22 ms·

According to the New York data, the fatality rate is about 0.5% for tested persons without underlying conditions. Considering the gross selection bias it likel

by edoo 6y ago

According to the New York data, the fatality rate is about 0.5% for tested persons without underlying conditions. Considering the gross selection bias it likely means actual death rates in the healthy population close to that of the flu. It is this data that shows the lockdowns were a complete illegal overreaction. Locking down nursing homes would have fixed most of it. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths-04172020-1.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...

arcticbull 6y ago
Illegal, no, but a massive overreaction. This is why the Swedish model (of telling people to take reasonable steps like not getting too close, and staying home when sick, and away from old people) is proving so successful. They've even started to see a flattening of the curve alongside the rest of the world without lockdowns. [1, 2] [1] https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-epidemiologist-covid-19-infections-flattening-under-policy-of-individual-responsibility/ https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-epidemiologist-covid-1... [2] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US&location=United+Kingdom https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sw...
- edoo 6y ago
  Quarantining the sick is legal but otherwise the freedom of assembly clause in the 1st amendment does not say "except when there is a pandemic or other fear". If you don't believe that should be the law fine, but since it is law and is incorporated to the states via the 14th amendment it qualifies as illegal.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Not quite; you'd have to drag this through court to get any sort of legal determination on it.
    - asdf21 6y ago
      And I think they would just say it was "reasonable" given the information known at the time.
  - dwaltrip 6y ago
    Can you please provide links to judicial opinions or rulings that validate your interpretation of the law?
    - edoo 6y ago
      If you read the federalist papers you'll note that the intention was literal, not to be reinterpreted for the times. That also makes the thousands of gun laws illegal. If you start reinterpreting the constitution that is how you go full banana republic, and everyone knows you never go full banana republic. You are supposed to change the law not reinterpret.
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        It's pretty funny to watch people try to justify "literal" readings of the text, since they often focus on interpreting just one piece of text and ignore the effects of the analysis on the rest of the text. The First Amendment very clearly binds only Congress in its literal reading: it begins "Congress shall make no law..." And there is no literal text in any subsequent amendment that might cause incorporation to the states--the Fourteenth Amendment only literally incorporates the Fifth Amendment, and that by literal repetition of the text.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      The fact that legal realism--which says that the law is whatever judges say it is, even when what the judges say is patently ridiculous when compared to the actual words of the Constitution or statute--is the mainstream viewpoint in today's legal environment does not make it right.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    I would argue the second amendment doesn't explicitly say you can't own a nuclear warhead for personal amusement, but I would argue nobody's going to challenge the validity of such impositions.
    - ta1771 6y ago
      Probably because they know it's futile, not because it shouldn't be covered under the Amendment.
      - curryst 6y ago
        It almost certainly shouldn't be covered. It states "being necessary to the security of a free State". What part of a nuclear warhead wielded by a militia contributes to the security of a free State? Nuclear weapons are rather unique in that they're essentially useless in a civil war. What are you going to do? Nuke the very land that you're fighting over? Biological and nuclear weapons should not fall in the scope of the 2nd amendment. They're useless for guaranteeing your liberties against a tyrannical government, and the consequences for storing them improperly are severe.
        pdonis 6y ago
        > What part of a nuclear warhead wielded by a militia contributes to the security of a free State? Depends on who's attacking and what might deter them. > They're useless for guaranteeing your liberties against a tyrannical government Which is only part of "the security of a free State", not all of it. The militia was also for repelling foreign invasions. Given our current modern world, I would agree that weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical) shouldn't be available to anyone who wants them; but the correct legal way to make that happen in the U.S. would be to amend the Constitution to explicitly add that exception to the Second Amendment. As the Second Amendment is currently written, it does not admit of any exceptions. As I noted in another comment upthread, privately owned warships were significant at the time the Second Amendment was passed, and the framers of the Amendment did not exempt them from the category of "arms".
    - 6y ago
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Freedom of assembly, like the other 1st amendment freedoms, can be regulated by government so long, per prior SCOTUS decisions. They key is that restrictions must be content-neutral and can only pertain to "time, place, and manner," additionally surviving strict scrutiny (which, in plain English, means "there's no other way to do it"). This is bread-and-butter First Amendment court case stuff; any US government class that's at least halfway competent ought to have covered this. The coronavirus bans on public gathering are fairly clearly permissible under SCOTUS precedent.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Part of the reason why lockdowns were resorted to in the first place is that Americans are, for various reasons, not likely to listen to official guidance about staying apart. See: all those panic articles about various people who knew they were at high risk and continued to go about their daily lives, or take flights or other forms of transporting masses of people, etc.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    In fact, the general take is that Americans have been pretty good at following distancing rules with or without hard rules but some were slow to do so (and most government was in retrospect slow to strongly recommend doing so) but, to a first approximation, few will do so over an extended period. So no.
    - jhayward 6y ago
      This isn't even close to true. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Spring Break. Florida beaches. Evangelical churches. Just because a majority of people do sensible things doesn't matter. The actions of the irresponsible and sociopathic minority still create the epidemic.
- zuminator 6y ago
  Let's not lose sight of the reason why lockdowns were advised in the first place. Absent the data from widespread testing, the spread of the disease was consistent with two epidemiological models -- low-contagion/high-mortality and high-contagion/low-mortality. In the latter model, there's not much to be done to stop the disease from infecting the population at large, and not that much that needs to be done, since the vast majority of people will emerge unscathed. But in the former model, it matters tremendously -- doing nothing will slowly but surely result in vast loss of life but quarantines can stop the disease dead in its tracks. Therefore the most cautious course of action, from a public health perspective, was to assume the former and proceed with a regime of extreme social distancing. Unfortunately doing so had dire economic consequences.
  - edoo 6y ago
    They knew within a week or two that the lockdowns had no effect. We converged right to the same level as Sweden. That they kept pushing it is insane.
    - creato 6y ago
      What explains the difference between NY and CA if it isn't lockdowns? The difference in death per capita between the two is staggering (nearly 30x more people per capita have died in NY than CA).
      - natrik 6y ago
        Lots of things could explain it. Here are some: - The way deaths are counted in each state - Daily Temperature - Comorbidity percentage difference for residents - https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Track...
        ImprovedSilence 6y ago
        Also population density. In NYC, a higher % of the population is touching shared surfaces such as doors and elevator buttons just to get outside.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Something that you might consider looking at when comparing countries or areas is the ratio of active cases to recovered. A higher ratio suggests that the epidemic is in an earlier stage. Sweden has about 23 active cases for each one recovered. The US is about 10:1, Europe overall is about 2:1, so is Italy, and Spain is close to 1:1. Asia as a whole is about 1:1.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    That likely has to do with availability of tests, who's getting tested, where and when. With Sweden not attempting to stop the spread, I doubt they've done wide-spread population testing. They're likely limiting it to hospitals, so the fact it's flat its really what matters until they kick off their wide-spread serological study in the works. [edit] I misread, disregard, but preserving for posterity.
    - hyperpape 6y ago
      Active vs. recovered is a metric related to the people who are tested and confirmed. It cannot be changed by testing fewer people, only by rapidly ramping the number of tests up or down.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Ah pardon, I misread. You're totally right.
    - rightbyte 6y ago
      There is random sampling being done. 2,5% had an ongoing infection in Stockholm in late Mars.[1] Now, 11/100 blood givers in Stockholm who has not been sick in the last two weeks have antibodies according to researchers. That gives you a naive mortality rate of 0,4% per infection, assuming the spread among bloodgivers is the same as the population in general and just dividing the death count by 11% of the population. It is a high eastimate as I guess many wont get traceable antobodies and mostly asymptotic people give blood. [1] (Swedish) https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/f/forekomsten-av-covid-19-i-region-stockholm-26-mars3-april-2020/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publ...
- majormajor 6y ago
  The answer to "what is the correct action to take in the face of uncertainty" is not "whatever people say we should've done after we gain full information." That's nonsense, it assumes that next time you should just know the future.
hyperpape 6y ago
I don't understand what calculation you're doing here. The worst flu season we saw in a decade killed (~80k / 300M) = .02% of the US population. NYC has seen ~14000 deaths, or .18% (~14k / ~8M) death rate for the entire population, and while the absolute worst may be over, people are still dying at a high rate in NYC. The only way I can make sense of this is that you're somehow mixing figures relating to deaths in healthy populations (COVID) vs. overall death rates in flu (including older/unhealthy populations).
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Nah, my calculus is basically as follows. The disease is not bad for people who aren't old, and who do not have pre-existing conditions. The data is pretty unequivocal there. The number of deaths under 20 worldwide rounds to zero. It's incredibly contagious (and contagious while no symptoms are shown), and a vaccine is 12-18 months away at a minimum. There's no way we're going to be able to contain everyone indoors, with no jobs, for 18 months while we await a vaccine that may not arrive. And that's just here in the US -- the weakest link dominates. If we don't develop herd immunity ASAP, and instead pursue a course of lockdowns, as soon as we lift the lockdowns (either voluntarily or because people just walk out -- see the midwest), we'll immediately start playing rolling lockdown whack-a-mole as China is. The first contagious person who flies in from a foreign country (or domestically) without perfect lockdowns will re-ignite the wildfire. We should do exactly what Sweden is doing and what the UK proposed: isolate and provide support services to those who are at risk, and let out those who aren't. I think it speaks volumes that Sweden's new infection rate stabilized at the same time as the rest of the world but without lockdowns. It's really the only path forward. Is it perfect? Of course not. People will die. However, there's no world in which about 70% of the population won't get the disease before the vaccine arrives, so we need to control who gets it, when, and in what order, to minimize harm.
  - mcnamaratw 6y ago
    Your calculus has no numbers in it.
    - 6y ago
perl4ever 6y ago
About 1500 people in the US died yesterday of covid; year-to-date, about 1300 people died each day of the flu. So it seems like there should be no possible way to frame it as less severe than the flu, even only comparing to when the flu is at its worst and even assuming 100% of the population has covid or whatever other extreme things you want.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  That's not entirely true. The flu has a vaccine (of varying efficacy -- 10-60% depending on the year). The flu also has a large body of immunity built up across the population from having had it. It's also less contagious. If we assume that COVID is spreading like wildfire (it is), and that we're front-loading the cases (we probably are), and that immunity will be built up as one-off instead of like having the disease mutate substantially every year like the flu, over a few years, it could easily be better. I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that there is a path.
- smsm42 6y ago
  Note that for the flu, most of the community does literally nothing. I mean, some people get vaccinated, but most literally ignore the flu as if it didn't exist - except if they get sick of course, and even then some people go to work if they can (they shouldn't, really, but they do). If we compare this with complete shutdown of all public activity on the other end of the spectrum, we can see there are things we could be doing that are on neither ends. Maybe distancing but not shutdown, or avoiding some mass gathering but still being ok with individual meetings, or having places like restaurants operating at reduced capacity to ensure people aren't too close to each other, or ask people to wear masks when they enter stores, etc. And strict lockdown for places like nursing homes, but more relaxed for places like college, or having people of high-risk groups to work from home, but people with lower risk be allowed to work in the office. I'm not saying it's the right way to do right now, but it's a possibility, there are options. So if this is e.g. 50 times worse than the flu, then trying any of the above may be too risky. But if it's kinda sorta like the flu, maybe somewhat worse but not 50x worse - then it may be prudent to consider measured response, given that for the flu we basically have no response at all and we're ok with that.
kgwgk 6y ago
How many healthy people do you think that dies because of the flu?
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Probably the same number of young and healthy people that die of COVID. For instance COVIDs fatality rate is lower than that of the flu for all demographics of people under the age of 35 per CDC data. It's about the same for 35-44 and really only diverges over 45. Worldwide the fatality rate under 20 rounds to zero. To date, pneumonia far outstrips COVID. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
  - greedo 6y ago
    This is completely inaccurate, and nowhere in the linked document is there supporting evidence to your claim that the flu has a higher fatality rate for under 35, nor the same for 35-44. And this report relies on figures that diverge dramatically from the COVID death tolls. It lists the current total report as around 15k, when we're close to 3x.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      > This is completely inaccurate, and nowhere in the linked document is there supporting evidence to your claim that the flu has a higher fatality rate for under 35, nor the same for 35-44. Here's some more data. What I'm saying (that it's approximately the same as the flu for the young, with some early evidence pointing to it being better) isn't particularly controversial and well supported by evidence [1] (also older, April 14th). CDC as of late March "... no ICU admissions or deaths were reported among persons aged ≤19 years. Similar to reports from other countries, this finding suggests that the risk for serious disease and death from COVID-19 is higher in older age groups." [2] In Italy nobody under 30 died, and only 5 people between 30 and 39, as of April 19th -- yes in spite of a CFR of what, 13.22%? [3, 4] More data as of April 20th from Oxford [4]. Scroll through all the data the world has to offer, I'm not wrong on this. I repeat, the facts you're arguing with me over, without citing data to support your case are not controversial. Surprising maybe, but not controvercial. Especially when you consider (an albeit bad flu): the overall case fatality rate as of 16 July 2009 (10 weeks after the first international alert) with pandemic H1N1 influenza varied from 0.1% to 5.1% depending on the country. [4] The flu can absolutely be very bad is the take away there. And yeah this is worse than the flu, by around 3X on both ends of that range. Not bad, not great. > It lists the current total report as around 15k, when we're close to 3x. They actually address that critique, that it takes a few weeks for case data to be finalized and reported upwards, so the CDC data can be up to a few weeks behind. It's not divergent, it's delayed. This is a live list updated and maintained by the CDC. Make of that what you will. [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths-04152020-1.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... [4] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-...
badfrog 6y ago
> Underlying illnesses include Diabetes, Lung Disease, Cancer, Immunodeficiency, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Asthma, Kidney Disease, and GI/Liver Disease That's a whole lot of people left out of your number. A quick google suggests that 1/3 of Americans have hypertension and 9% have diabetes. It seems like probably the majority of the US has at least one of these underlying illnesses.

by edoo 6y ago

arcticbull 6y ago

Illegal, no, but a massive overreaction. This is why the Swedish model (of telling people to take reasonable steps like not getting too close, and staying home when sick, and away from old people) is proving so successful. They've even started to see a flattening of the curve alongside the rest of the world without lockdowns. [1, 2] [1] https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-epidemiologist-covid-19-infections-flattening-under-policy-of-individual-responsibility/ https://fee.org/articles/sweden-s-top-epidemiologist-covid-1... [2] https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sweden&location=US&location=United+Kingdom https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/?location=Canada&location=Sw...

edoo 6y ago
Quarantining the sick is legal but otherwise the freedom of assembly clause in the 1st amendment does not say "except when there is a pandemic or other fear". If you don't believe that should be the law fine, but since it is law and is incorporated to the states via the 14th amendment it qualifies as illegal.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Not quite; you'd have to drag this through court to get any sort of legal determination on it.
  - asdf21 6y ago
    And I think they would just say it was "reasonable" given the information known at the time.
- dwaltrip 6y ago
  Can you please provide links to judicial opinions or rulings that validate your interpretation of the law?
  - edoo 6y ago
    If you read the federalist papers you'll note that the intention was literal, not to be reinterpreted for the times. That also makes the thousands of gun laws illegal. If you start reinterpreting the constitution that is how you go full banana republic, and everyone knows you never go full banana republic. You are supposed to change the law not reinterpret.
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      It's pretty funny to watch people try to justify "literal" readings of the text, since they often focus on interpreting just one piece of text and ignore the effects of the analysis on the rest of the text. The First Amendment very clearly binds only Congress in its literal reading: it begins "Congress shall make no law..." And there is no literal text in any subsequent amendment that might cause incorporation to the states--the Fourteenth Amendment only literally incorporates the Fifth Amendment, and that by literal repetition of the text.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    The fact that legal realism--which says that the law is whatever judges say it is, even when what the judges say is patently ridiculous when compared to the actual words of the Constitution or statute--is the mainstream viewpoint in today's legal environment does not make it right.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- arcticbull 6y ago
  I would argue the second amendment doesn't explicitly say you can't own a nuclear warhead for personal amusement, but I would argue nobody's going to challenge the validity of such impositions.
  - ta1771 6y ago
    Probably because they know it's futile, not because it shouldn't be covered under the Amendment.
    - curryst 6y ago
      It almost certainly shouldn't be covered. It states "being necessary to the security of a free State". What part of a nuclear warhead wielded by a militia contributes to the security of a free State? Nuclear weapons are rather unique in that they're essentially useless in a civil war. What are you going to do? Nuke the very land that you're fighting over? Biological and nuclear weapons should not fall in the scope of the 2nd amendment. They're useless for guaranteeing your liberties against a tyrannical government, and the consequences for storing them improperly are severe.
      - pdonis 6y ago
        > What part of a nuclear warhead wielded by a militia contributes to the security of a free State? Depends on who's attacking and what might deter them. > They're useless for guaranteeing your liberties against a tyrannical government Which is only part of "the security of a free State", not all of it. The militia was also for repelling foreign invasions. Given our current modern world, I would agree that weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical) shouldn't be available to anyone who wants them; but the correct legal way to make that happen in the U.S. would be to amend the Constitution to explicitly add that exception to the Second Amendment. As the Second Amendment is currently written, it does not admit of any exceptions. As I noted in another comment upthread, privately owned warships were significant at the time the Second Amendment was passed, and the framers of the Amendment did not exempt them from the category of "arms".
  - 6y ago
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Freedom of assembly, like the other 1st amendment freedoms, can be regulated by government so long, per prior SCOTUS decisions. They key is that restrictions must be content-neutral and can only pertain to "time, place, and manner," additionally surviving strict scrutiny (which, in plain English, means "there's no other way to do it"). This is bread-and-butter First Amendment court case stuff; any US government class that's at least halfway competent ought to have covered this. The coronavirus bans on public gathering are fairly clearly permissible under SCOTUS precedent.
bobthepanda 6y ago
Part of the reason why lockdowns were resorted to in the first place is that Americans are, for various reasons, not likely to listen to official guidance about staying apart. See: all those panic articles about various people who knew they were at high risk and continued to go about their daily lives, or take flights or other forms of transporting masses of people, etc.
- ghaff 6y ago
  In fact, the general take is that Americans have been pretty good at following distancing rules with or without hard rules but some were slow to do so (and most government was in retrospect slow to strongly recommend doing so) but, to a first approximation, few will do so over an extended period. So no.
  - jhayward 6y ago
    This isn't even close to true. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Spring Break. Florida beaches. Evangelical churches. Just because a majority of people do sensible things doesn't matter. The actions of the irresponsible and sociopathic minority still create the epidemic.
zuminator 6y ago
Let's not lose sight of the reason why lockdowns were advised in the first place. Absent the data from widespread testing, the spread of the disease was consistent with two epidemiological models -- low-contagion/high-mortality and high-contagion/low-mortality. In the latter model, there's not much to be done to stop the disease from infecting the population at large, and not that much that needs to be done, since the vast majority of people will emerge unscathed. But in the former model, it matters tremendously -- doing nothing will slowly but surely result in vast loss of life but quarantines can stop the disease dead in its tracks. Therefore the most cautious course of action, from a public health perspective, was to assume the former and proceed with a regime of extreme social distancing. Unfortunately doing so had dire economic consequences.
- edoo 6y ago
  They knew within a week or two that the lockdowns had no effect. We converged right to the same level as Sweden. That they kept pushing it is insane.
  - creato 6y ago
    What explains the difference between NY and CA if it isn't lockdowns? The difference in death per capita between the two is staggering (nearly 30x more people per capita have died in NY than CA).
    - natrik 6y ago
      Lots of things could explain it. Here are some: - The way deaths are counted in each state - Daily Temperature - Comorbidity percentage difference for residents - https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Track...
      - ImprovedSilence 6y ago
        Also population density. In NYC, a higher % of the population is touching shared surfaces such as doors and elevator buttons just to get outside.
perl4ever 6y ago
Something that you might consider looking at when comparing countries or areas is the ratio of active cases to recovered. A higher ratio suggests that the epidemic is in an earlier stage. Sweden has about 23 active cases for each one recovered. The US is about 10:1, Europe overall is about 2:1, so is Italy, and Spain is close to 1:1. Asia as a whole is about 1:1.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  That likely has to do with availability of tests, who's getting tested, where and when. With Sweden not attempting to stop the spread, I doubt they've done wide-spread population testing. They're likely limiting it to hospitals, so the fact it's flat its really what matters until they kick off their wide-spread serological study in the works. [edit] I misread, disregard, but preserving for posterity.
  - hyperpape 6y ago
    Active vs. recovered is a metric related to the people who are tested and confirmed. It cannot be changed by testing fewer people, only by rapidly ramping the number of tests up or down.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Ah pardon, I misread. You're totally right.
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    There is random sampling being done. 2,5% had an ongoing infection in Stockholm in late Mars.[1] Now, 11/100 blood givers in Stockholm who has not been sick in the last two weeks have antibodies according to researchers. That gives you a naive mortality rate of 0,4% per infection, assuming the spread among bloodgivers is the same as the population in general and just dividing the death count by 11% of the population. It is a high eastimate as I guess many wont get traceable antobodies and mostly asymptotic people give blood. [1] (Swedish) https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publikationsarkiv/f/forekomsten-av-covid-19-i-region-stockholm-26-mars3-april-2020/ https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/publicerat-material/publ...
majormajor 6y ago
The answer to "what is the correct action to take in the face of uncertainty" is not "whatever people say we should've done after we gain full information." That's nonsense, it assumes that next time you should just know the future.

hyperpape 6y ago

I don't understand what calculation you're doing here. The worst flu season we saw in a decade killed (~80k / 300M) = .02% of the US population. NYC has seen ~14000 deaths, or .18% (~14k / ~8M) death rate for the entire population, and while the absolute worst may be over, people are still dying at a high rate in NYC. The only way I can make sense of this is that you're somehow mixing figures relating to deaths in healthy populations (COVID) vs. overall death rates in flu (including older/unhealthy populations).

arcticbull 6y ago
Nah, my calculus is basically as follows. The disease is not bad for people who aren't old, and who do not have pre-existing conditions. The data is pretty unequivocal there. The number of deaths under 20 worldwide rounds to zero. It's incredibly contagious (and contagious while no symptoms are shown), and a vaccine is 12-18 months away at a minimum. There's no way we're going to be able to contain everyone indoors, with no jobs, for 18 months while we await a vaccine that may not arrive. And that's just here in the US -- the weakest link dominates. If we don't develop herd immunity ASAP, and instead pursue a course of lockdowns, as soon as we lift the lockdowns (either voluntarily or because people just walk out -- see the midwest), we'll immediately start playing rolling lockdown whack-a-mole as China is. The first contagious person who flies in from a foreign country (or domestically) without perfect lockdowns will re-ignite the wildfire. We should do exactly what Sweden is doing and what the UK proposed: isolate and provide support services to those who are at risk, and let out those who aren't. I think it speaks volumes that Sweden's new infection rate stabilized at the same time as the rest of the world but without lockdowns. It's really the only path forward. Is it perfect? Of course not. People will die. However, there's no world in which about 70% of the population won't get the disease before the vaccine arrives, so we need to control who gets it, when, and in what order, to minimize harm.
- mcnamaratw 6y ago
  Your calculus has no numbers in it.
  - 6y ago

perl4ever 6y ago

About 1500 people in the US died yesterday of covid; year-to-date, about 1300 people died each day of the flu. So it seems like there should be no possible way to frame it as less severe than the flu, even only comparing to when the flu is at its worst and even assuming 100% of the population has covid or whatever other extreme things you want.

arcticbull 6y ago
That's not entirely true. The flu has a vaccine (of varying efficacy -- 10-60% depending on the year). The flu also has a large body of immunity built up across the population from having had it. It's also less contagious. If we assume that COVID is spreading like wildfire (it is), and that we're front-loading the cases (we probably are), and that immunity will be built up as one-off instead of like having the disease mutate substantially every year like the flu, over a few years, it could easily be better. I'm not saying it is or isn't, just that there is a path.
smsm42 6y ago
Note that for the flu, most of the community does literally nothing. I mean, some people get vaccinated, but most literally ignore the flu as if it didn't exist - except if they get sick of course, and even then some people go to work if they can (they shouldn't, really, but they do). If we compare this with complete shutdown of all public activity on the other end of the spectrum, we can see there are things we could be doing that are on neither ends. Maybe distancing but not shutdown, or avoiding some mass gathering but still being ok with individual meetings, or having places like restaurants operating at reduced capacity to ensure people aren't too close to each other, or ask people to wear masks when they enter stores, etc. And strict lockdown for places like nursing homes, but more relaxed for places like college, or having people of high-risk groups to work from home, but people with lower risk be allowed to work in the office. I'm not saying it's the right way to do right now, but it's a possibility, there are options. So if this is e.g. 50 times worse than the flu, then trying any of the above may be too risky. But if it's kinda sorta like the flu, maybe somewhat worse but not 50x worse - then it may be prudent to consider measured response, given that for the flu we basically have no response at all and we're ok with that.

kgwgk 6y ago

How many healthy people do you think that dies because of the flu?

arcticbull 6y ago
Probably the same number of young and healthy people that die of COVID. For instance COVIDs fatality rate is lower than that of the flu for all demographics of people under the age of 35 per CDC data. It's about the same for 35-44 and really only diverges over 45. Worldwide the fatality rate under 20 rounds to zero. To date, pneumonia far outstrips COVID. [1] [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm
- greedo 6y ago
  This is completely inaccurate, and nowhere in the linked document is there supporting evidence to your claim that the flu has a higher fatality rate for under 35, nor the same for 35-44. And this report relies on figures that diverge dramatically from the COVID death tolls. It lists the current total report as around 15k, when we're close to 3x.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > This is completely inaccurate, and nowhere in the linked document is there supporting evidence to your claim that the flu has a higher fatality rate for under 35, nor the same for 35-44. Here's some more data. What I'm saying (that it's approximately the same as the flu for the young, with some early evidence pointing to it being better) isn't particularly controversial and well supported by evidence [1] (also older, April 14th). CDC as of late March "... no ICU admissions or deaths were reported among persons aged ≤19 years. Similar to reports from other countries, this finding suggests that the risk for serious disease and death from COVID-19 is higher in older age groups." [2] In Italy nobody under 30 died, and only 5 people between 30 and 39, as of April 19th -- yes in spite of a CFR of what, 13.22%? [3, 4] More data as of April 20th from Oxford [4]. Scroll through all the data the world has to offer, I'm not wrong on this. I repeat, the facts you're arguing with me over, without citing data to support your case are not controversial. Surprising maybe, but not controvercial. Especially when you consider (an albeit bad flu): the overall case fatality rate as of 16 July 2009 (10 weeks after the first international alert) with pandemic H1N1 influenza varied from 0.1% to 5.1% depending on the country. [4] The flu can absolutely be very bad is the take away there. And yeah this is worse than the flu, by around 3X on both ends of that range. Not bad, not great. > It lists the current total report as around 15k, when we're close to 3x. They actually address that critique, that it takes a few weeks for case data to be finalized and reported upwards, so the CDC data can be up to a few weeks behind. It's not divergent, it's delayed. This is a live list updated and maintained by the CDC. Make of that what you will. [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-daily-data-summary-deaths-04152020-1.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho... [4] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/ https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-...

badfrog 6y ago

> Underlying illnesses include Diabetes, Lung Disease, Cancer, Immunodeficiency, Heart Disease, Hypertension, Asthma, Kidney Disease, and GI/Liver Disease That's a whole lot of people left out of your number. A quick google suggests that 1/3 of Americans have hypertension and 9% have diabetes. It seems like probably the majority of the US has at least one of these underlying illnesses.