3 ms·

You're talking about conceivably millions in the U.S. alone. 55% * 6% fatality rate * 330 million is >10,000,000. That's a lot of people to sacrifice to keep

You're talking about conceivably millions in the U.S. alone. 55% * 6% fatality rate * 330 million is >10,000,000. That's a lot of people to sacrifice to keep bars and restaurants open.

ryanSrich 7y ago
6% where are you getting that number? The highest I’ve seen is 3% and that’s in people older than 80...
- coddingtonbear 7y ago
  In countries having overwhelmed healthcare systems, most recently: Italy, the rate is much higher than the 3.4% estimated by the WHO. It’s still too early to say what the actual figure will turn out to be in Italy, but 6% was the raw result from 13 March.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30195-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... So our best sets of data are the WHO analysis of Wuhan which puts it at 5.6%. And the diamond princess which gives us a 1% fatality rate. But here's the big catch, those infected on the Diamond Princess got all of the medical care they needed. And the issue is once our healthcare system gets overwhelmed the rate will shift from 1% up to the 5.6% (And Wuhan could have gotten much worse)
  - marvin 7y ago
    Also, South Korea was around 1%. It's a number that has grown in credibility, unfortunately. I was hoping 0.1%.
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      It's awful when you consider that losing 1% of the population is the best case scenario.
Grue3 7y ago
You're assuming that none of them would die if you keep bars and restaurants closed. There's no indication that this measure is effective at all.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  That's true, I was mostly just trying to illustrate the size of the problem we're dealing with. I think our best bet is to slow it down as much as possible. And we're not going to get randomized controlled trials on a lot of the interventions we take, just our medical community's best guess at what will work.
dang 7y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Sorry I assumed op was underestimating the mortality rate(which is easy to do if you just look at the mortality rates without digging into the overwhelmed vs not overwhelmed rates), not that he didn't care about human lives. I think many people think that if we don't strongly mitigate/contain the virus the deaths are measured in 10's of thousands which would need more careful consideration of the downstream effects of closing off a part of our economy. Looking at my comment the restaurants and bars could sound flippant but I posted that before the thread turned nasty so I wasn't as careful with my words as I would have been had I known this was a contentious subject. I wish the tone in my head when I wrote the comment came through, I'll try to be more careful in the future, especially regarding this subject. Just sometimes the tone of a comment sounds very different in your head then how it might read.

You're talking about conceivably millions in the U.S. alone. 55% * 6% fatality rate * 330 million is >10,000,000. That's a lot of people to sacrifice to keep bars and restaurants open.

ryanSrich 7y ago

6% where are you getting that number? The highest I’ve seen is 3% and that’s in people older than 80...

coddingtonbear 7y ago
In countries having overwhelmed healthcare systems, most recently: Italy, the rate is much higher than the 3.4% estimated by the WHO. It’s still too early to say what the actual figure will turn out to be in Italy, but 6% was the raw result from 13 March.
JamesBarney 7y ago
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30195-X/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... So our best sets of data are the WHO analysis of Wuhan which puts it at 5.6%. And the diamond princess which gives us a 1% fatality rate. But here's the big catch, those infected on the Diamond Princess got all of the medical care they needed. And the issue is once our healthcare system gets overwhelmed the rate will shift from 1% up to the 5.6% (And Wuhan could have gotten much worse)
- marvin 7y ago
  Also, South Korea was around 1%. It's a number that has grown in credibility, unfortunately. I was hoping 0.1%.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    It's awful when you consider that losing 1% of the population is the best case scenario.

Grue3 7y ago

You're assuming that none of them would die if you keep bars and restaurants closed. There's no indication that this measure is effective at all.

JamesBarney 7y ago
That's true, I was mostly just trying to illustrate the size of the problem we're dealing with. I think our best bet is to slow it down as much as possible. And we're not going to get randomized controlled trials on a lot of the interventions we take, just our medical community's best guess at what will work.

dang 7y ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

JamesBarney 7y ago
Sorry I assumed op was underestimating the mortality rate(which is easy to do if you just look at the mortality rates without digging into the overwhelmed vs not overwhelmed rates), not that he didn't care about human lives. I think many people think that if we don't strongly mitigate/contain the virus the deaths are measured in 10's of thousands which would need more careful consideration of the downstream effects of closing off a part of our economy. Looking at my comment the restaurants and bars could sound flippant but I posted that before the thread turned nasty so I wasn't as careful with my words as I would have been had I known this was a contentious subject. I wish the tone in my head when I wrote the comment came through, I'll try to be more careful in the future, especially regarding this subject. Just sometimes the tone of a comment sounds very different in your head then how it might read.