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Why are you being downvoted? Is this the equivalent of people sticking their hands over their ears and saying “la la la la! I can’t hear you!” It seems obvious

Why are you being downvoted? Is this the equivalent of people sticking their hands over their ears and saying “la la la la! I can’t hear you!” It seems obvious that you are right that everyone will get it. The real quibble is what will the death rate actually be. 2.5% seems like a middle-of-the-road estimate according to current knowledge.

ksdale 7y ago
I don't think it's obvious at all that everyone will get it, especially now that so many people are practicing social distancing and handwashing and avoiding gatherings. Yes, there are still a lot of people going about their lives without worry, but it seems totally plausible to me that if some percentage of people behave more responsibly, it will decrease R0 to some number below 1. I think using simple exponential numbers to predict future cases is too simplistic if we don't take into account how people's changing behavior will affect the spread.
- irrational 7y ago
  I guess it depends on where you live. In the city where I live I have seen absolutely 0 changes in behavior. All gatherings are going on as normal, no special social distancing. There are lots of jokes about it (we probably shouldn't shake hands, ha ha! [still shake hands]), but nobody is actually doing anything differently.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    I've seen that same thing! But I live about an hour away from Seattle, and I'm generally seeing way fewer people shake hands and several people I know (my family included) are avoiding unnecessary trips into public. I mostly just wonder where the threshold is between population density and social distancing and R0. Obviously total quarantine does wonders, and completely normal behavior is terrible, but is it enough if half the population takes precautions? Or 2/3 or 1/3? I've been thinking of it kind of like a graph or a web, and if you cut enough of the connections, the spread stops, and "enough" isn't anything like "all," and the more strategically placed the cuts are, the fewer there can be, but it's not easy to figure out exactly how many cuts you need.
SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Well-informed sources I've read almost universally put their estimates at 1% or lower. The people saying 2% or 3% seem to be naively averaging together all the mortality rates they've seen in the news, even though almost all of those rates aren't meant to be good estimates of "how likely is the average person who catches the virus to die".
- greedo 7y ago
  The case fatality rate is not something that can be applied across the world; it's specific to regions, to the corrective measures used, and to time. The CFR in China/Wuhan was initially around 20% since there was a steep learning curve. By Feb 1 it had dropped to around 5%. Currently, the global CFR is around 3%. In China, almost 4%. The CFR for the rest of the world (excluding China) is almost 2%. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    The CFR is just the number of known COVID deaths divided by the number of known COVID infections. There's no reason that number should be a good estimate of the question people are asking, "how likely is the average person who gets COVID-19 to die", and as I mentioned medical professionals are pretty unanimously agreed it isn't.
    - greedo 7y ago
      So you disagree with the WHO about the current CFR?
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        Again, the current CFR as calculated by the WHO is a mathematical artifact. I trust that they're accurately reporting the numbers they measured, and agree that dividing their death count by their case count yields 3.4%, but I don't agree (and don't think they said) that this is an accurate estimate of how deadly the virus is likely to be.
hef19898 7y ago
I assume because of the "everyone will get it and 2.5% will die" part. Nmbers are not making this very likely, in China this thing is slowing down already. Last estimate I heard was somewhere between 60 and 70% of the population will get. Add to this the fact tht the 2.5% are likely overstated (due to not testing everybody and having this huge Wuhan province outlier in there), and a statement like this is pretty alarmist.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  China had a very strong response to this crisis. They had hard quarantines up to and including jail-like cells to enforce those orders. They had significant amounts of PPE brought in rapidly. They built a hospital in a month at ground zero. They provided thermal camera helmets to police to catch people with a high temperature (most common ailment with coronavirus). In effect, they knew they had a diaster on their hands, and responded rapidly. And it shows in their numbers. In the USA, We refused the the WHO's tests in favor of some for profit company. And we had 1/12 the tests promised by last Friday. Hospitals aren't able to test even highly suspect cases. Quarantines are considered optional, with dozens of cases of "I'm special and ignore quarantine suggestions". There's no sick pay, so those who haven't been tested are working sick. Vomiting, a easy way to go home, is only present in 1% of the cases infected. And perhaps 'everyone will get it' was exaggerating - but I'm seeing this as similar to the flu, with a 5 day asymptomatic period and a 2.5% chance of death, as opposed to .1% .
  - hef19898 7y ago
    If "everyone's getting it" is an exageration, why are we ok with "everyone" being used as the basis to apply whatever percentage on? Wuhan still stands out rearding mortality so, with almost 5%. Total deaths there stand at 3,000, the rest of the world, includig the rest of China, stand at roughly 900. Wuhan is overrepresented. No idea why, but I am certain experts are working on that question. South Korea on the other hand has mrtality rate of under 1%. Source: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200309-sitrep-49-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=70dabe61_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati... Totally agree on the testing issue in the US, so. That, combined with the non-existing sick leave insentivising people to not see a doctor and continue to go to work could become a major problem, so. In Europe it's easy, just send people home on sick leave, Germany allows you up to 6 weeks per year per illness. Doctors visits are free for patients as are blood tests. Without all that, the game changes.

ksdale 7y ago

I don't think it's obvious at all that everyone will get it, especially now that so many people are practicing social distancing and handwashing and avoiding gatherings. Yes, there are still a lot of people going about their lives without worry, but it seems totally plausible to me that if some percentage of people behave more responsibly, it will decrease R0 to some number below 1. I think using simple exponential numbers to predict future cases is too simplistic if we don't take into account how people's changing behavior will affect the spread.

irrational 7y ago
I guess it depends on where you live. In the city where I live I have seen absolutely 0 changes in behavior. All gatherings are going on as normal, no special social distancing. There are lots of jokes about it (we probably shouldn't shake hands, ha ha! [still shake hands]), but nobody is actually doing anything differently.
- ksdale 7y ago
  I've seen that same thing! But I live about an hour away from Seattle, and I'm generally seeing way fewer people shake hands and several people I know (my family included) are avoiding unnecessary trips into public. I mostly just wonder where the threshold is between population density and social distancing and R0. Obviously total quarantine does wonders, and completely normal behavior is terrible, but is it enough if half the population takes precautions? Or 2/3 or 1/3? I've been thinking of it kind of like a graph or a web, and if you cut enough of the connections, the spread stops, and "enough" isn't anything like "all," and the more strategically placed the cuts are, the fewer there can be, but it's not easy to figure out exactly how many cuts you need.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

Well-informed sources I've read almost universally put their estimates at 1% or lower. The people saying 2% or 3% seem to be naively averaging together all the mortality rates they've seen in the news, even though almost all of those rates aren't meant to be good estimates of "how likely is the average person who catches the virus to die".

greedo 7y ago
The case fatality rate is not something that can be applied across the world; it's specific to regions, to the corrective measures used, and to time. The CFR in China/Wuhan was initially around 20% since there was a steep learning curve. By Feb 1 it had dropped to around 5%. Currently, the global CFR is around 3%. In China, almost 4%. The CFR for the rest of the world (excluding China) is almost 2%. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  The CFR is just the number of known COVID deaths divided by the number of known COVID infections. There's no reason that number should be a good estimate of the question people are asking, "how likely is the average person who gets COVID-19 to die", and as I mentioned medical professionals are pretty unanimously agreed it isn't.
  - greedo 7y ago
    So you disagree with the WHO about the current CFR?
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      Again, the current CFR as calculated by the WHO is a mathematical artifact. I trust that they're accurately reporting the numbers they measured, and agree that dividing their death count by their case count yields 3.4%, but I don't agree (and don't think they said) that this is an accurate estimate of how deadly the virus is likely to be.

hef19898 7y ago

I assume because of the "everyone will get it and 2.5% will die" part. Nmbers are not making this very likely, in China this thing is slowing down already. Last estimate I heard was somewhere between 60 and 70% of the population will get. Add to this the fact tht the 2.5% are likely overstated (due to not testing everybody and having this huge Wuhan province outlier in there), and a statement like this is pretty alarmist.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago
China had a very strong response to this crisis. They had hard quarantines up to and including jail-like cells to enforce those orders. They had significant amounts of PPE brought in rapidly. They built a hospital in a month at ground zero. They provided thermal camera helmets to police to catch people with a high temperature (most common ailment with coronavirus). In effect, they knew they had a diaster on their hands, and responded rapidly. And it shows in their numbers. In the USA, We refused the the WHO's tests in favor of some for profit company. And we had 1/12 the tests promised by last Friday. Hospitals aren't able to test even highly suspect cases. Quarantines are considered optional, with dozens of cases of "I'm special and ignore quarantine suggestions". There's no sick pay, so those who haven't been tested are working sick. Vomiting, a easy way to go home, is only present in 1% of the cases infected. And perhaps 'everyone will get it' was exaggerating - but I'm seeing this as similar to the flu, with a 5 day asymptomatic period and a 2.5% chance of death, as opposed to .1% .
- hef19898 7y ago
  If "everyone's getting it" is an exageration, why are we ok with "everyone" being used as the basis to apply whatever percentage on? Wuhan still stands out rearding mortality so, with almost 5%. Total deaths there stand at 3,000, the rest of the world, includig the rest of China, stand at roughly 900. Wuhan is overrepresented. No idea why, but I am certain experts are working on that question. South Korea on the other hand has mrtality rate of under 1%. Source: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200309-sitrep-49-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=70dabe61_4 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati... Totally agree on the testing issue in the US, so. That, combined with the non-existing sick leave insentivising people to not see a doctor and continue to go to work could become a major problem, so. In Europe it's easy, just send people home on sick leave, Germany allows you up to 6 weeks per year per illness. Doctors visits are free for patients as are blood tests. Without all that, the game changes.