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How much ‘normal’ risk does Covid represent?

87 points by robrenaud 7y ago

Gatsky 7y ago
Looks like the gender disparity in mortality is not being taken into account. The excess risk for men is probably double what he estimates. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/men-are-much-more-likely-to-die-from-coronavirus-but-why https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/men-are-much-m...
- tasogare 7y ago
  Women "rights" activists are surprisingly mute on the matter, just like they are about the gap in men and women’s life expectancy in general. If they were congruent with the equality of outcome they’re trying the shove our throats down all the time they should advocate for some "measures" to address this gap too, which is even more important. Of the course they won’t, but it shows clearly how flawed they demands and arguments are.
  - jamesrcole 7y ago
    “Mute” isn’t the right word. https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus+gendered https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus+gendered See for example this speech from an Australian senator https://twitter.com/mehreenfaruqi/status/1242713728048455680?s=21 https://twitter.com/mehreenfaruqi/status/1242713728048455680...
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    I think I've seen the issue brought up periodically by people on the women's rights side of the issue - example https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-patriarchy-is-killing-men/2019/09/12/2490fa7e-d3ea-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-patriarchy-is... but the argument is generally that the men's life expectancy problem will be solved as a side effect of solving the problem they want to solve. on edit: to clarify, I mean of course in regards to the general men's life expectancy problem, not the covid-19 enhanced experience of that problem.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    This forum is generally open to considering contrarian ideas, however, your intensely lazy phrasing and lack of any real argument does not contribute to the discussion here. "Some women's rights advocates have a blind spot, causing (named negative effect of said advocates' policies that can be sourced or is commonly agreed), and this could be an opportunity to address those in light of the disease's disproportionate effect on men". - Not really a statement I agree with, but one I would at least listen to. And, as has been noted, plenty of advocates have pointed out the negative impacts of ["patriarchy", "traditional gender stereotypes", "etc"] on men, like smaller social circles and support groups in elderly men and the expectation to take on dangerous jobs (logging, for instance). Are you aware of these efforts?
    - Der_Einzige 7y ago
      Why your being downvoted I will never know. Hacker news is embarrassing to be a member of sometimes. The OP you responded to was absolutely lazy with the phrasing and hardly made an argument. You did the opposite and they downvoted you more. What the hell guys?
  - 7952 7y ago
    Why shouldn't an activist focus on one particular issue? People are sometimes more interested in one cause than another. A bowel cancer charity is not working to stop lung cancer. And a charity working to protect the rights of separated father's should not have to campaign against domestic violence.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - monadgonad 7y ago
    > they’re trying the shove our throats down all the time Ironic that you say this, yet you've clearly not actually listened to women's rights activists, because men's disproportionate deaths due to mental health/suicide is a major feminist talking point.
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    Bro it's cause women smoke less. Women also abuse alcohol less prolifically than men, but for coronavirus it's the smoking rate which is important If men treated themselves well than women wouldn't have better life expectancy You want equality of outcome? Tobbaco bans!
maest 7y ago
> a steady increase which is remarkably linear, apart from a sad bump in late teens and early 20’s, whose cause is all too clear. Any idea what this "clear" cause is?
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  I'm not sure but my guess would be suicide
  - scotty79 7y ago
    And driving.
- Laforet 7y ago
  First time living away from home with ample access to the vices of the world. Driving alone adds a tangible of risk of death.
  - kieranmaine 7y ago
    Re. passengers, I thought it was the reverse. Seems it's more complicated than that - https://aaafoundation.org/teen-driver-risk-relation-age-number-passengers/ https://aaafoundation.org/teen-driver-risk-relation-age-numb....
- rocqua 7y ago
  Reckless behavior by young adults who recently have gotten a lot more freedom and responsibility.
- f_allwein 7y ago
  Drivng and road accidents maybe? Definitely not too clear...
- mkl 7y ago
  That confused me too. The tone suggests they think it's suicide, but more than twice as many people that age die in traffic accidents. Maybe I'm misinterpreting. Certainly not "all too clear" though. US 20-24 years fatal crash rate: 36.3/100,000 [1], and US 15-24 years suicide rate: ~15/100,000 [2]. [1] https://www.autoinsurance.org/age-groups-fatal-crashes/ https://www.autoinsurance.org/age-groups-fatal-crashes/ [2] https://www.sprc.org/scope/age https://www.sprc.org/scope/age
thinkingemote 7y ago
The comments on the post suggest there are some major flaws. One graph compares two different rates on the same axis, and some others show small difference in logarithmic scales. Can anyone look into these criticisms and see if they hold weight?
- pishpash 7y ago
  Valid criticisms. Linear plot has been added but doesn't resolve the unit difference. The whole article tries to ask the right question but goes down the wrong path.
  - geertj 7y ago
    Can you elaborate in what way it goes down the wrong path?
- ajnin 7y ago
  What that comment is saying is that the two axis have different units (a unitless risk for covid case fatality and a time^-1 rate for mortality), so you can't compare them. Which is true, but if you multiply the rate by 1 year, then the units become the same and the values don't change, so that becomes comparable. I still think it makes sense to compare the risk of dying of covid-19 if you catch it vs the risk of dying of any cause in the next 12 months. 1 to 2 years worth of risk still seems like a lot to me
  - iguy 7y ago
    Right, and plotting the comparison to 1 year's risk seems entirely sensible to me. That seems approximately the right "compared to what?" scale to be using, otherwise almost any numbers multiplied by 300 million end up looking huge. One thing this plot does very well is put into perspective the extra risk to the elderly.
filleokus 7y ago
How much higher will the rate of death be in 2020 compared to 2019? Some people that dies from/with Covid would have died from something else just days/weeks/months later, but not all of them. But how many are “extra” deaths? I’m not saying the answers should influence our policy decisions necessarily, but it’s still an interesting question.
- pishpash 7y ago
  Using a year is arbitrary. Everyone eventually dies, so there are no "extra" deaths, only premature deaths. I think it's better to look at expected lifespan decrease.
- m_mueller 7y ago
  I guess there's even a slight chance that it will be a lower rate in some countries, due to people staying at home, air being cleaner etc. - at great cost for the economy of course.
- lordnacho 7y ago
  I think we'd need a "healthy years lost" analysis to see this. Take the residual expected lives of each cohort and guess how many of those years are lost due to the illness. Similarly some kind of measure for the weeks in hospital and potential permanent damage from surviving.
- samsonradu 7y ago
  With the recent movement restrictions I would also expect the car crash death rate to fall considerably so the numbers might be skewed. For 2018 there were 25100 deaths reported for the 28 EU states [1]. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_19_1990 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...
- CalRobert 7y ago
  Incidentally, the leading direct cause of death for children and young adults, drivers, is curtailed by shelter in place restrictions. Deaths from air pollution will most likely fall as well.
- 7y ago
ekidd 7y ago
> This suggests that COVID-19 very roughly contributes a year’s worth of risk. Yes. If I get all the medical care I need, then I have only an 0.15% chance of dying. (Well, more than that, because I'm male, and our numbers are twice as bad.) But I have a 4.9% chance of being hospitalized, which generally means supplemental oxygen and an IV. And if we let this disease just burn through the population, then my state would be looking at something like 13,000 hospitalizations for 700 beds. And the numbers get much worse for older people. Personally, I could live with an 0.15% chance of death. But a 4.9% chance of getting stuck in a field triage hospital with inadequate care, struggling to breathe? Not so much. And what about my older relatives?
- mathdev 7y ago
  > But I have a 4.9% chance of being hospitalized You are not taking into account the asymptomatic rate, among other mistakes.
  - luspr 7y ago
    You are right. According to the Robert-Koch-Institut, even in Germany, where there is a lot of testing being done, the number of actual cases is probably a lot higher than the number of confirmed cases. We are talking about 10x or higher.
    - cycrutchfield 7y ago
      Please cite your sources, preferably a paper pre-print
      - luspr 7y ago
        It was in a press conference with the German minister of health and the RKI. The British chief medical advisor estimated 20x in Britain. Of course nobody really knows at this point. In Germany, a large-scale study using antibody tests is starting next week to estimate the true numbers.
  - ekidd 7y ago
mathdev 7y ago
It is amazing how the whole society can spiral into madness almost overnight. The COVID histeria reminds me of descriptions of the mood among the Hutu people in Rwanda in 1994, also driven by fear instilled by the media. We still have some window left to turn back from the brink.
- maest 7y ago
  Do you disagree with the estimated mortality rates or with the tradeoff between economic and human loss?
  - tlear 7y ago
    It is not the economic loss that is the problem, it is the totalitarian control that is now being advocated with foam in the mouth all over the place. “Those damn neighbors let kids out! Put them in prison” PRC is new model of what we should aspire to.. because they stopped the pandemic(after covering it up and letting it spread first)
    - cycrutchfield 7y ago
      Imagine equating "quarantine" with "totalitarian control". When your parents put you in timeout did you equate it with being imprisoned?
      - logicchains 7y ago
        >When your parents put you in timeout did you equate it with being imprisoned? That attitude that the government is like a parent and the citizens its child to be disciplined, as opposed to a humble servant to the citizens, is exactly the kind of totalitarianism the poster was referring to.
        cycrutchfield 7y ago
        Actually, my point was not to draw a metaphor between the two scenarios I described, although that's a nice little gotcha I walked into. My point was that equating quarantines with totalitarianism is the kind of superficial and querulous comparison that a child might make about timeouts.
klaudius 7y ago
...
- maxstone 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, did anyone have a look at this? Based on the website, the author seems to have a "conspiracy theory by default" response to every recent potentially pandemic levels reaching infectious disease. What's the conspiracy here? Is it that none of the diseases are human-to-human transmissible?
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  Yes, it is.
- paulie_a 7y ago
  Yes, the author of that is a conspiracy but that wants to think they are smarter than everyone else..."The world is suffering from a massive delusion". The only delusion is the fantasy world the author lives in.
csomar 7y ago
- The linear graph shows a linear increase for Covid mortality vs. an exponential one for normal deaths. > So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed. These numbers, afaik, are just wild guess-estimates. The real numbers are still not known because we are yet to have a breakdown from an country that went with herd-immunity and see how that did pan-out. But the real question is: Is the mortality rate, overboard, increase and if so, is it increasing significantly. Italy is recording ~700 deaths per day. But ~2.000 deaths per day happens on a regular basis. If we were to pack a year of deaths into a two weeks slot, then we should see ~40.000 deaths every 24 hours. We are clearly very far from there. It's surprising that no country is doing that but what we should do is test people randomly. That will estimate the % of the population that is currently infected with Covid-19 and determine a more accurate fatality rate. It's very possible that the Covid is a nothing-burger really and the recorded deaths would have died naturally anyway.
- pjc50 7y ago
  This is not consistent with what the hospitals are seeing in Italy.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  In the early phases, random testing to estimate what proportion of the population are infected is prohibitively expensive - you'd need to test hundreds of thousands to find just a few infected. In the later phases, you want to know who has been infected, yet the commonly available test in fact measures who is currently infected (ie. It can't detect those who are still liable to get infected, which is what you need for good modelling). Antibody tests which are being prototyped by many groups should fill this need.
  - sfj 7y ago
    Even testing 100 people would still be informative and give you an upper and lower bounds on the number infected. You don't need an exact number to form policy.
muzani 7y ago
Nice graphs, but I have to question if the numbers are accurate. Let's take UK stats as an example - good healthcare, good coverage of testing, moderate panic levels. 11,658 cases as of writing. 578 deaths, 135 recoveries. 163 in serious condition. 1.4% critical, 4.7% deaths, that's not too bad. But what worries me is that statistic with 578 deaths and 135 recoveries. This is probably because there's a lot of unreported cases, maybe 10,000 people feel sick, stay at home, don't want to tell anyone, and a portion of those die because it's too late, or have an asthma attack classified as Corona. But it looks like a 80% mortality rate from this really pessimistic angle. What am I missing here?
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  Recovery rates are not uniform, and more ill patients die faster than well patients recover. #deaths/(#deaths + #recoveries) will overestimate CFR, and #deaths/#cases will underestimate CFR. The final result will be somewhere in the middle, around 1-1.5%, unless the hospital system gets overloaded in the UK.
- oizin 7y ago
  Calculating the mortality rates as deaths/(deaths+recovered) will give you a biased result for an ongoing epidemic.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    It's a deaths/infections ratio. What's biased about that?
    - irishsultan 7y ago
      The number that worried the OP was deaths/(deaths + recovered), that's different from deaths/(deaths + recovered + ongoing cases).
- david_draco 7y ago
  The temporal dimension. Comparing the deaths now to the infected now doesn't make a lot of sense. (I would question whether the UK has good coverage of testing.)
fbn79 7y ago
In Bergamo (Northern Italy, 120,000 inhabitants) in the last two years, the average number of deaths between 1 and 24 March has been 98 people. This year it’s 446, clearly because COVID. Many COVID death are not reported because of absence of official verification.Data source (https://www.bergamonews.it/2020/03/27/gori-a-bergamo-dall1-al-24-marzo-446-decessi-348-piu-della-media-degli-ultimi-anni/362792/ https://www.bergamonews.it/2020/03/27/gori-a-bergamo-dall1-a...).
- incangold 7y ago
  Your numbers don’t disagree with the article. The data in the article tell us that most of those 446 deaths in which C19 played a part would have happened in the next few years anyway. So we would expect fewer people to die in Bergamo next year, because they died this year instead. And then fewer than normal expected the year after, and so on, although it gets increasingly noisy with time. We’re measuring the impact of COVID in deaths, by and large. A more useful unit for some purposes is quality-adjusted-life-years (QALYs). For people who die, the QALY impact of C19 would have been how many years of full health the person had left, if they had not died after catching the virus. But similarly, for people who don’t die shortly after contracting it, C19 can still have a QALY impact, and we’re not reporting or even measuring that much. Patients often have reduced lunch function even after “recovering”; there will be patients in whom C19 triggers post viral fatigue, which can last years; in the worst cases patients will be stuck with ME/CFS or similar for the rest of their lives. Very little about the philosophy, economics, politics or science of dealing with C19 is simple. Although clearly some things are: if I don’t go near people with the virus, I won’t catch it; if we flatten the curve, fewer patients will die; the old and the infirm are more at risk. But those few simple parts don’t necessarily make the whole simple.
  - greenhatman 7y ago
    But won't people who survive have an increased chance of death in the next few years as well? Seems probably that they would. So overall deaths per capita will probably still be much higher than before for the next 5 to 10 years. Maybe longer.
- 7y ago
nabla9 7y ago
This risk measures risk to expected lifespan with and without COVID-19. It's a good way to put things into context. If you compare deaths directly, you get really horrific numbers. For example: Covid will kill significantly more people in the US than WWII and the deaths will occur within roughly a year or year and a half. (WWII lasted 4 years for the US but the popuation was also smaller). If that sounds horrible and unacceptable, consider that tobacco related deaths (including second hand smoke) in the US kill more than WWII every year. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... Because the deaths will come in short time span and hospitals will be out of capacity the situation will be warlike in countries that fail mitigation. Hospitals running out of capacity kills more of people than the disease. Isolation failures due to hospitals not having testing equipment and protective gear will add unnecessary deaths too. The risk from the disease itself is comparable to lifestyle risks and many other risks.
- nroets 7y ago
  And how does it compare to deaths related to automobile accidents ?
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    Those accidents are no basically longer happening because there are so few cars on the road. Our response to this also solved auto accidents. You should be asking "how does this compare to causes of death related to poverty"
    - brianwawok 7y ago
      Where is this no car traffic happening? Where I am, I don’t see less car traffic. We are moderate in terms of US states for cases. We are told to only leave the house for urgent matters. But the chic-fil-a drive through line is 45 cars deep.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Automobile accidents are order of magnitude smaller risk. In the US automobiles kill roughly the same amount of people annually as year in the Vietnam war. Something like 30k+ annually. You can actually subtract some car deaths from covid deaths because there is less traffic. 9/11 or terrorism in general so low risks that it's quite clear that responding for terrorism with conventional war and trillions of dollars is insane.
fjallstrom 7y ago
I love the simplicity in this statement: "So average risk of death doubles in 8 years."
- paulie_a 7y ago
  The statement is a nieve one to say the least. While the discussion revolves around math and y axis etc, here is the simple math: due to covid I have 12-18 months left before I die.
  - paulie_a 7y ago
    I like how I was downvoted here by some number crunchers for bringing a bit of humanity to the discussion. I guess I should have mentioned something about javascript and an illegal business plan (uber, airbnb etc)
    - ekanes 7y ago
      No, it sounds like you're saying that you're older and therefor at higher risk. Just say your age for context.
  - SahAssar 7y ago
    What is the math that leads you to saying 12-18 months?
    - paulie_a 7y ago
      A particular medication I am on has a life expectancy of that time frame.
nroets 7y ago
How much will life expectancy be reduced if the disease just runs it's course ? (or if we don't enforce a lockdown) ?
- paulie_a 7y ago
  For me it reduces my life expectancy from a decade or two, to a year or two.
- scotty79 7y ago
  Harder to tell. You might assume that people who need oxygen or respirator won't get them and die.
leto_ii 7y ago
Some comments on the concluding remarks: > So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Sure, but it also means these deaths are piled up on top of everything else. It's not like people will stop dying of other causes. > many people who die of COVID would have died anyway within a short period This strikes me as completely unfounded. Diabetes or an age > 70 aren't imminent death sentences in a developed country. > if COVID deaths can be kept in the order of say 20,000 by stringent suppression measures, as is now being suggested, there may end up being a minimal impact on overall mortality In a sense this is a tautology. Of course, if we keep deaths to a low number there won't be an impact on mortality rates.
- monadgonad 7y ago
  > Sure, but it also means these deaths are piled up on top of everything else. It's not like people will stop dying of other causes. You're misunderstanding: the people who die of COVID-19 will stop dying of other causes, because they've died of COVID-19. There will be a decrease in other-cause mortality... >In a sense this is a tautology. Of course, if we keep deaths to a low number there won't be an impact on mortality rates. ...thus what it means is that if the COVID-19 deaths are kept to people who are ill enough that they would have died within the year anyway, those deaths won't be extra mortality across the year. If on the other hand COVID-19 spreads a lot and kills people who wouldn't have otherwise died, there will be extra mortality.
  - leto_ii 7y ago
    Even among the chronically ill and the elderly, the number that die in any given year will be dwarfed by that of covid deaths (if the virus burns through the population).
imotroubairitz 7y ago
Cancer Urology Surgeon friend of mine was down in X ray chatting to one of the radiologist over lunch yesterday. Apparently they’ve noticed that on scans they’ve been doing on people for other (i.e. non lung) reasons - They’ve noted that virtually EVERYONE young and old, have lung fibrosis Even if they’ve been asymptomatic...
imotroubairitz 7y ago
Cancer Urology Surgeon friend of mine (UK) was down in X ray chatting to one of the radiologist over lunch. Apparently they’ve noticed that on scans they’ve been doing on people for other (i.e. non lung) reasons They’ve noted that virtually EVERYONE young and old, have lung fibrosis Even if they’ve been asymptomatic
fxj 7y ago
The mortality during WWII was 9% over 6 years (1939-1945) for Germany, which gives a comparable number to that of corona virus now. So we should compare the current pandemic to 1 year of WWII with all the misery and suffering of the people instead of talking about "normal" or "abnormal" risk. just my 2ct
- remmargorp64 7y ago
  Yeah, but one huge difference there is that wartime ravaged physical cities and buildings with bombs, and all sorts of other things. The coronavirus isn't having any affect on *physical", real objects (other than people), so it's not realistic to assume that it will have anywhere even close to the same side effects as a 6 year war. Comparing it with world war 2 is hyperbolic, at best.
usrusr 7y ago
Deaths are easy to count, but I'm far more interested in what Covid-19 does to survivors. I find reports of permanent lung damage showing up in scans of people who never even noticed an acute illness far more concerning than any single digit death percentage.
- casperc 7y ago
  Source?
  - usrusr 7y ago
    Just tidbits, nothing worth referring. But too many to for comfort. Systematic studies either don't exist or they get lost in the noise of death-counting. It's particularly hard to find even speculative opinion because the same lung damage keywords that would describe outcomes are also preconditions associated with greatly elevated risk, so there's naturally a lot of charter about that.
- sroussey 7y ago
  Curious if covid19 will stay in the system like mono or chickenpox. The latter coming back decades later as Shingles. It may take decades to find out.
justforyou 7y ago
Conspicuously absent from all these armchair "normal risk" discussions is the impact of living the rest of ones life marred by complications (such as painful glass like lesions in the lungs) after surviving.

87 points by robrenaud 7y ago

Looks like the gender disparity in mortality is not being taken into account. The excess risk for men is probably double what he estimates. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/men-are-much-more-likely-to-die-from-coronavirus-but-why https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/men-are-much-m...

tasogare 7y ago
Women "rights" activists are surprisingly mute on the matter, just like they are about the gap in men and women’s life expectancy in general. If they were congruent with the equality of outcome they’re trying the shove our throats down all the time they should advocate for some "measures" to address this gap too, which is even more important. Of the course they won’t, but it shows clearly how flawed they demands and arguments are.
- jamesrcole 7y ago
  “Mute” isn’t the right word. https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus+gendered https://www.google.com/search?q=coronavirus+gendered See for example this speech from an Australian senator https://twitter.com/mehreenfaruqi/status/1242713728048455680?s=21 https://twitter.com/mehreenfaruqi/status/1242713728048455680...
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  I think I've seen the issue brought up periodically by people on the women's rights side of the issue - example https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-patriarchy-is-killing-men/2019/09/12/2490fa7e-d3ea-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-patriarchy-is... but the argument is generally that the men's life expectancy problem will be solved as a side effect of solving the problem they want to solve. on edit: to clarify, I mean of course in regards to the general men's life expectancy problem, not the covid-19 enhanced experience of that problem.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  This forum is generally open to considering contrarian ideas, however, your intensely lazy phrasing and lack of any real argument does not contribute to the discussion here. "Some women's rights advocates have a blind spot, causing (named negative effect of said advocates' policies that can be sourced or is commonly agreed), and this could be an opportunity to address those in light of the disease's disproportionate effect on men". - Not really a statement I agree with, but one I would at least listen to. And, as has been noted, plenty of advocates have pointed out the negative impacts of ["patriarchy", "traditional gender stereotypes", "etc"] on men, like smaller social circles and support groups in elderly men and the expectation to take on dangerous jobs (logging, for instance). Are you aware of these efforts?
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    Why your being downvoted I will never know. Hacker news is embarrassing to be a member of sometimes. The OP you responded to was absolutely lazy with the phrasing and hardly made an argument. You did the opposite and they downvoted you more. What the hell guys?
- 7952 7y ago
  Why shouldn't an activist focus on one particular issue? People are sometimes more interested in one cause than another. A bowel cancer charity is not working to stop lung cancer. And a charity working to protect the rights of separated father's should not have to campaign against domestic violence.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- monadgonad 7y ago
  > they’re trying the shove our throats down all the time Ironic that you say this, yet you've clearly not actually listened to women's rights activists, because men's disproportionate deaths due to mental health/suicide is a major feminist talking point.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Bro it's cause women smoke less. Women also abuse alcohol less prolifically than men, but for coronavirus it's the smoking rate which is important If men treated themselves well than women wouldn't have better life expectancy You want equality of outcome? Tobbaco bans!

maest 7y ago

> a steady increase which is remarkably linear, apart from a sad bump in late teens and early 20’s, whose cause is all too clear. Any idea what this "clear" cause is?

chipperyman573 7y ago
I'm not sure but my guess would be suicide
- scotty79 7y ago
  And driving.
Laforet 7y ago
First time living away from home with ample access to the vices of the world. Driving alone adds a tangible of risk of death.
- kieranmaine 7y ago
  Re. passengers, I thought it was the reverse. Seems it's more complicated than that - https://aaafoundation.org/teen-driver-risk-relation-age-number-passengers/ https://aaafoundation.org/teen-driver-risk-relation-age-numb....
rocqua 7y ago
Reckless behavior by young adults who recently have gotten a lot more freedom and responsibility.
f_allwein 7y ago
Drivng and road accidents maybe? Definitely not too clear...
mkl 7y ago
That confused me too. The tone suggests they think it's suicide, but more than twice as many people that age die in traffic accidents. Maybe I'm misinterpreting. Certainly not "all too clear" though. US 20-24 years fatal crash rate: 36.3/100,000 [1], and US 15-24 years suicide rate: ~15/100,000 [2]. [1] https://www.autoinsurance.org/age-groups-fatal-crashes/ https://www.autoinsurance.org/age-groups-fatal-crashes/ [2] https://www.sprc.org/scope/age https://www.sprc.org/scope/age

thinkingemote 7y ago

The comments on the post suggest there are some major flaws. One graph compares two different rates on the same axis, and some others show small difference in logarithmic scales. Can anyone look into these criticisms and see if they hold weight?

pishpash 7y ago
Valid criticisms. Linear plot has been added but doesn't resolve the unit difference. The whole article tries to ask the right question but goes down the wrong path.
- geertj 7y ago
  Can you elaborate in what way it goes down the wrong path?
ajnin 7y ago
What that comment is saying is that the two axis have different units (a unitless risk for covid case fatality and a time^-1 rate for mortality), so you can't compare them. Which is true, but if you multiply the rate by 1 year, then the units become the same and the values don't change, so that becomes comparable. I still think it makes sense to compare the risk of dying of covid-19 if you catch it vs the risk of dying of any cause in the next 12 months. 1 to 2 years worth of risk still seems like a lot to me
- iguy 7y ago
  Right, and plotting the comparison to 1 year's risk seems entirely sensible to me. That seems approximately the right "compared to what?" scale to be using, otherwise almost any numbers multiplied by 300 million end up looking huge. One thing this plot does very well is put into perspective the extra risk to the elderly.

filleokus 7y ago

How much higher will the rate of death be in 2020 compared to 2019? Some people that dies from/with Covid would have died from something else just days/weeks/months later, but not all of them. But how many are “extra” deaths? I’m not saying the answers should influence our policy decisions necessarily, but it’s still an interesting question.

pishpash 7y ago
Using a year is arbitrary. Everyone eventually dies, so there are no "extra" deaths, only premature deaths. I think it's better to look at expected lifespan decrease.
m_mueller 7y ago
I guess there's even a slight chance that it will be a lower rate in some countries, due to people staying at home, air being cleaner etc. - at great cost for the economy of course.
lordnacho 7y ago
I think we'd need a "healthy years lost" analysis to see this. Take the residual expected lives of each cohort and guess how many of those years are lost due to the illness. Similarly some kind of measure for the weeks in hospital and potential permanent damage from surviving.
samsonradu 7y ago
With the recent movement restrictions I would also expect the car crash death rate to fall considerably so the numbers might be skewed. For 2018 there were 25100 deaths reported for the 28 EU states [1]. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_19_1990 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_1...
CalRobert 7y ago
Incidentally, the leading direct cause of death for children and young adults, drivers, is curtailed by shelter in place restrictions. Deaths from air pollution will most likely fall as well.
7y ago

ekidd 7y ago

> This suggests that COVID-19 very roughly contributes a year’s worth of risk. Yes. If I get all the medical care I need, then I have only an 0.15% chance of dying. (Well, more than that, because I'm male, and our numbers are twice as bad.) But I have a 4.9% chance of being hospitalized, which generally means supplemental oxygen and an IV. And if we let this disease just burn through the population, then my state would be looking at something like 13,000 hospitalizations for 700 beds. And the numbers get much worse for older people. Personally, I could live with an 0.15% chance of death. But a 4.9% chance of getting stuck in a field triage hospital with inadequate care, struggling to breathe? Not so much. And what about my older relatives?

mathdev 7y ago
> But I have a 4.9% chance of being hospitalized You are not taking into account the asymptomatic rate, among other mistakes.
- luspr 7y ago
  You are right. According to the Robert-Koch-Institut, even in Germany, where there is a lot of testing being done, the number of actual cases is probably a lot higher than the number of confirmed cases. We are talking about 10x or higher.
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    Please cite your sources, preferably a paper pre-print
    - luspr 7y ago
      It was in a press conference with the German minister of health and the RKI. The British chief medical advisor estimated 20x in Britain. Of course nobody really knows at this point. In Germany, a large-scale study using antibody tests is starting next week to estimate the true numbers.
- ekidd 7y ago

mathdev 7y ago

It is amazing how the whole society can spiral into madness almost overnight. The COVID histeria reminds me of descriptions of the mood among the Hutu people in Rwanda in 1994, also driven by fear instilled by the media. We still have some window left to turn back from the brink.

maest 7y ago
Do you disagree with the estimated mortality rates or with the tradeoff between economic and human loss?
- tlear 7y ago
  It is not the economic loss that is the problem, it is the totalitarian control that is now being advocated with foam in the mouth all over the place. “Those damn neighbors let kids out! Put them in prison” PRC is new model of what we should aspire to.. because they stopped the pandemic(after covering it up and letting it spread first)
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    Imagine equating "quarantine" with "totalitarian control". When your parents put you in timeout did you equate it with being imprisoned?
    - logicchains 7y ago
      >When your parents put you in timeout did you equate it with being imprisoned? That attitude that the government is like a parent and the citizens its child to be disciplined, as opposed to a humble servant to the citizens, is exactly the kind of totalitarianism the poster was referring to.
      - cycrutchfield 7y ago
        Actually, my point was not to draw a metaphor between the two scenarios I described, although that's a nice little gotcha I walked into. My point was that equating quarantines with totalitarianism is the kind of superficial and querulous comparison that a child might make about timeouts.

klaudius 7y ago

...

maxstone 7y ago
Out of curiosity, did anyone have a look at this? Based on the website, the author seems to have a "conspiracy theory by default" response to every recent potentially pandemic levels reaching infectious disease. What's the conspiracy here? Is it that none of the diseases are human-to-human transmissible?
LeoNatan25 7y ago
Yes, it is.
paulie_a 7y ago
Yes, the author of that is a conspiracy but that wants to think they are smarter than everyone else..."The world is suffering from a massive delusion". The only delusion is the fantasy world the author lives in.

csomar 7y ago

- The linear graph shows a linear increase for Covid mortality vs. an exponential one for normal deaths. > So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed. These numbers, afaik, are just wild guess-estimates. The real numbers are still not known because we are yet to have a breakdown from an country that went with herd-immunity and see how that did pan-out. But the real question is: Is the mortality rate, overboard, increase and if so, is it increasing significantly. Italy is recording ~700 deaths per day. But ~2.000 deaths per day happens on a regular basis. If we were to pack a year of deaths into a two weeks slot, then we should see ~40.000 deaths every 24 hours. We are clearly very far from there. It's surprising that no country is doing that but what we should do is test people randomly. That will estimate the % of the population that is currently infected with Covid-19 and determine a more accurate fatality rate. It's very possible that the Covid is a nothing-burger really and the recorded deaths would have died naturally anyway.

pjc50 7y ago
This is not consistent with what the hospitals are seeing in Italy.
londons_explore 7y ago
In the early phases, random testing to estimate what proportion of the population are infected is prohibitively expensive - you'd need to test hundreds of thousands to find just a few infected. In the later phases, you want to know who has been infected, yet the commonly available test in fact measures who is currently infected (ie. It can't detect those who are still liable to get infected, which is what you need for good modelling). Antibody tests which are being prototyped by many groups should fill this need.
- sfj 7y ago
  Even testing 100 people would still be informative and give you an upper and lower bounds on the number infected. You don't need an exact number to form policy.

muzani 7y ago

Nice graphs, but I have to question if the numbers are accurate. Let's take UK stats as an example - good healthcare, good coverage of testing, moderate panic levels. 11,658 cases as of writing. 578 deaths, 135 recoveries. 163 in serious condition. 1.4% critical, 4.7% deaths, that's not too bad. But what worries me is that statistic with 578 deaths and 135 recoveries. This is probably because there's a lot of unreported cases, maybe 10,000 people feel sick, stay at home, don't want to tell anyone, and a portion of those die because it's too late, or have an asthma attack classified as Corona. But it looks like a 80% mortality rate from this really pessimistic angle. What am I missing here?

cycrutchfield 7y ago
Recovery rates are not uniform, and more ill patients die faster than well patients recover. #deaths/(#deaths + #recoveries) will overestimate CFR, and #deaths/#cases will underestimate CFR. The final result will be somewhere in the middle, around 1-1.5%, unless the hospital system gets overloaded in the UK.
oizin 7y ago
Calculating the mortality rates as deaths/(deaths+recovered) will give you a biased result for an ongoing epidemic.
- rumanator 7y ago
  It's a deaths/infections ratio. What's biased about that?
  - irishsultan 7y ago
    The number that worried the OP was deaths/(deaths + recovered), that's different from deaths/(deaths + recovered + ongoing cases).
david_draco 7y ago
The temporal dimension. Comparing the deaths now to the infected now doesn't make a lot of sense. (I would question whether the UK has good coverage of testing.)

fbn79 7y ago

In Bergamo (Northern Italy, 120,000 inhabitants) in the last two years, the average number of deaths between 1 and 24 March has been 98 people. This year it’s 446, clearly because COVID. Many COVID death are not reported because of absence of official verification.Data source (https://www.bergamonews.it/2020/03/27/gori-a-bergamo-dall1-al-24-marzo-446-decessi-348-piu-della-media-degli-ultimi-anni/362792/ https://www.bergamonews.it/2020/03/27/gori-a-bergamo-dall1-a...).

incangold 7y ago
Your numbers don’t disagree with the article. The data in the article tell us that most of those 446 deaths in which C19 played a part would have happened in the next few years anyway. So we would expect fewer people to die in Bergamo next year, because they died this year instead. And then fewer than normal expected the year after, and so on, although it gets increasingly noisy with time. We’re measuring the impact of COVID in deaths, by and large. A more useful unit for some purposes is quality-adjusted-life-years (QALYs). For people who die, the QALY impact of C19 would have been how many years of full health the person had left, if they had not died after catching the virus. But similarly, for people who don’t die shortly after contracting it, C19 can still have a QALY impact, and we’re not reporting or even measuring that much. Patients often have reduced lunch function even after “recovering”; there will be patients in whom C19 triggers post viral fatigue, which can last years; in the worst cases patients will be stuck with ME/CFS or similar for the rest of their lives. Very little about the philosophy, economics, politics or science of dealing with C19 is simple. Although clearly some things are: if I don’t go near people with the virus, I won’t catch it; if we flatten the curve, fewer patients will die; the old and the infirm are more at risk. But those few simple parts don’t necessarily make the whole simple.
- greenhatman 7y ago
  But won't people who survive have an increased chance of death in the next few years as well? Seems probably that they would. So overall deaths per capita will probably still be much higher than before for the next 5 to 10 years. Maybe longer.
7y ago

nabla9 7y ago

This risk measures risk to expected lifespan with and without COVID-19. It's a good way to put things into context. If you compare deaths directly, you get really horrific numbers. For example: Covid will kill significantly more people in the US than WWII and the deaths will occur within roughly a year or year and a half. (WWII lasted 4 years for the US but the popuation was also smaller). If that sounds horrible and unacceptable, consider that tobacco related deaths (including second hand smoke) in the US kill more than WWII every year. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/heal... Because the deaths will come in short time span and hospitals will be out of capacity the situation will be warlike in countries that fail mitigation. Hospitals running out of capacity kills more of people than the disease. Isolation failures due to hospitals not having testing equipment and protective gear will add unnecessary deaths too. The risk from the disease itself is comparable to lifestyle risks and many other risks.

nroets 7y ago
And how does it compare to deaths related to automobile accidents ?
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Those accidents are no basically longer happening because there are so few cars on the road. Our response to this also solved auto accidents. You should be asking "how does this compare to causes of death related to poverty"
  - brianwawok 7y ago
    Where is this no car traffic happening? Where I am, I don’t see less car traffic. We are moderate in terms of US states for cases. We are told to only leave the house for urgent matters. But the chic-fil-a drive through line is 45 cars deep.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Automobile accidents are order of magnitude smaller risk. In the US automobiles kill roughly the same amount of people annually as year in the Vietnam war. Something like 30k+ annually. You can actually subtract some car deaths from covid deaths because there is less traffic. 9/11 or terrorism in general so low risks that it's quite clear that responding for terrorism with conventional war and trillions of dollars is insane.

fjallstrom 7y ago

I love the simplicity in this statement: "So average risk of death doubles in 8 years."

paulie_a 7y ago
The statement is a nieve one to say the least. While the discussion revolves around math and y axis etc, here is the simple math: due to covid I have 12-18 months left before I die.
- paulie_a 7y ago
  I like how I was downvoted here by some number crunchers for bringing a bit of humanity to the discussion. I guess I should have mentioned something about javascript and an illegal business plan (uber, airbnb etc)
  - ekanes 7y ago
    No, it sounds like you're saying that you're older and therefor at higher risk. Just say your age for context.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  What is the math that leads you to saying 12-18 months?
  - paulie_a 7y ago
    A particular medication I am on has a life expectancy of that time frame.

nroets 7y ago

How much will life expectancy be reduced if the disease just runs it's course ? (or if we don't enforce a lockdown) ?

paulie_a 7y ago
For me it reduces my life expectancy from a decade or two, to a year or two.
scotty79 7y ago
Harder to tell. You might assume that people who need oxygen or respirator won't get them and die.

leto_ii 7y ago

Some comments on the concluding remarks: > So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Sure, but it also means these deaths are piled up on top of everything else. It's not like people will stop dying of other causes. > many people who die of COVID would have died anyway within a short period This strikes me as completely unfounded. Diabetes or an age > 70 aren't imminent death sentences in a developed country. > if COVID deaths can be kept in the order of say 20,000 by stringent suppression measures, as is now being suggested, there may end up being a minimal impact on overall mortality In a sense this is a tautology. Of course, if we keep deaths to a low number there won't be an impact on mortality rates.

monadgonad 7y ago
> Sure, but it also means these deaths are piled up on top of everything else. It's not like people will stop dying of other causes. You're misunderstanding: the people who die of COVID-19 will stop dying of other causes, because they've died of COVID-19. There will be a decrease in other-cause mortality... >In a sense this is a tautology. Of course, if we keep deaths to a low number there won't be an impact on mortality rates. ...thus what it means is that if the COVID-19 deaths are kept to people who are ill enough that they would have died within the year anyway, those deaths won't be extra mortality across the year. If on the other hand COVID-19 spreads a lot and kills people who wouldn't have otherwise died, there will be extra mortality.
- leto_ii 7y ago
  Even among the chronically ill and the elderly, the number that die in any given year will be dwarfed by that of covid deaths (if the virus burns through the population).

imotroubairitz 7y ago

Cancer Urology Surgeon friend of mine was down in X ray chatting to one of the radiologist over lunch yesterday. Apparently they’ve noticed that on scans they’ve been doing on people for other (i.e. non lung) reasons - They’ve noted that virtually EVERYONE young and old, have lung fibrosis Even if they’ve been asymptomatic...

imotroubairitz 7y ago

Cancer Urology Surgeon friend of mine (UK) was down in X ray chatting to one of the radiologist over lunch. Apparently they’ve noticed that on scans they’ve been doing on people for other (i.e. non lung) reasons They’ve noted that virtually EVERYONE young and old, have lung fibrosis Even if they’ve been asymptomatic

fxj 7y ago

The mortality during WWII was 9% over 6 years (1939-1945) for Germany, which gives a comparable number to that of corona virus now. So we should compare the current pandemic to 1 year of WWII with all the misery and suffering of the people instead of talking about "normal" or "abnormal" risk. just my 2ct

remmargorp64 7y ago
Yeah, but one huge difference there is that wartime ravaged physical cities and buildings with bombs, and all sorts of other things. The coronavirus isn't having any affect on *physical", real objects (other than people), so it's not realistic to assume that it will have anywhere even close to the same side effects as a 6 year war. Comparing it with world war 2 is hyperbolic, at best.

usrusr 7y ago

Deaths are easy to count, but I'm far more interested in what Covid-19 does to survivors. I find reports of permanent lung damage showing up in scans of people who never even noticed an acute illness far more concerning than any single digit death percentage.

casperc 7y ago
Source?
- usrusr 7y ago
  Just tidbits, nothing worth referring. But too many to for comfort. Systematic studies either don't exist or they get lost in the noise of death-counting. It's particularly hard to find even speculative opinion because the same lung damage keywords that would describe outcomes are also preconditions associated with greatly elevated risk, so there's naturally a lot of charter about that.
sroussey 7y ago
Curious if covid19 will stay in the system like mono or chickenpox. The latter coming back decades later as Shingles. It may take decades to find out.

justforyou 7y ago

Conspicuously absent from all these armchair "normal risk" discussions is the impact of living the rest of ones life marred by complications (such as painful glass like lesions in the lungs) after surviving.