4 ms·

The Diamond Princess cruise. They were a major cluster, and coincidentally got forced quarantined and turns out to be a natural test case. Notice how we only f

by whb07 7y ago

The Diamond Princess cruise. They were a major cluster, and coincidentally got forced quarantined and turns out to be a natural test case. Notice how we only focus on the bank run on US hospitals. Are hospitals in poorer countries immune to these type of sudden rushes? Why aren’t we seeing millions of people in neighboring countries to China clogging up hospitals? Is it slightly possible this is just a tad over done? What would you say are the chances of that?

scottlocklin 7y ago
People are slowly noticing the use of the WHO CFR as an actual FR is science fiction[1] at least. Well, they're not really noticing that, especially here on HN, because people are statistical imbeciles, but at least they're noticing that the denominator in the FR is a lot larger than they previously thought. That was abundantly obvious at the beginning; if you aren't widely administering a costly and rare test[2], you're enormously left censored in your estimator. You're also radically screwing up your R0 estimate. I suppose there are arguments to be made that more hot and humid climates prevent the spread of respiratory viruses in general, which is why you don't see problems in the more humid and hot regions of China and Vietnam.[3] The real question is why some countries look like Germany, and some look like Italy. The paranoid answer is Germany will soon look like Italy (and this might be true), except the claimed origin of the disease is .... Germany[4]. If it does turn out to be overblown in some sense, it's probably a valuable exercise in autarky. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statistics-undetected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statis... [2] And FWIIW none of the tests are well calibrated; in fact there are numerous tests in use with radically different biases. [3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-scientists/coronavirus-may-have-reached-italy-from-germany-scientists-say-idUSKBN20Y35B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... (I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's a common assertion)

by whb07 7y ago

scottlocklin 7y ago

People are slowly noticing the use of the WHO CFR as an actual FR is science fiction[1] at least. Well, they're not really noticing that, especially here on HN, because people are statistical imbeciles, but at least they're noticing that the denominator in the FR is a lot larger than they previously thought. That was abundantly obvious at the beginning; if you aren't widely administering a costly and rare test[2], you're enormously left censored in your estimator. You're also radically screwing up your R0 estimate. I suppose there are arguments to be made that more hot and humid climates prevent the spread of respiratory viruses in general, which is why you don't see problems in the more humid and hot regions of China and Vietnam.[3] The real question is why some countries look like Germany, and some look like Italy. The paranoid answer is Germany will soon look like Italy (and this might be true), except the claimed origin of the disease is .... Germany[4]. If it does turn out to be overblown in some sense, it's probably a valuable exercise in autarky. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statistics-undetected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/health/coronavirus-statis... [2] And FWIIW none of the tests are well calibrated; in fact there are numerous tests in use with radically different biases. [3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-scientists/coronavirus-may-have-reached-italy-from-germany-scientists-say-idUSKBN20Y35B https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... (I mean, it seems unlikely, but it's a common assertion)