5 ms·

"I'm not an epidemiologist but" that South Korea number is misleading because it's calculated as death/"people that tested positive". That undercounts the death

"I'm not an epidemiologist but" that South Korea number is misleading because it's calculated as death/"people that tested positive". That undercounts the death rate because some of the people that tested positive are still sick and might die. The correct formula is death/"closed cases" which takes into account only people that have recovered or died. That number in SK is currently around 5% though trending down as cases are closed. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-kore...

joe_the_user 7y ago
That's not quite right. Your link shows the seriously ill among the unclosed cases as 59 people. If those dies, it won't increase the death significantly - maybe bump it to 1.5%. But an increase to the base death rate doesn't matter. We should know a 1% death rate is going to be catastrophic and take action. Edit: originally read you as arguing the death rate as too high so different argument. It's probably better to assume a higher death rate regardless anyway so I changed "you are wrong" to "not quite right" too.
foxyv 7y ago
Also need to take into account that people will die a long time before the cases close. Also not all cases will be closed because of limited testing. Right now the ratio of deaths to closed cases in the US is about 60:40 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
rstuart4133 7y ago
I'm looking forward to the day when the dust has settled and I can see deaths/total population. To be useful it has to run its natural course, rather than being stopped by a vaccine. The only out way is to test everybody in a large random sample. Even South Korea doesn't do that - people volunteer or a pushed to get tested. The end result is all testing to date has been done on the parts of population who are more likely to be feeling the effects of covid-19. That skews everything. Even "every person infects 2.3 others" becomes suspect if there is a large reservoir of people out there who have it, are infectious but don't know it. Kids in particular, being the little germ bags they are, areseemingly mostly unaffected by it and so could be a huge vector. Counting the dead after it's over is one way to by-pass that measurement problem. In Australia, a bad flu season kills 0.015% of the population. My gut feeling is we don't as yet have any idea where covid-19 will end up. Italy is currently sitting at 0.0083%, so they aren't up to the flu levels yet. The current overwhelming of the hospitals could be caused by an extraordinarily high infection rate coupled with it being very, very mild for most people, particularly kids. Or it could because it's as horrible as the media paints it. We simply don't know.

joe_the_user 7y ago

That's not quite right. Your link shows the seriously ill among the unclosed cases as 59 people. If those dies, it won't increase the death significantly - maybe bump it to 1.5%. But an increase to the base death rate doesn't matter. We should know a 1% death rate is going to be catastrophic and take action. Edit: originally read you as arguing the death rate as too high so different argument. It's probably better to assume a higher death rate regardless anyway so I changed "you are wrong" to "not quite right" too.

foxyv 7y ago

Also need to take into account that people will die a long time before the cases close. Also not all cases will be closed because of limited testing. Right now the ratio of deaths to closed cases in the US is about 60:40 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

rstuart4133 7y ago

I'm looking forward to the day when the dust has settled and I can see deaths/total population. To be useful it has to run its natural course, rather than being stopped by a vaccine. The only out way is to test everybody in a large random sample. Even South Korea doesn't do that - people volunteer or a pushed to get tested. The end result is all testing to date has been done on the parts of population who are more likely to be feeling the effects of covid-19. That skews everything. Even "every person infects 2.3 others" becomes suspect if there is a large reservoir of people out there who have it, are infectious but don't know it. Kids in particular, being the little germ bags they are, areseemingly mostly unaffected by it and so could be a huge vector. Counting the dead after it's over is one way to by-pass that measurement problem. In Australia, a bad flu season kills 0.015% of the population. My gut feeling is we don't as yet have any idea where covid-19 will end up. Italy is currently sitting at 0.0083%, so they aren't up to the flu levels yet. The current overwhelming of the hospitals could be caused by an extraordinarily high infection rate coupled with it being very, very mild for most people, particularly kids. Or it could because it's as horrible as the media paints it. We simply don't know.