7 ms·

If 0.37% is true, why are the hospitals in this shape?

fungi 6y ago
Because the infection rate is so high.
amiantos 6y ago
The 2% number is 2% of people who have bad symptoms die. 0.37% is 0.37% of all people who get it, including those who have mild/no symptoms die. It simply means a much larger percentage of people get it, not that any less people are dying. I’d say there’s a good chance that many of us have gotten it, and spread it, without knowing it.
- rumanator 6y ago
  > The 2% number is 2% of people who have bad symptoms die. I don't believe that's true. In countries such as Spain, right now there are about 80k confirmed recoveries and 19k deaths among a universe of 182k confirmed cases.
  - Tepix 6y ago
    We don't know. There are probably a lot of cases in Spain that are flying under the radar because people without symptoms don't get tested often.
    - rumanator 6y ago
      OP's claim was that "2% of people who have bad symptoms die." From Spain's numbers, around 10% of those experiencing symptoms that lead them to get tested by Spain's health service, which due to scarcity is reserved for serious cases and people on the front lines, have died since the onset of the epidemic.
  - ronhav3 6y ago
    A majority of Spanish fatalities were in nursing homes and other restricted facilities. If the virus penetrates these places, average mortality spikes.
- endogui 6y ago
  Korean testing is revealing a fatality rate of about 2% over all cases, with about 8% requiring hospitalization. You are off by an order of magnitude.
  - bart_spoon 6y ago
    Korean testing is largely confined to the symptomatic. They are still suffering from the same issues with missing the iceberg that everyone else is.
xenonite 6y ago
These were among the very first cases in Germany where capacity was abundant, hence the low fatality rate. Also, this is a “up to now” value, more cases might turn out fatal. “Only” 7 deaths is furthermore not a good data basis for calculating this number. Moreover, the report is not even public nor peer reviewed. So I can’t even cite it here. However you find criticism of the study by Prof. Streeck online.
- xenonite 6y ago
  At least, here is a link to a preliminary summary of the study, in German language. Please note how shallow the text is in its current state. https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_0.pdf https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwis...
yomly 6y ago
Imagine all 65M people in the UK caught the virus then a 10,000 case fatality number would give a rate of 0.015%. The rate itself has no time element so it tells you nothing about the number of people in hospital right now and hence isn't very illustrative of how hospitals can be swamped by this disease. More interestingly (for me at least) is that the mortality rate is dependent on a patient's access to a ventilator. This means if you caught the virus early in the spread of the pandemic your odds of surviving are substantially higher than if you caught it right at the peak of infection. This is impossible to reflect in a simple global mortality rate and so really paints a different picture of the virus - the death rate in South Korea vs other places really highlights this. I guess to your point, hospitals are more in this way because the virus is so infectious, rather than it being a universally dangerous disease as may be seen from a higher mortality rate. Remember, a high number of people experience little to no symptoms from catching this. This variability in symptoms doesn't seem to be as true for other lethal diseases like say malaria or dengue fever
- Tepix 6y ago
  > This means if you caught the virus early in the spread of the pandemic your odds of surviving are substantially higher than if you caught it right at the peak of infection. I'd say your odds are best if you catch it some time after the peak. The hospital will be better prepared to prevent infections there and have more experience on how to treat patients best. There may even be some treatment that prevents the worst symptoms. Also, if you (egoistically) try to get Covid-19 early, you may inadvertently infect others against their will.
  - yomly 6y ago
    Yep you're right, your odds are best towards the tail of the pandemic
    - bluGill 6y ago
      In most cases, but the 1918 Spanish flu famously got more deadly after a mutation, if you got it early you were better off. I'm still hoping to get it late assuming better treatment (or better yet vaccine), but I recognize there is no way to know if this is correct in this case.
arcticbull 6y ago
Because it's spreading so very fast, and nobody has any pre-existing immunity to this new disease. The flu kills 60,000 Americans every year and so far COVID has killed about 10,000 -- over roughly the same flu season time period. The difference is that the flu is spread out over time and is fighting some pre-existing immunity and flu shots. It also has a lot to do with excess capacity. If there suddenly appeared a new disease exactly as fatal as the flu, that would kill another 60,000 Americans per year and 650,000 people worldwide. There's not really capacity for that.
- soperj 6y ago
  So far Covid has killed 34,000 not 10,000 in the States.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Thanks, I grabbed the wrong column from my data. Either way that’s half the flu total over the same season. My point is that it isn’t unprecedented load, it’s just all at once — and additive.
    - DanBC 6y ago
      If you're going to compare the deaths you need to count them in the same way, and you haven't done so here.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Well it’s fair to say that neither has the government, if anyone dies in possession of COVID they’re automatically a COVID death, pretty much even if they get hit by a truck. That’s not true of the flu is it?
        chiefalchemist 6y ago
        From what I've read the CDC has told med facilities to code any death that is even suspected to be C19 as C19. No test? Doesn't matter. Patient had other serious conditions? Doesn't matter. With broader testing limited and deaths from being inflated the IFR should be suspect.
thu2111 6y ago
They're currently mostly empty so it matches.
Ragnarork 6y ago
The majority of people that end up in hospitals actually survive the virus. Their symptoms are treated, not the causes, unfortunately. But you have to take these people in as they have (among other things) respiratory complications, hence the great demand for ventilators incidentally. Infection Fatality Rate is certainly coupled to the number of people that develop severe symptoms, but it's not this number that you need to look at as to why people end up in hospitals.
csomar 6y ago
One possible explanation is that hospitals were already operating close to capacity. So even adding a small number (percentage-wise) of the population very fast, will cause disasters.
cm2187 6y ago
The problem is the high number of infections. The virus is having a run in a population that has no immunity, unlike a flu. So it is spreading fast and in large numbers. A tiny hospitalisation rate multiplied by a very large number of people infected may be more than the hospital capacity. Which is why both of these statement can be true at the same time: this thing is no more dangerous than the flu to an individual if you get it, but it can kill many more people than the flu because the population doesn't have any immunity and many more people will get it.
swebs 6y ago
.0037 * 83,700,000 = 309,690 additional people
- saalweachter 6y ago
  It's still going to be a giant number, but I recommend including the fraction estimated to catch the disease, in this case 0.7 because diseases with an R0 of 2-2.5 typically infect 70% of the population.

Because the infection rate is so high.

The 2% number is 2% of people who have bad symptoms die. 0.37% is 0.37% of all people who get it, including those who have mild/no symptoms die. It simply means a much larger percentage of people get it, not that any less people are dying. I’d say there’s a good chance that many of us have gotten it, and spread it, without knowing it.

rumanator 6y ago
> The 2% number is 2% of people who have bad symptoms die. I don't believe that's true. In countries such as Spain, right now there are about 80k confirmed recoveries and 19k deaths among a universe of 182k confirmed cases.
- Tepix 6y ago
  We don't know. There are probably a lot of cases in Spain that are flying under the radar because people without symptoms don't get tested often.
  - rumanator 6y ago
    OP's claim was that "2% of people who have bad symptoms die." From Spain's numbers, around 10% of those experiencing symptoms that lead them to get tested by Spain's health service, which due to scarcity is reserved for serious cases and people on the front lines, have died since the onset of the epidemic.
- ronhav3 6y ago
  A majority of Spanish fatalities were in nursing homes and other restricted facilities. If the virus penetrates these places, average mortality spikes.
endogui 6y ago
Korean testing is revealing a fatality rate of about 2% over all cases, with about 8% requiring hospitalization. You are off by an order of magnitude.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  Korean testing is largely confined to the symptomatic. They are still suffering from the same issues with missing the iceberg that everyone else is.

xenonite 6y ago

These were among the very first cases in Germany where capacity was abundant, hence the low fatality rate. Also, this is a “up to now” value, more cases might turn out fatal. “Only” 7 deaths is furthermore not a good data basis for calculating this number. Moreover, the report is not even public nor peer reviewed. So I can’t even cite it here. However you find criticism of the study by Prof. Streeck online.

xenonite 6y ago
At least, here is a link to a preliminary summary of the study, in German language. Please note how shallow the text is in its current state. https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_0.pdf https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwis...

yomly 6y ago

Imagine all 65M people in the UK caught the virus then a 10,000 case fatality number would give a rate of 0.015%. The rate itself has no time element so it tells you nothing about the number of people in hospital right now and hence isn't very illustrative of how hospitals can be swamped by this disease. More interestingly (for me at least) is that the mortality rate is dependent on a patient's access to a ventilator. This means if you caught the virus early in the spread of the pandemic your odds of surviving are substantially higher than if you caught it right at the peak of infection. This is impossible to reflect in a simple global mortality rate and so really paints a different picture of the virus - the death rate in South Korea vs other places really highlights this. I guess to your point, hospitals are more in this way because the virus is so infectious, rather than it being a universally dangerous disease as may be seen from a higher mortality rate. Remember, a high number of people experience little to no symptoms from catching this. This variability in symptoms doesn't seem to be as true for other lethal diseases like say malaria or dengue fever

Tepix 6y ago
> This means if you caught the virus early in the spread of the pandemic your odds of surviving are substantially higher than if you caught it right at the peak of infection. I'd say your odds are best if you catch it some time after the peak. The hospital will be better prepared to prevent infections there and have more experience on how to treat patients best. There may even be some treatment that prevents the worst symptoms. Also, if you (egoistically) try to get Covid-19 early, you may inadvertently infect others against their will.
- yomly 6y ago
  Yep you're right, your odds are best towards the tail of the pandemic
  - bluGill 6y ago
    In most cases, but the 1918 Spanish flu famously got more deadly after a mutation, if you got it early you were better off. I'm still hoping to get it late assuming better treatment (or better yet vaccine), but I recognize there is no way to know if this is correct in this case.

arcticbull 6y ago

Because it's spreading so very fast, and nobody has any pre-existing immunity to this new disease. The flu kills 60,000 Americans every year and so far COVID has killed about 10,000 -- over roughly the same flu season time period. The difference is that the flu is spread out over time and is fighting some pre-existing immunity and flu shots. It also has a lot to do with excess capacity. If there suddenly appeared a new disease exactly as fatal as the flu, that would kill another 60,000 Americans per year and 650,000 people worldwide. There's not really capacity for that.

soperj 6y ago
So far Covid has killed 34,000 not 10,000 in the States.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Thanks, I grabbed the wrong column from my data. Either way that’s half the flu total over the same season. My point is that it isn’t unprecedented load, it’s just all at once — and additive.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    If you're going to compare the deaths you need to count them in the same way, and you haven't done so here.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Well it’s fair to say that neither has the government, if anyone dies in possession of COVID they’re automatically a COVID death, pretty much even if they get hit by a truck. That’s not true of the flu is it?
      - chiefalchemist 6y ago
        From what I've read the CDC has told med facilities to code any death that is even suspected to be C19 as C19. No test? Doesn't matter. Patient had other serious conditions? Doesn't matter. With broader testing limited and deaths from being inflated the IFR should be suspect.

thu2111 6y ago

They're currently mostly empty so it matches.

Ragnarork 6y ago

The majority of people that end up in hospitals actually survive the virus. Their symptoms are treated, not the causes, unfortunately. But you have to take these people in as they have (among other things) respiratory complications, hence the great demand for ventilators incidentally. Infection Fatality Rate is certainly coupled to the number of people that develop severe symptoms, but it's not this number that you need to look at as to why people end up in hospitals.

csomar 6y ago

One possible explanation is that hospitals were already operating close to capacity. So even adding a small number (percentage-wise) of the population very fast, will cause disasters.

cm2187 6y ago

The problem is the high number of infections. The virus is having a run in a population that has no immunity, unlike a flu. So it is spreading fast and in large numbers. A tiny hospitalisation rate multiplied by a very large number of people infected may be more than the hospital capacity. Which is why both of these statement can be true at the same time: this thing is no more dangerous than the flu to an individual if you get it, but it can kill many more people than the flu because the population doesn't have any immunity and many more people will get it.

swebs 6y ago

.0037 * 83,700,000 = 309,690 additional people

saalweachter 6y ago
It's still going to be a giant number, but I recommend including the fraction estimated to catch the disease, in this case 0.7 because diseases with an R0 of 2-2.5 typically infect 70% of the population.