5 ms·
The goal of establishing a lower bound is to inform decision-making. A lower bound of 0 is trivially true and doesn't help decision-making. A lower bound of 0.5
by jdm2212 7y ago
The goal of establishing a lower bound is to inform decision-making. A lower bound of 0 is trivially true and doesn't help decision-making. A lower bound of 0.5% rules out some policy options, though -- in America, it means over a million people would have to die to achieve herd immunity, which is probably unacceptable to political leaders.
The higher the lower bound, the more policy options can be ruled out, and hence the more useful the bound.
- Retric 7y agoI agree, however if you have two accurate lower bounds then it’s only the higher one that’s useful. Aka X > 5 is not useful if you know X > 10.
- nopinsight 7y agoIf you know of a lower bound that's higher than mine, based on as/more reliable data, you should mention/link to it. People are doubting the Lancet paper based on data source (I don't have a strong opinion on that), so this bound based on a different source of evidence should provide additional information for policymaking. Your lower bound based on the population of earth is clearly not it.
- Retric 7y agoWe can argue about specific examples, but I think you can more easily accept errors in your estimate so: First, there are 12 not 11 known deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Princess_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Princess_(ship) Second your using both passengers and crew numbers to hit 712, but 145 of those where crew average age 36 and 567 occurred in passengers average age 69. Thus the demographic estimate of 30% also low. Finally, for accuracy you need to adjust for the healthier than average population receiving better than average care. But, that’s more debatable.
- nopinsight 7y agoI use data from worldometers. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ You can make adjustments and get better estimates with more work. You are welcomed to and let us know the results. My point is to invalidate some wildly optimistic estimates like 0.1-0.2% fatality rate which is still getting spread around. With some adjustments on my model, the point would still stand. “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” —- George E P Box
- SAI_Peregrinus 7y agoIt also lets you judge whether other models are useful. If you see a model claiming an IFR the lower bound of 0.5%, it's wrong.