8 ms·

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 ~

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 7y 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 7y ago
  Your calculus has no numbers in it.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Different kind of calculus.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  > but without lockdowns. While I agree mostly with your assessment, it's worth mentioning that the lack of official lockdown in Sweden doesn't mean there isn't a lockdown. According to Google's mobility data for Sweden, their lockdown activity looks pretty similar to what we see in the US. People are voluntarily staying home.
  - balnaphone 7y ago
    > their lockdown activity Since Sweden doesn't have a lockdown, this statement is meaningless. A major objection to lockdowns is their involuntary nature. In general, there is a big difference between choosing to stay home, and being coerced (with the threat of force) to do so. One is "choosing to do what you believe is best", the other is "prison".
    - qqqwerty 7y ago
      And there are big differences in social cohesion between countries. Voluntary efforts appear to be sufficient in Sweden precisely because there is a high level of compliance. In the meantime, the coastal town that I live in is getting swarmed with out of town visitors every weekend. This is in violation of the shelter-in-place orders. Other towns have stepped up enforcement to combat this type of behavior, but our police department is small and does not have the resources. We shut down the parking lots, but now they just park in the neighborhoods. And to add insult to injury, we have a large senior housing complex at the entrance point to my neighborhood. I have little faith that the US could achieve the type of distancing and isolation necessary on a voluntary basis. There is a sharp vein of individualism that runs through our society that works strongly against us in these types of situations.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        For what it's worth, Sweden's goal is to get 70% of the country infected to achieve herd immunity. They likely quite rightly believe that's the only way to stop the disease once and for all. While it's absolutely not okay to be anywhere near a seniors residence, the rest is likely tolerated because it's kind of the unstated goal to the extent healthcare facilities remain un-saturated. It's by no means a "hope and pray it goes away" or a "lets wait it out until a vaccine" -- it's a "let's get everyone not in a risk category infected as fast as possible so long as the healthcare system retains some excess capacity."
edoo 7y ago
The serological surveys are showing 50-100x infection rates of those tested. If tested healthy persons are dying at 0.5% that gets you to 0.01%-0.005% death rate in healthy persons. That number is lower than the all cause death rates of 25-34 year olds... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355-h.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355-h.pdf
- hyperpape 7y ago
  I see. You're correct that while the overall death rates in NYC are vastly higher than any season flu, it's mathematically possible that those are all deaths of unhealthy people. It's a creative interpretation of the facts. One important note: it's impossible that NYC is overestimating cases by 100x. Close to 2% of NYC has confirmed cases.
  - edoo 7y ago
    New York is at 1.3 percent positive with new cases flatlining. That fits very squarely with what you'd expect to see based on the surveys. Healthy people aren't dying by any significant number based on New York's own published data. The only other one I've seen is MA that has 97.5% deaths with comorbidity. This is a huge overreaction.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      99.2% of the folks who died in Italy averaged 80.5 and had an average of 3 underlying conditions, so that data lines up.
  - vanniv 7y ago
    The other thing to keep in mind with death counts, especially in NY and NJ, is that all deaths of likely-infected people are being counted as COVID deaths regardless of cause of death. This has included a couple lf suicides of folks who had respiratory illness prior to death, and one person who got in an auto accident and died of head trauma -- but he had tested COVID-positive. Yes, most people right now who get a respiratory illness and then die probably did have COVID -- and it is possible that some folks are dying of COVID and being uncounted to offset some of the overcounting -- but with death numbers counted so loosely, it is hard to know the real story, and impossible to do simple maths using rates from one place at one time to compute rates at other times or other places. I tend to think that NYC must be approaching saturation, and that the true new-case numbers must be falling there, but it's impossible to answer with certainty using only the numbers we have here on the internets.
smsm42 7y ago
I don't think it's right to compare whole US population with worst-case NY population. Of course worst-case would be much worse that average case.
- hyperpape 7y ago
  Depends on what you're comparing. I agree we can't assume that the rest of the country will see similar infection rates. However, it's less clear to me that fatality rates would be incorrect. On the other hand, there's one very specific way that considering NYC gives us data we can't (yet) get elsewhere. While it's possible that we're underestimating disease prevalence by 50x elsewhere, it's basically impossible in NYC (almost 2% of people already have tested positive, with less than 10% of the population being tested).
  - smsm42 7y ago
    > However, it's less clear to me that fatality rates would be incorrect. Depends on whether mortality rates can be variant on environmental conditions, such as viral load, population density, access to healthcare/ICUs, population socio-demographic profile, etc.
    - hyperpape 7y ago
      These are good points, and I think I ended up claiming a much stronger claim than I should've. There's plenty of reasons NYC could have a higher death rate than elsewhere. I don't know how precisely you could estimate the potential death rate from just NYC's data. What I would still say is that it's reasonable to say "NYC has .18% of its population dead. It's extremely implausible that this disease is no more lethal than the flu is, when that's 10x the overall death rate from the flu. If you present me evidence suggesting that from elsewhere, it's going to have to be quite strong to overcome the evidence from NYC."
      - weaksauce 7y ago
        the flu would be way more deadly than it is if there wasn't a seasonal flu shot that gives herd immunity. edit: it shouldn't be controversial to say that a thing that kills 30-80k per year with active measures of mitigation already something that would be more deadly without a vaccine. seriously reflect on that. the corona virus is something we need to take 100% seriously but also acknowledge that the flu is also very deadly... even more so without any mitigation (thankfully we have for the common flu)

arcticbull 7y 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 7y ago
Your calculus has no numbers in it.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Different kind of calculus.
rootusrootus 7y ago
> but without lockdowns. While I agree mostly with your assessment, it's worth mentioning that the lack of official lockdown in Sweden doesn't mean there isn't a lockdown. According to Google's mobility data for Sweden, their lockdown activity looks pretty similar to what we see in the US. People are voluntarily staying home.
- balnaphone 7y ago
  > their lockdown activity Since Sweden doesn't have a lockdown, this statement is meaningless. A major objection to lockdowns is their involuntary nature. In general, there is a big difference between choosing to stay home, and being coerced (with the threat of force) to do so. One is "choosing to do what you believe is best", the other is "prison".
  - qqqwerty 7y ago
    And there are big differences in social cohesion between countries. Voluntary efforts appear to be sufficient in Sweden precisely because there is a high level of compliance. In the meantime, the coastal town that I live in is getting swarmed with out of town visitors every weekend. This is in violation of the shelter-in-place orders. Other towns have stepped up enforcement to combat this type of behavior, but our police department is small and does not have the resources. We shut down the parking lots, but now they just park in the neighborhoods. And to add insult to injury, we have a large senior housing complex at the entrance point to my neighborhood. I have little faith that the US could achieve the type of distancing and isolation necessary on a voluntary basis. There is a sharp vein of individualism that runs through our society that works strongly against us in these types of situations.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      For what it's worth, Sweden's goal is to get 70% of the country infected to achieve herd immunity. They likely quite rightly believe that's the only way to stop the disease once and for all. While it's absolutely not okay to be anywhere near a seniors residence, the rest is likely tolerated because it's kind of the unstated goal to the extent healthcare facilities remain un-saturated. It's by no means a "hope and pray it goes away" or a "lets wait it out until a vaccine" -- it's a "let's get everyone not in a risk category infected as fast as possible so long as the healthcare system retains some excess capacity."

edoo 7y ago

The serological surveys are showing 50-100x infection rates of those tested. If tested healthy persons are dying at 0.5% that gets you to 0.01%-0.005% death rate in healthy persons. That number is lower than the all cause death rates of 25-34 year olds... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355-h.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355-h.pdf

hyperpape 7y ago
I see. You're correct that while the overall death rates in NYC are vastly higher than any season flu, it's mathematically possible that those are all deaths of unhealthy people. It's a creative interpretation of the facts. One important note: it's impossible that NYC is overestimating cases by 100x. Close to 2% of NYC has confirmed cases.
- edoo 7y ago
  New York is at 1.3 percent positive with new cases flatlining. That fits very squarely with what you'd expect to see based on the surveys. Healthy people aren't dying by any significant number based on New York's own published data. The only other one I've seen is MA that has 97.5% deaths with comorbidity. This is a huge overreaction.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    99.2% of the folks who died in Italy averaged 80.5 and had an average of 3 underlying conditions, so that data lines up.
- vanniv 7y ago
  The other thing to keep in mind with death counts, especially in NY and NJ, is that all deaths of likely-infected people are being counted as COVID deaths regardless of cause of death. This has included a couple lf suicides of folks who had respiratory illness prior to death, and one person who got in an auto accident and died of head trauma -- but he had tested COVID-positive. Yes, most people right now who get a respiratory illness and then die probably did have COVID -- and it is possible that some folks are dying of COVID and being uncounted to offset some of the overcounting -- but with death numbers counted so loosely, it is hard to know the real story, and impossible to do simple maths using rates from one place at one time to compute rates at other times or other places. I tend to think that NYC must be approaching saturation, and that the true new-case numbers must be falling there, but it's impossible to answer with certainty using only the numbers we have here on the internets.

smsm42 7y ago

I don't think it's right to compare whole US population with worst-case NY population. Of course worst-case would be much worse that average case.

hyperpape 7y ago
Depends on what you're comparing. I agree we can't assume that the rest of the country will see similar infection rates. However, it's less clear to me that fatality rates would be incorrect. On the other hand, there's one very specific way that considering NYC gives us data we can't (yet) get elsewhere. While it's possible that we're underestimating disease prevalence by 50x elsewhere, it's basically impossible in NYC (almost 2% of people already have tested positive, with less than 10% of the population being tested).
- smsm42 7y ago
  > However, it's less clear to me that fatality rates would be incorrect. Depends on whether mortality rates can be variant on environmental conditions, such as viral load, population density, access to healthcare/ICUs, population socio-demographic profile, etc.
  - hyperpape 7y ago
    These are good points, and I think I ended up claiming a much stronger claim than I should've. There's plenty of reasons NYC could have a higher death rate than elsewhere. I don't know how precisely you could estimate the potential death rate from just NYC's data. What I would still say is that it's reasonable to say "NYC has .18% of its population dead. It's extremely implausible that this disease is no more lethal than the flu is, when that's 10x the overall death rate from the flu. If you present me evidence suggesting that from elsewhere, it's going to have to be quite strong to overcome the evidence from NYC."
    - weaksauce 7y ago
      the flu would be way more deadly than it is if there wasn't a seasonal flu shot that gives herd immunity. edit: it shouldn't be controversial to say that a thing that kills 30-80k per year with active measures of mitigation already something that would be more deadly without a vaccine. seriously reflect on that. the corona virus is something we need to take 100% seriously but also acknowledge that the flu is also very deadly... even more so without any mitigation (thankfully we have for the common flu)