3 ms·

- 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 COVI

by 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.
  - SahAssar 7y ago
    We can only test for active infections, not past infections. The disease is still rare enough to not allow for sparse testing but common and infectious enough to spread quickly. The disease is still not fully known. The disease can take up to (or longer) than 14 days to show the symptoms to show that we should test a person. The disease can spread from non-symptomatic persons. Can't you see how these factors mean that testing 100 people would not lead to a proper representative sample? I don't think 100 people would be enough to properly and statistically test for a common cold, much less for a disease like this.
    - sfj 7y ago
      > Can't you see how these factors mean that testing 100 people would not lead to a proper representative sample? Where did I ever write this? I wrote it would give us an upper and lower bound.

by csomar 7y ago

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.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  We can only test for active infections, not past infections. The disease is still rare enough to not allow for sparse testing but common and infectious enough to spread quickly. The disease is still not fully known. The disease can take up to (or longer) than 14 days to show the symptoms to show that we should test a person. The disease can spread from non-symptomatic persons. Can't you see how these factors mean that testing 100 people would not lead to a proper representative sample? I don't think 100 people would be enough to properly and statistically test for a common cold, much less for a disease like this.
  - sfj 7y ago
    > Can't you see how these factors mean that testing 100 people would not lead to a proper representative sample? Where did I ever write this? I wrote it would give us an upper and lower bound.