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I simply do not believe those figures at all. How can you even claim an "average death rate" when you don't even know how many people were infected, had mild s

by umvi 7y ago

I simply do not believe those figures at all. How can you even claim an "average death rate" when you don't even know how many people were infected, had mild symptoms, and recovered without reporting it to anyone? Of course the numbers will look scary when you only count hospitalized people as infected.

adjkant 7y ago
> How can you even claim an "average death rate" when you don't even know how many people were infected, had mild symptoms, and recovered without reporting it to anyone? We can either throw our hands up and give up or we can do the best with what we have. So, what percentage of cases do you think are unconfirmed? You can adjust my math with that and see what those rates are. Those numbers still stay scary unless you assume a 90% unconfirmed rate, at which it equalizes for young people compared to the flu but is still 10x or more for some age groups. The point being, even accounting for underreporting this is still much more deadly and allowing it to spread like the flu would result in many more deaths. I haven't seen any reliable numbers given about the underreporting rate, so if you have seen any that would be interesting!
- concordDance 7y ago
  See the report by Imperial: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-30-COVID19-Report-13.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/m... Looks like Spain had 6 million infections but only 140 thousand cases. So the actual uncomfirmed rate could be 97%.
Non24Throw 7y ago
You’re touching on what this whole thing is. It’s rushed and woefully incomplete data enabling media companies to write apocalyptic headlines without exposing themselves to any legal liability. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, so that’s what they’re doing. I think to most people with a background in statistics it’s very easy to tell how bad the data is at a glance. It’s downright blatant. They don’t have a platform though, because in this media climate your platform is only as big as your level of sensationalism and hysteria. There are multiple factors skewing the data toward coronavirus appearing more deadly than it actually is. It’s new and sudden, so there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure in place for testing. It’s causing a rush on hospitals. Combine those and you have one massive shortage of testing. You obviously want to care for the most critically ill first, so globally, only the most sick get tested, and only the cases most likely to be fatal are even represented in these numbers everyone is seeing. Then they take wildly differing medical, economic and political environments all over the world, and merge all the data as if it’s equal. In many cases, in addition to the inadequate testing, that data is only as accurate as their governing bodies want it to be. Do we really believe there are 5x as many cases in the US as in China? Do we really believe there were only 5,000 cases in India? Do we really believe the virus is 10x as likely to be fatal in Italy as compared to Germany? Take the “confirmed cases” number and just add a zero, and you might be closer to the reality of what’s going on out there. People are simply blind to the difference between “confirmed cases” and “cases”. It’s very unfortunate that this nomenclature has a natural tendency to make “confirmed cases” feel like it must be more accurate, and also unfortunate that the term “cases” could only ever be an approximation. But those labels were chosen carefully and for a good reason, and they represent very, very different things.

by umvi 7y ago

adjkant 7y ago

> How can you even claim an "average death rate" when you don't even know how many people were infected, had mild symptoms, and recovered without reporting it to anyone? We can either throw our hands up and give up or we can do the best with what we have. So, what percentage of cases do you think are unconfirmed? You can adjust my math with that and see what those rates are. Those numbers still stay scary unless you assume a 90% unconfirmed rate, at which it equalizes for young people compared to the flu but is still 10x or more for some age groups. The point being, even accounting for underreporting this is still much more deadly and allowing it to spread like the flu would result in many more deaths. I haven't seen any reliable numbers given about the underreporting rate, so if you have seen any that would be interesting!

concordDance 7y ago
See the report by Imperial: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-30-COVID19-Report-13.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/m... Looks like Spain had 6 million infections but only 140 thousand cases. So the actual uncomfirmed rate could be 97%.

Non24Throw 7y ago

You’re touching on what this whole thing is. It’s rushed and woefully incomplete data enabling media companies to write apocalyptic headlines without exposing themselves to any legal liability. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, so that’s what they’re doing. I think to most people with a background in statistics it’s very easy to tell how bad the data is at a glance. It’s downright blatant. They don’t have a platform though, because in this media climate your platform is only as big as your level of sensationalism and hysteria. There are multiple factors skewing the data toward coronavirus appearing more deadly than it actually is. It’s new and sudden, so there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure in place for testing. It’s causing a rush on hospitals. Combine those and you have one massive shortage of testing. You obviously want to care for the most critically ill first, so globally, only the most sick get tested, and only the cases most likely to be fatal are even represented in these numbers everyone is seeing. Then they take wildly differing medical, economic and political environments all over the world, and merge all the data as if it’s equal. In many cases, in addition to the inadequate testing, that data is only as accurate as their governing bodies want it to be. Do we really believe there are 5x as many cases in the US as in China? Do we really believe there were only 5,000 cases in India? Do we really believe the virus is 10x as likely to be fatal in Italy as compared to Germany? Take the “confirmed cases” number and just add a zero, and you might be closer to the reality of what’s going on out there. People are simply blind to the difference between “confirmed cases” and “cases”. It’s very unfortunate that this nomenclature has a natural tendency to make “confirmed cases” feel like it must be more accurate, and also unfortunate that the term “cases” could only ever be an approximation. But those labels were chosen carefully and for a good reason, and they represent very, very different things.