5 ms·

All of those are great but COVID has done that in weeks. 38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roads. COVID deaths are at 39k and the first COVID-19 d

All of those are great but COVID has done that in weeks. 38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roads. COVID deaths are at 39k and the first COVID-19 death was on Feb. 29. 50 days ago.

arcticbull 7y ago
I actually dedicated much of my comment to addressing that, specifically pointing out that COVID represents a lifetime risk that's been front-loaded and so it's fair to compare COVID's infection fatality rate to your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident. I also called out explicitly that COVID has been front-loaded. Also, it's not a fair comparison between the flu and COVID because the flu has that unfortunate feature known as horizontal gene transfer. That's why you can get re-infected by the flu each year, and why in spite of a massive vaccination campaign the flu causes 45,000,000 illnesses each year in the US alone (and 60,000 deaths) -- and 650,000 deaths worldwide. Each year. And each upcoming year. COVID will, based on what we know so far, happen once.
- ckarmann 7y ago
  You also have to take into account the uncertainty in your risk evaluation. The fatality rate is largely unknown so it's a bit deceptive to quote numbers like 0.37% as if it could be measure up to the second decimal. The German study probably came with error bars that were larger than that. For the age group 50-59, maybe it's 1.3% according to NY state (for both males and females so if the person you responds to is male, it's higher), but it could very well be 2% (or 0.5%) without it being surprising. There is also a big assumption in considering the risk to be front-loaded. This is not the flu, but it could very well come back next year or in ten years in a different form. We just don't know yet this virus with enough confidence to do this assumption. Anyway, it is a bit strange that the ability for this virus to mutate next year would impact the risk of dying by going out tomorrow which, I think, the person your responded to was thinking about. Finally, you're saying the flu deaths this year is double what the coronavirus has done, but again the uncertainty is high: the CDC estimation for the flu is from 24,000 to 62,000 deaths this season [1]. So it could be the double, but it could be actually lower. Let's not do things like chosing the estimate that better suits the argument without saying it's a high end of the estimate. [1] - https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Americas-2019-2020-flu-season-claims-24K--62K-lives-569733551.html https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Americas-2019-2020-flu-sea...
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    > This is not the flu, but it could very well come back next year or in ten years in a different form. There has been no evidence of substantial mutations so far in COVID. There's no evidence that COVID will come back in a new and different form, any more than there's evidence I'll come back next week as a velociraptor. I mean, it could happen, but it's not something I'll plan for until I start sprouting scales and and a giant tail. Mutations are pretty random and the vast majority of mutations are harmful to the virus. It's worth considering we live with coronaviridae all the time, something like 15% of the common cold is attributable to coronaviridae. [2] There's as much evidence of the common cold becoming Ebola as there is of me becoming a velociraptor. The flu death range is likely more to do with how good a job we do guessing which the predominant strain will be in a given year, as the flu vaccine efficacy rate ranges from 10% to 60% each year. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.... [2] https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_causes https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

All of those are great but COVID has done that in weeks. 38,000 people die every year in crashes on US roads. COVID deaths are at 39k and the first COVID-19 death was on Feb. 29. 50 days ago.

arcticbull 7y ago

I actually dedicated much of my comment to addressing that, specifically pointing out that COVID represents a lifetime risk that's been front-loaded and so it's fair to compare COVID's infection fatality rate to your lifetime risk of dying in a car accident. I also called out explicitly that COVID has been front-loaded. Also, it's not a fair comparison between the flu and COVID because the flu has that unfortunate feature known as horizontal gene transfer. That's why you can get re-infected by the flu each year, and why in spite of a massive vaccination campaign the flu causes 45,000,000 illnesses each year in the US alone (and 60,000 deaths) -- and 650,000 deaths worldwide. Each year. And each upcoming year. COVID will, based on what we know so far, happen once.

ckarmann 7y ago
You also have to take into account the uncertainty in your risk evaluation. The fatality rate is largely unknown so it's a bit deceptive to quote numbers like 0.37% as if it could be measure up to the second decimal. The German study probably came with error bars that were larger than that. For the age group 50-59, maybe it's 1.3% according to NY state (for both males and females so if the person you responds to is male, it's higher), but it could very well be 2% (or 0.5%) without it being surprising. There is also a big assumption in considering the risk to be front-loaded. This is not the flu, but it could very well come back next year or in ten years in a different form. We just don't know yet this virus with enough confidence to do this assumption. Anyway, it is a bit strange that the ability for this virus to mutate next year would impact the risk of dying by going out tomorrow which, I think, the person your responded to was thinking about. Finally, you're saying the flu deaths this year is double what the coronavirus has done, but again the uncertainty is high: the CDC estimation for the flu is from 24,000 to 62,000 deaths this season [1]. So it could be the double, but it could be actually lower. Let's not do things like chosing the estimate that better suits the argument without saying it's a high end of the estimate. [1] - https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Americas-2019-2020-flu-season-claims-24K--62K-lives-569733551.html https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Americas-2019-2020-flu-sea...
- arcticbull 7y ago
  > This is not the flu, but it could very well come back next year or in ten years in a different form. There has been no evidence of substantial mutations so far in COVID. There's no evidence that COVID will come back in a new and different form, any more than there's evidence I'll come back next week as a velociraptor. I mean, it could happen, but it's not something I'll plan for until I start sprouting scales and and a giant tail. Mutations are pretty random and the vast majority of mutations are harmful to the virus. It's worth considering we live with coronaviridae all the time, something like 15% of the common cold is attributable to coronaviridae. [2] There's as much evidence of the common cold becoming Ebola as there is of me becoming a velociraptor. The flu death range is likely more to do with how good a job we do guessing which the predominant strain will be in a given year, as the flu vaccine efficacy rate ranges from 10% to 60% each year. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies.... [2] https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_causes https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common_cold_ca...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]