recover) that it will severely disrupt the world, ranging from economic markets to supply of food/drugs at grocery stores. I'm not necessarily saying I buy into that doomsday/prepper hype, but seeing news like Japan recommending school closures definitely makes me worry.

Iv 7y ago

Ok, time for a rant. If you looked at that table and went like "Oh, just 0.2% for me, great! No need to worry!" you are a terrible person. Even just at 0.2%, a billion people infected would result in more casualties than most recent conflicts. Eradicating diseases is possibly the most noble, the most obviously good behavior that humans can have. And here we have the opposite, people spreading it because of carelessness, because it is likely to not impact them too much, because their holiday plans are too important. Damn. And damned Hollywood for making people think that an epidemic has to kill a high percentage to be deadly. I am less afraid of hearing of an Ebola outbreak than about a new strain of seasonal virus that did not have any opportunities to combine with others yet.

jaas 7y ago
"If you looked at that table and went like "Oh, just 0.2% for me, great! No need to worry!" you are a terrible person." Or, with a bit more empathy, they just haven't put it in the right context yet. Any death from this is unfortunate, but many things can kill you and many people have accepted a low mortality percentage for lots of things. They may just initially perceive that smallish number as another one among many (e.g. the normal flu, biking). It may be a big number compared to other stuff, but it looks small and I can see how people might be dismissive. That doesn't make them terrible people, they just don't (yet?) have the perspective that you do.
henriquemaia 7y ago
I disagree. you're not a terrible person for thinking that. There's only so much you can do, and the disease and the deaths it leaves in its wake is totally out of the reach of your intention or actions. Worrying about something like that does not award you good person points. Actually, contributing to the general panic is far worse in terms of your real impact on what's going on. So, in this sense, you may be an actually worse person to think like you're proposing.

toptal 7y ago

So it’s just a coincidence that Dr. Li Wenliang, who was 34, died and he only had a 0.2% chance of dying? I find this too much of a coincidence. There is no way these numbers can be correct.

fullstop 7y ago
My tinfoil hat wonders if he actually died from other causes.
- petschge 7y ago
  Causes like not eating and drinking enough and not sleeping enough while already pretty sick?
kemotep 7y ago
Just because the statistical probability of something happening is very low does not mean that it is physically impossible. Flipping a coin 100 times and having the results all be heads is extremely low but still physically possible. We can be skeptical about China's official numbers but just because something is statistically unlikely to happen and it happens does not mean immediately that there is foul play.
emiliobumachar 7y ago
There's reporting bias. Would you have heard of him if he had survived?
- mr-ron 7y ago
  He was in the news well before he died: https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001359040/police-arrest-doctor-who-predicted-coronavirus https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001359040/police-ar...

rkachowski 7y ago

what css artifact is causing the last "e" in "Rate" to be consistently out of the bold formatting?

swader999 7y ago
Asking the real questions right here.
jfk13 7y ago
Not CSS's fault, it's just how the document is marked-up: *Death Rate = (number of deaths / number of cases) ... The fact that it happens consistently is probably a result of copy-and-paste (or equivalently, it's wrong in a report-generating template of some kind that produced each section).
- downerending 7y ago
 Looks like a WYSIWYG wreck.

checker659 7y ago

I wish there was statistics available on mortality for people taking immunosuppressants (secondary immunosuppression).

blueant 7y ago
Very interesting point, although this population should be very small (people with transplants or treating rheumatic deseases with biologicals).
tathatsnice 7y ago
I am also interested in this. If you find information on this, please post it here.

yogthos 7y ago

Imagine if people would get as excited about actual problems like global warming and the unfolding mass extinction as they do about a new mild flu.

swader999 7y ago
Exponential vs logistic growth. This is far more of a threat.
- yogthos 7y ago
  This virus is not a threat to long term survival of the human species by any stretch of imagination. Meanwhile the collapse of our biosphere is an existential threat. What's more, we know that we have a very short window to make any meaningful changes to prevent the worst outcomes including our extinction. Yet, we're still completely reliant on fossil fuels, and the industry is actually being subsidized right now. Thinking that this is more of a threat because it's happening now as opposed to a few decades in the future is sheer idiocy.
dharma1 7y ago
Timescale, and immediacy of the threat. Humans are not good at long timescale thinking. BTW I don't think these things need to be mutually exclusive. We should take action against all kinds of threats
- yogthos 7y ago
  Obviously we should take action against all kinds of threats. My point is that the reaction to this virus is completely disproportional to the level of the threat. Meanwhile, lack of reaction to an actual existential threat we're facing in the near future is utterly terrifying.

throwitaway6666 7y ago

Let me preface this in saying I'm no way a racist, race realist, or any such thing. I'm currently living and working in China and I've be inundated with many rumours and hearsay from Chinese people to ex-pats living here about the virus. I've heard a rumour where the virus has had a greater impact on people of Asian descent rather than Caucasians and Africans due to genetic differences. Has there been any proof or confirmation of this? I've seen obnoxious ex-pats walking around Shanghai without masks claiming that they'll be fine because it's Asians that need to be worried about the virus.

golergka 7y ago

So, it seems as if smoking actually prevents infection, or something along the lines of it?

thanatropism 7y ago

I expected something disaggregate. This would make a great alternative to titanic.csv to teach an intro class.

jxramos 7y ago

This is a really great format. I particularly appreciate the proactive interpretative pitfall warning. Would that all publications be so upfront. > The percentage shown below does NOT represent in any way the

Fnoord 7y ago

Zero infants or children between 0-9 have died. The article mentions: > In general, relatively few cases are seen among children. How come? My expectation would be something akin to an elderly range.

dredmorbius 7y ago

A related item that's been languishing in HN's submissions queue: "Mapping Coronavirus, Responsibly" https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/mapping-coronavirus-responsibly/ https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/ma... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22427334 This looks at the geographic distribution of COVID-19, and ways of accurately (and non-emotionally) conveying that information. Existing infographics have tended to hide information as much as they reveal it.

qwerty456127 7y ago

Given 0.2% chance to die I see no reason to care, I probably have higher chances to die in a car accident on any given day. Even if I were 80 years old I still would see no reason to worry about the 14.8% chance to die as I would probably have comparable chances to get a hear attack and die on any given day anyway.

killface 7y ago

I'm curious about the dramatically increased mortality rate with diabetes. Given America's situation, especially with insulin prices at a perverse high, that could be catastrophic.