4 ms·

Let's presume this death rate is accurate to within an order of 2- 1.33% to 0.33%. We can use that to do some interesting estimates on the true infection rate.

by mabbo 7y ago

Let's presume this death rate is accurate to within an order of 2- 1.33% to 0.33%. We can use that to do some interesting estimates on the true infection rate. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ (trust it if you like) says that the USA has (as of 2020-04-05T15:13:00Z) had 9,119 deaths- and I was going to say 8,486 but I refreshed the page and it jumped to 9,119 because of course it did. 9,119 / 0.33% = 2,763,333 infections. 9,119 / 1.33% = 685,639 infections. But, we also have to consider that death isn't instant- so add in everyone who became infected in the last 5-10 days. That'll be a bigger number. The reported number of infections because of limited testing is 320,828. I think it's not unreasonable to say that probably 1m Americans have now been infected by this virus. And the longer ago this comment was made, the more likely that estimate is correct. Edit to add: I trust the number of deaths more than the number of infections because it's easy to say "don't come to the hospital to get tested if you don't need to" but it's hard to say "let's pretend that dead body died of something else".

slovenlyrobot 7y ago
If you click into the per-country view on Worldometers you can see their sources. For example the current numbers for USA came from nyc.gov.
- nradov 7y ago
  The trouble is that numbers are not being gathered in a consistent way in every country. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
fnord123 7y ago
Sal Khan's excellent video on extrapolating the probable existing cases from deaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk
LorenPechtel 7y ago
You're assuming they have an accurate cause of death for everyone. In the absence of a Covid-19 diagnosis it will simply look like pneumonia.
- mabbo 7y ago
  That's a really fair point, but I suspect for the moment at least the dead or very seriously ill are all being tested. Most deaths are happening in hospitals, for the moment. My father, for example, is currently in the hospital for something other than Covid-19 but as soon as he got a mild fever he was rushed into isolation and given the tests for it. (He does not recommend the up-the-nose test at all.)
  - greedo 7y ago
    My understanding is that there's a huge gap in testing people who have died. Why waste a valuable test on someone who can't use it?
xorcist 7y ago
> it's hard to say "let's pretend that dead body died of something else" Pretends is a strong word. How many people who died of pneumonia during the last months did die of covid-19? It's not possible to know unless you test every dead person, even those who were never hospitalised. Respiratory infections is not an uncommon cause of death with the elderly. Not every country have tested exhaustively for this, which need not be of ill intent.
rhacker 7y ago
I believed we were at the 1M level about 3 weeks ago. I think we're at the 50 - 100M level at this point, but we won't see those numbers, ever. We will probably see about 5-10M US infections in 3 weeks, which account for the extremely small percentage of people getting tested, and at that point (in 3 weeks) the number of actually infected people will be at least 40% of the US population. I think at that point it will also have waned quite a lot, but we're just playing catch up with the vast numbers of people that are already infected. For a lot of people there's easily hideable symptoms and people are likely going to their grocery store jobs anyway.
- jlmorton 7y ago
  That's ridiculous. We're only testing people with severe symptoms and telling everyone with minor symptoms to stay home. We're not testing anyone without symptoms. And the positive test rate is 18.6%.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tasuki 7y ago
  You are quite optimistic.
jodrellblank 7y ago
CDC says USA deaths are at 6,500 as of yesterday 4th April [1] Considering they were reported in the news[2] as 600 on Tues 23rd, 1000 on Thurs 25th, 2000 on Sat 28th, 3700 on Mon 31st, and the infection rate increasing steeply, to have “only” 6500 or 9100 a week later is quite flat. Yes deaths lag infections, but on the same CDC page the total infection count graph has only been increasing faster over this time, from 80,000 to 260,000. Doubling every three days would become 7-10k dead midweek, 15-20k dead by now, this weekend. (That’s the reported infection rate in NY and Michigan, by the media), and it’s half that or less. Has the death count slowed significantly this week? A Phantom of vague rounded numbers? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case... [2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/25/coronavirus-usa-death-count-dead-1000/5079442002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/25/coronav...
- hedora 7y ago
  The US death rate is the sum of a bunch of time-lagged exponential curves. For instance, CA is 2 weeks after NY. Numbers from individual states are more informative (but have similar issues for big states): https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
antman 7y ago
But how do we define mortality? This is not an existentialist question, it is just that somebody infected needs one or two weeks to die. Closer to the truth might be deaths/infected-10days-ago and that will be a lot bigger. If instead one divides only those that “completed the process” meaning dead/healed, events which also happen in a more similar time frame, that ratio is also a lot higher. TLDR: I need help understanding what a “death rate” should be.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  It's usually not mortality but CFR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate
beamatronic 7y ago
I personally know at least 5 people with the symptoms, who haven’t been tested.
- hedora 7y ago
  Just about everyone I know had the symptoms some time in 2020, mostly before COVID got here. It’s still the tail end of cold and flu season, after all. Other than randomly testing the population, there doesn’t seem to be any statistically sound way to estimate the number of infections.
tren-hard 7y ago
One article I read recently brought up a topic on how unreliable testing and confirming the dead are currently that to get a more accurate count we should look at year over year deaths. This could be broken down to compare deaths in a county the last x years in March to this year. To me it makes sense I suppose, yoy is a pretty common tool. But I'm just a reader, so perhaps it is not correct
- hkai 7y ago
  The variations in deaths between years is so large (over 30k deaths difference, sometimes up sometimes down) that year on year comparison may not be meaningful. You could just twist the data to prove any point, even that covid-19 reduced deaths.
genofon 7y ago
the problem with relying too much on death is that even trying to be accurate if the system is overwhelmed they will not spend time, resources and precious test on a death body. This is not speculation, it's happening in China, Spain, Italy (sorry can't remember the source)
xbmcuser 7y ago
They are doing that as well. Just a few days ago I read a mortician was told that 3 dead had coranavirus but only the death certificate of only 1 mentiond coranavirus. They are not testing many of the dead so the deaths are being undercounted by a large number as well. This is not just a Us problem but in many other countries as well.

by mabbo 7y ago

slovenlyrobot 7y ago

If you click into the per-country view on Worldometers you can see their sources. For example the current numbers for USA came from nyc.gov.

nradov 7y ago
The trouble is that numbers are not being gathered in a consistent way in every country. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

fnord123 7y ago

Sal Khan's excellent video on extrapolating the probable existing cases from deaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk

LorenPechtel 7y ago

You're assuming they have an accurate cause of death for everyone. In the absence of a Covid-19 diagnosis it will simply look like pneumonia.

mabbo 7y ago
That's a really fair point, but I suspect for the moment at least the dead or very seriously ill are all being tested. Most deaths are happening in hospitals, for the moment. My father, for example, is currently in the hospital for something other than Covid-19 but as soon as he got a mild fever he was rushed into isolation and given the tests for it. (He does not recommend the up-the-nose test at all.)
- greedo 7y ago
  My understanding is that there's a huge gap in testing people who have died. Why waste a valuable test on someone who can't use it?

xorcist 7y ago

> it's hard to say "let's pretend that dead body died of something else" Pretends is a strong word. How many people who died of pneumonia during the last months did die of covid-19? It's not possible to know unless you test every dead person, even those who were never hospitalised. Respiratory infections is not an uncommon cause of death with the elderly. Not every country have tested exhaustively for this, which need not be of ill intent.

rhacker 7y ago

I believed we were at the 1M level about 3 weeks ago. I think we're at the 50 - 100M level at this point, but we won't see those numbers, ever. We will probably see about 5-10M US infections in 3 weeks, which account for the extremely small percentage of people getting tested, and at that point (in 3 weeks) the number of actually infected people will be at least 40% of the US population. I think at that point it will also have waned quite a lot, but we're just playing catch up with the vast numbers of people that are already infected. For a lot of people there's easily hideable symptoms and people are likely going to their grocery store jobs anyway.

jlmorton 7y ago
That's ridiculous. We're only testing people with severe symptoms and telling everyone with minor symptoms to stay home. We're not testing anyone without symptoms. And the positive test rate is 18.6%.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tasuki 7y ago
You are quite optimistic.

jodrellblank 7y ago

CDC says USA deaths are at 6,500 as of yesterday 4th April [1] Considering they were reported in the news[2] as 600 on Tues 23rd, 1000 on Thurs 25th, 2000 on Sat 28th, 3700 on Mon 31st, and the infection rate increasing steeply, to have “only” 6500 or 9100 a week later is quite flat. Yes deaths lag infections, but on the same CDC page the total infection count graph has only been increasing faster over this time, from 80,000 to 260,000. Doubling every three days would become 7-10k dead midweek, 15-20k dead by now, this weekend. (That’s the reported infection rate in NY and Michigan, by the media), and it’s half that or less. Has the death count slowed significantly this week? A Phantom of vague rounded numbers? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case... [2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/25/coronavirus-usa-death-count-dead-1000/5079442002/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/25/coronav...

hedora 7y ago
The US death rate is the sum of a bunch of time-lagged exponential curves. For instance, CA is 2 weeks after NY. Numbers from individual states are more informative (but have similar issues for big states): https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

antman 7y ago

But how do we define mortality? This is not an existentialist question, it is just that somebody infected needs one or two weeks to die. Closer to the truth might be deaths/infected-10days-ago and that will be a lot bigger. If instead one divides only those that “completed the process” meaning dead/healed, events which also happen in a more similar time frame, that ratio is also a lot higher. TLDR: I need help understanding what a “death rate” should be.

raverbashing 7y ago
It's usually not mortality but CFR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_fatality_rate

beamatronic 7y ago

I personally know at least 5 people with the symptoms, who haven’t been tested.

hedora 7y ago
Just about everyone I know had the symptoms some time in 2020, mostly before COVID got here. It’s still the tail end of cold and flu season, after all. Other than randomly testing the population, there doesn’t seem to be any statistically sound way to estimate the number of infections.

tren-hard 7y ago

One article I read recently brought up a topic on how unreliable testing and confirming the dead are currently that to get a more accurate count we should look at year over year deaths. This could be broken down to compare deaths in a county the last x years in March to this year. To me it makes sense I suppose, yoy is a pretty common tool. But I'm just a reader, so perhaps it is not correct

hkai 7y ago
The variations in deaths between years is so large (over 30k deaths difference, sometimes up sometimes down) that year on year comparison may not be meaningful. You could just twist the data to prove any point, even that covid-19 reduced deaths.

genofon 7y ago

the problem with relying too much on death is that even trying to be accurate if the system is overwhelmed they will not spend time, resources and precious test on a death body. This is not speculation, it's happening in China, Spain, Italy (sorry can't remember the source)

xbmcuser 7y ago

They are doing that as well. Just a few days ago I read a mortician was told that 3 dead had coranavirus but only the death certificate of only 1 mentiond coranavirus. They are not testing many of the dead so the deaths are being undercounted by a large number as well. This is not just a Us problem but in many other countries as well.