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tl;dr The case fatality rate is usually much higher than the real mortality rate. People and health professionals have pointed that out from the start and it s

tl;dr The case fatality rate is usually much higher than the real mortality rate. People and health professionals have pointed that out from the start and it should be hard to find anyone who doesn't know that by now. > A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. Sure, you can use expected utility theory to calculate that. What result you get depends a lot on the monetary value you attribute to a human live, or, if you think that's better, on the value of quality-adjusted life years (QUALYs). If you're particularly sociopathic you can also reverse-engineer the simple models used in order to find the value judgments that will give you the decision result you want. Just tweak the values for QUALYs, lower the estimates here and there, and the result is that it's better to save the economy (or vice versa, depending on what you want). Call me cynic, but I'm sure plenty of people around the world are doing that right now.

makomk 7y ago
People should understand that, but the media reporting has been absolutely atrocious. CNN even ran an article arguing that the reason not testing as widely was correlated with a higher reported fatality rate (as a percentage of cases) was because widespread testing reduced the fatality rate by simply reducing the number of people who got it, which is... not exactly the right conclusion, shall we say. It's not like there's been a shortage of folks who happily multiply the CFR figures by 60, 70, 80% of the entire population and present this as the inevitable death toll of, generally, the actions of the political party they oppose.
- hcknwscommenter 7y ago
  "CNN even ran an article arguing that the reason not testing as widely was correlated with a higher reported fatality rate (as a percentage of cases) was because widespread testing reduced the fatality rate by simply reducing the number of people who got it, which is... not exactly the right conclusion, shall we say." It is a factor though, and not a minor one. You test widely enough and you can track, trace, and quarantine your way to containment or at least massively flatten the curve and thereby avoid overwhelming the medical system and spiking CFR. That is exactly what S. Korea did. You didn't link to the article, so it's hard to tell if you are just a troll or not. If the article stated that as a factor, it is not wrong at all. IF the article stated that as THE reason, well it's pretty misleading. Did the media mess up here? We shall never know I guess unless you can produce a link.
glormph 7y ago
Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but the outcome of quarantining measures is not only monetary. If the economy suffers more to solve the current crisis, more people will die because of secondary effects. I guess that is included in the calculations.
- jonathanstrange 7y ago
  Yes, these kind of factors should be included in a proper evaluation. Monetary value usually only serves as an exchange medium in compensatory models, you can also use abstract utils instead. My point was a bit different, that from the perspective of multi-attribute decision theory with standard additive models the trade-offs between various attributes only need to be consistent (~not violate axioms of additive models, if the model is supposed to be additive in the first place), but they can be based on any kind of value judgments. Even if you use standard measures in health care like QUALYs and weigh this attribute in a way that was previously accepted, the attribute would traditionally only be evaluated within the normal health care budget, which doesn't apply here. It is not usually aggregated together with completely different attributes like economic costs over time, number of unemployed people over time, increase of homelessness, overall reduction of the quality of life for healthy people, and so on. I fear that in the coming months people will pick whatever weights suit their agenda and come up with various models of "costs" here and there, instead of arguing clearly for their position and the underlying value judgments. This is not a new problem, of course, and it is further aggravated by social pressures and institutional habits/self-interest.

makomk 7y ago

People should understand that, but the media reporting has been absolutely atrocious. CNN even ran an article arguing that the reason not testing as widely was correlated with a higher reported fatality rate (as a percentage of cases) was because widespread testing reduced the fatality rate by simply reducing the number of people who got it, which is... not exactly the right conclusion, shall we say. It's not like there's been a shortage of folks who happily multiply the CFR figures by 60, 70, 80% of the entire population and present this as the inevitable death toll of, generally, the actions of the political party they oppose.

hcknwscommenter 7y ago
"CNN even ran an article arguing that the reason not testing as widely was correlated with a higher reported fatality rate (as a percentage of cases) was because widespread testing reduced the fatality rate by simply reducing the number of people who got it, which is... not exactly the right conclusion, shall we say." It is a factor though, and not a minor one. You test widely enough and you can track, trace, and quarantine your way to containment or at least massively flatten the curve and thereby avoid overwhelming the medical system and spiking CFR. That is exactly what S. Korea did. You didn't link to the article, so it's hard to tell if you are just a troll or not. If the article stated that as a factor, it is not wrong at all. IF the article stated that as THE reason, well it's pretty misleading. Did the media mess up here? We shall never know I guess unless you can produce a link.

glormph 7y ago

Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but the outcome of quarantining measures is not only monetary. If the economy suffers more to solve the current crisis, more people will die because of secondary effects. I guess that is included in the calculations.

jonathanstrange 7y ago
Yes, these kind of factors should be included in a proper evaluation. Monetary value usually only serves as an exchange medium in compensatory models, you can also use abstract utils instead. My point was a bit different, that from the perspective of multi-attribute decision theory with standard additive models the trade-offs between various attributes only need to be consistent (~not violate axioms of additive models, if the model is supposed to be additive in the first place), but they can be based on any kind of value judgments. Even if you use standard measures in health care like QUALYs and weigh this attribute in a way that was previously accepted, the attribute would traditionally only be evaluated within the normal health care budget, which doesn't apply here. It is not usually aggregated together with completely different attributes like economic costs over time, number of unemployed people over time, increase of homelessness, overall reduction of the quality of life for healthy people, and so on. I fear that in the coming months people will pick whatever weights suit their agenda and come up with various models of "costs" here and there, instead of arguing clearly for their position and the underlying value judgments. This is not a new problem, of course, and it is further aggravated by social pressures and institutional habits/self-interest.