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"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the di

"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" "The results will eventually be similar for all countries" "Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people."

ldng 7y ago
"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" Fatality rate is meaningless. Even if you don't die, you can't work when you're sick for 2 to 5 weeks. Sickness duration is relevant. Hospital bed occupancy rate and impact on hospital treating other pathologies and injuries is relevant. > "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" It's just pure speculation at the moment. You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  > You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible. Not more or less irresponsible than large-scale lockdowns. Don't kid yourself and think the lockdowns were evidence-driven and accounted for knock-on effects. They were desperation moves.
  - ldng 7y ago
    Most state waited for at least one city hospitals, if not a region's hospitals, to be overwhelmed before acting. Despite hard medical evidence of high contagiousness. Lockdowns were not irrational, just the fruit on not having enough masks ans test ready on time for selective quarantine.
- jamesblonde 7y ago
  Actually he claimed it was based on data they had collected in the last week, but was careful to say that it may change as they collect more data. I assume it is because they are now testing all care workers and finding a large percentage of them have antibodies.
mgsouth 7y ago
Sweden already has 1 death per 10,000 population (0.01% per capita, not per case) and rate is increasing. Spain is 1 per 2,500 (0.04%). NY state is 1 per 1,200, soon to be 1 per 1,000 (0.1% per capita). This is with lockdown [0] [0] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
- nabla9 7y ago
  According to Giesecke projection, the total number of deaths will be around 6000, 2-3 times the deaths from annual influenza. (currently 1,511 have died from COVID-19 in Sweden)
  - glofish 7y ago
    right or wrong, he'll be proven so relatively shortly, after all the rate will either rise exponentially as the alarmist say, or stays the same and slowly drops as he claims
- glofish 7y ago
  the whole point of the argument is that it does not matter what you do everyone will end up in the same situation
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Which is obviously wrong because it's been demonstrated that if infections get out of control and hospitals are overwhelmed, a higher percentage of infections before fatal. This was shown in the difference in death rates in Wuhan vs other cities in China. ...as well as northern Italy vs other provinces in Italy.
  - twic 7y ago
    "Hiding infections in the future is not the same as avoiding them": https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo...
gberger 7y ago
What is the conclusion that you make from these select quotes? Or are you just summarizing what you consider to be the most important information?
- jamesblonde 7y ago
  Just summarizing. That's what we do on HN for those who dont want to read the whole article/interview.
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
Yes, those are things from the article. Did you have some comment on them? Are those the things you agree with most or are those things you disagree with?
adrr 7y ago
Mild disease that caused of rationing of care in multiple countries. Filled up all the hospitals and stopped elective surgeries through out the world. Killed more people in the US in 1 month that the flu kills in a year even with the largest states going into full lock down to prevent spreading. What disease besides Spanish flu has caused this must disruption to our medical infrastructure?
- rpiguy 7y ago
  Not even close. Flu killed 80K in the 2018-2019 season. https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter... Projected deaths for COVID-19 are 70K through July.
  - candybar 7y ago
    That's for the 2017-2018 season and it was the worst flu season in quite some time. The article even says it's the worst flu season in at least 4 decades and way outside the normal range: "In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC." This is not to mention that these estimates include non flu deaths to compensate for the fact that not every dead person gets tested for the flu and even those that are, often wouldn't be documented as flu deaths. For example, if COVID-19 was merely a minor outbreak, COVID-19 deaths would be counted towards flu deaths, as the cause of the death would be viral pneumonia and viral pneumonia is statistically likely to be caused by the flu. The reverse isn't close to true - we're for the most part only attributing deaths to COVID-19 when it's either a confirmed case or otherwise overwhelmingly likely to be caused by it. It's a certainty that COVID-19 will end up killing more people in the month of April than the flu kills most years.
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      Conversely if 80% of COVID carriers are asymptomatic and therefore untested as is currently theorized (the US aircraft carrier that became infected is the most recent example) then we should be multiplying the denominator by 5 for the mortality rate, because right now we are just putting tested cases in the denominator for COVID. This dramatically reduces the mortality rate for the disease. So the contagiousness of the disease actually reduces the mortality rate quite a lot, more so than uncounted deaths in the numerator. Secondly if you do the same thing for the flu, put confirmed flu deaths over confirmed flu cases (tested) the mortality for flu is 4%. This would be the apples to apples comparison.
klipt 7y ago
> "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" They're already doing antibody testing in other countries and the numbers are much lower than 50%. In Santa Clara county, California, the estimate is only 2.49% to 4.16% https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/health/santa-clara-coronavirus-infections-study/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/heal...
- rpiguy 7y ago
  But much higher in a Chicago, as high as 50% https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospital-phlebotomist-30-of-those-tested-have-coronavirus-antibody https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
  - klipt 7y ago
    Totally different sample. Chicago tested patients, from your link "10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus". Not representative of the general population. Santa Clara was testing from the general population.
    - rpiguy 7y ago
      Apologies.

ldng 7y ago

"The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%" Fatality rate is meaningless. Even if you don't die, you can't work when you're sick for 2 to 5 weeks. Sickness duration is relevant. Hospital bed occupancy rate and impact on hospital treating other pathologies and injuries is relevant. > "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" It's just pure speculation at the moment. You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible.

dehrmann 7y ago
> You don't take life or death decision based on such optimistic speculation. This is just irresponsible. Not more or less irresponsible than large-scale lockdowns. Don't kid yourself and think the lockdowns were evidence-driven and accounted for knock-on effects. They were desperation moves.
- ldng 7y ago
  Most state waited for at least one city hospitals, if not a region's hospitals, to be overwhelmed before acting. Despite hard medical evidence of high contagiousness. Lockdowns were not irrational, just the fruit on not having enough masks ans test ready on time for selective quarantine.
jamesblonde 7y ago
Actually he claimed it was based on data they had collected in the last week, but was careful to say that it may change as they collect more data. I assume it is because they are now testing all care workers and finding a large percentage of them have antibodies.

mgsouth 7y ago

Sweden already has 1 death per 10,000 population (0.01% per capita, not per case) and rate is increasing. Spain is 1 per 2,500 (0.04%). NY state is 1 per 1,200, soon to be 1 per 1,000 (0.1% per capita). This is with lockdown [0] [0] http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

nabla9 7y ago
According to Giesecke projection, the total number of deaths will be around 6000, 2-3 times the deaths from annual influenza. (currently 1,511 have died from COVID-19 in Sweden)
- glofish 7y ago
  right or wrong, he'll be proven so relatively shortly, after all the rate will either rise exponentially as the alarmist say, or stays the same and slowly drops as he claims
glofish 7y ago
the whole point of the argument is that it does not matter what you do everyone will end up in the same situation
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Which is obviously wrong because it's been demonstrated that if infections get out of control and hospitals are overwhelmed, a higher percentage of infections before fatal. This was shown in the difference in death rates in Wuhan vs other cities in China. ...as well as northern Italy vs other provinces in Italy.
- twic 7y ago
  "Hiding infections in the future is not the same as avoiding them": https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-modeling-5c156686a64b https://medium.com/@wpegden/a-call-to-honesty-in-pandemic-mo...

gberger 7y ago

What is the conclusion that you make from these select quotes? Or are you just summarizing what you consider to be the most important information?

jamesblonde 7y ago
Just summarizing. That's what we do on HN for those who dont want to read the whole article/interview.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

Yes, those are things from the article. Did you have some comment on them? Are those the things you agree with most or are those things you disagree with?

adrr 7y ago

Mild disease that caused of rationing of care in multiple countries. Filled up all the hospitals and stopped elective surgeries through out the world. Killed more people in the US in 1 month that the flu kills in a year even with the largest states going into full lock down to prevent spreading. What disease besides Spanish flu has caused this must disruption to our medical infrastructure?

rpiguy 7y ago
Not even close. Flu killed 80K in the 2018-2019 season. https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter... Projected deaths for COVID-19 are 70K through July.
- candybar 7y ago
  That's for the 2017-2018 season and it was the worst flu season in quite some time. The article even says it's the worst flu season in at least 4 decades and way outside the normal range: "In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to — in the worst year — 56,000, according to the CDC." This is not to mention that these estimates include non flu deaths to compensate for the fact that not every dead person gets tested for the flu and even those that are, often wouldn't be documented as flu deaths. For example, if COVID-19 was merely a minor outbreak, COVID-19 deaths would be counted towards flu deaths, as the cause of the death would be viral pneumonia and viral pneumonia is statistically likely to be caused by the flu. The reverse isn't close to true - we're for the most part only attributing deaths to COVID-19 when it's either a confirmed case or otherwise overwhelmingly likely to be caused by it. It's a certainty that COVID-19 will end up killing more people in the month of April than the flu kills most years.
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    Conversely if 80% of COVID carriers are asymptomatic and therefore untested as is currently theorized (the US aircraft carrier that became infected is the most recent example) then we should be multiplying the denominator by 5 for the mortality rate, because right now we are just putting tested cases in the denominator for COVID. This dramatically reduces the mortality rate for the disease. So the contagiousness of the disease actually reduces the mortality rate quite a lot, more so than uncounted deaths in the numerator. Secondly if you do the same thing for the flu, put confirmed flu deaths over confirmed flu cases (tested) the mortality for flu is 4%. This would be the apples to apples comparison.

klipt 7y ago

> "At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available" They're already doing antibody testing in other countries and the numbers are much lower than 50%. In Santa Clara county, California, the estimate is only 2.49% to 4.16% https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/health/santa-clara-coronavirus-infections-study/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/17/heal...

rpiguy 7y ago
But much higher in a Chicago, as high as 50% https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospital-phlebotomist-30-of-those-tested-have-coronavirus-antibody https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/530092711-roseland-hospi...
- klipt 7y ago
  Totally different sample. Chicago tested patients, from your link "10% to 20% of those tested have the active virus". Not representative of the general population. Santa Clara was testing from the general population.
  - rpiguy 7y ago
    Apologies.