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This is incorrect. As of the weekend gone past South Korea had tested 248,000 people out of a population of 50,000,000, with 8,086 +ve cases and 72 deaths. <30

This is incorrect. As of the weekend gone past South Korea had tested 248,000 people out of a population of 50,000,000, with 8,086 +ve cases and 72 deaths. <300k is not "and they've tested everyone and their dog" There is a lot of memetic nonsense flying around about this online and this is part of it

marvin 7y ago
Hm, ok. That would make it in the region of 1%. Thought my numbers were out of date since I heard 0.6% somewhere else.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- easytiger 7y ago
  1% of what?
  - marvin 7y ago
    8000-ish cases. 70-ish deaths => ~0.9% fatality rate. Very thorough testing, so 0.9% is likely to be a reasonable estimate of the real fatality rate. Granted, 250k-ish of 50 million is a small sample, but you've got to assume that they haven't tested randomly but tested people who have been in touch with known cases.
    - easytiger 7y ago
      You are almost there. > but you've got to assume that they haven't tested randomly but tested people who have been in touch with known cases Yes. Well with symptoms etc. So of the people who got tested they are much more likely to test +ve. I agree. Which means real cases are massively more widespread than those tested. It is believed here in the UK that this has been fairly rife for a while now, but those who got it are not statistically counted anywhere. The real fatality rate is way less than 0.9
      - marvin 7y ago
        I don't follow your reasoning. South Korea has tested 35 times the number of positive cases. That's a lot. Presumably, it's not a random sample, but people who have been in touch with people who have had obvious symptoms. Maybe some random sampling in outbreak areas, I don't know their methodology. Certainly there's a number of people that are not picked up throughout that process. This means that the real death rate is not ~70/8000. The real denominator is bigger. But it wouldn't be on the order of 10 times bigger. In most of the groups of sick people, there's likely to be some that show enough symptoms to prompt a test, with a positive test leading most of that group to be tracked down. The exception would be tiny groups that somehow did not spread the disease further, or untracably spread it to similar tiny groups. I don't buy that there's a massive amount of such lonely cases out there. Twice as many as detected? Sure. But not a dramatically bigger number than that. Maybe there's a way to show mathematically that this reasoning is wrong, if so, please feel free.
        easytiger 7y ago
        I'll use London for an example. I personally know many people who believe they have this, and, I believe I and 3 friends picked it up from each other after one visited Milan in Feb. Loads of people have this and are not counted. > But it wouldn't be on the order of 10 times bigger. I believe it is of that order. > In most of the groups of sick people, there's likely to be some that show enough symptoms to prompt a test, with a positive test leading most of that group to be tracked down Literally not because most people won't be tested unless they are in need of hospitalisation
djsumdog 7y ago
248k out of 50M is still a very impressive sample size; especially compared to most scientific papers coming out these days.
- easytiger 7y ago
  There is a persistent assertion that "everyone" in SK is being tested. It's not true. There is a pretty high chance that a high % of the infected are almost asymptomatic. Fatigue might be the only thing some get. Others nothing. The problem is people asserting without statistical extrapolation a base fatality rate predicated on a division of [+ve tests/deaths]. It is exactly what WHO have done before in other epidemic like situations and it doesn't make sense. Previous epidemics have seen these massive similar ratios promoted only to later be revised aggressively. I can offer examples if required
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    I am curious of those examples. The big outbreaks in the past the WHO has focused on include MERS, Ebola and H1N1. There's a really good Wendover video on the WHO Ebola response and it's pretty impressive. That said, Ebola got people sick quickly (compared to SARS-cov2) and it started in areas that weren't as globally connected, limiting the spread. Still, there was a lot of hype of H1N1 that never really panned out. Still this is a totally new virus, from a family of viruses that has historically never been bad (a quarter of colds are caused coronaviruses). If it's May 1st and there are <50k dead in the US with the patient rates going down, I think people are going to start to seriously question anything the WHO says going into the future. The alternative is that by May we'll be hearing news reports of how 90% of hospital in <insert big city .. London, Brussels, Atlanta> are at capacity with people being shipped to suburbs and individual 3D printing ventilator parts. Honestly, I will be surprised either way.

marvin 7y ago

Hm, ok. That would make it in the region of 1%. Thought my numbers were out of date since I heard 0.6% somewhere else.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
easytiger 7y ago
1% of what?
- marvin 7y ago
  8000-ish cases. 70-ish deaths => ~0.9% fatality rate. Very thorough testing, so 0.9% is likely to be a reasonable estimate of the real fatality rate. Granted, 250k-ish of 50 million is a small sample, but you've got to assume that they haven't tested randomly but tested people who have been in touch with known cases.
  - easytiger 7y ago
    You are almost there. > but you've got to assume that they haven't tested randomly but tested people who have been in touch with known cases Yes. Well with symptoms etc. So of the people who got tested they are much more likely to test +ve. I agree. Which means real cases are massively more widespread than those tested. It is believed here in the UK that this has been fairly rife for a while now, but those who got it are not statistically counted anywhere. The real fatality rate is way less than 0.9
    - marvin 7y ago
      I don't follow your reasoning. South Korea has tested 35 times the number of positive cases. That's a lot. Presumably, it's not a random sample, but people who have been in touch with people who have had obvious symptoms. Maybe some random sampling in outbreak areas, I don't know their methodology. Certainly there's a number of people that are not picked up throughout that process. This means that the real death rate is not ~70/8000. The real denominator is bigger. But it wouldn't be on the order of 10 times bigger. In most of the groups of sick people, there's likely to be some that show enough symptoms to prompt a test, with a positive test leading most of that group to be tracked down. The exception would be tiny groups that somehow did not spread the disease further, or untracably spread it to similar tiny groups. I don't buy that there's a massive amount of such lonely cases out there. Twice as many as detected? Sure. But not a dramatically bigger number than that. Maybe there's a way to show mathematically that this reasoning is wrong, if so, please feel free.
      - easytiger 7y ago
        I'll use London for an example. I personally know many people who believe they have this, and, I believe I and 3 friends picked it up from each other after one visited Milan in Feb. Loads of people have this and are not counted. > But it wouldn't be on the order of 10 times bigger. I believe it is of that order. > In most of the groups of sick people, there's likely to be some that show enough symptoms to prompt a test, with a positive test leading most of that group to be tracked down Literally not because most people won't be tested unless they are in need of hospitalisation

djsumdog 7y ago

248k out of 50M is still a very impressive sample size; especially compared to most scientific papers coming out these days.

easytiger 7y ago
There is a persistent assertion that "everyone" in SK is being tested. It's not true. There is a pretty high chance that a high % of the infected are almost asymptomatic. Fatigue might be the only thing some get. Others nothing. The problem is people asserting without statistical extrapolation a base fatality rate predicated on a division of [+ve tests/deaths]. It is exactly what WHO have done before in other epidemic like situations and it doesn't make sense. Previous epidemics have seen these massive similar ratios promoted only to later be revised aggressively. I can offer examples if required
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I am curious of those examples. The big outbreaks in the past the WHO has focused on include MERS, Ebola and H1N1. There's a really good Wendover video on the WHO Ebola response and it's pretty impressive. That said, Ebola got people sick quickly (compared to SARS-cov2) and it started in areas that weren't as globally connected, limiting the spread. Still, there was a lot of hype of H1N1 that never really panned out. Still this is a totally new virus, from a family of viruses that has historically never been bad (a quarter of colds are caused coronaviruses). If it's May 1st and there are <50k dead in the US with the patient rates going down, I think people are going to start to seriously question anything the WHO says going into the future. The alternative is that by May we'll be hearing news reports of how 90% of hospital in <insert big city .. London, Brussels, Atlanta> are at capacity with people being shipped to suburbs and individual 3D printing ventilator parts. Honestly, I will be surprised either way.