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This seems a bit over-the-top. Sure, maybe Japan isn't testing and is just treating pneumonia cases as pneumonia cases instead of the cornavirus cases they actu

This seems a bit over-the-top. Sure, maybe Japan isn't testing and is just treating pneumonia cases as pneumonia cases instead of the cornavirus cases they actually are, but if that is allowing society to function mostly normally and isn't changing death rates all that much I don't see the harm. Arguably that is a better response than shutting down your economy and creating massive debt problems that will need to be resolved later.

XorNot 7y ago
The death rate from COVID-19 is a constant: about ~1% of all cases, so far as is currently known. If the R0 of the virus is about 2 (which from evidence is about the case for uncontained spread, possibly higher) then half of your entire case load is discovered in the last increment. That period is (roughly) 14 days from infection to the onset of symptoms. We cannot build a hospital, nor train doctors and nurses, in 14 days. But here's the thing: the hospitalization rate - which is what keeps the death rate at 1% - is around 10 - 15%. And both those numbers are constants, multiplied against an exponential factor. And hospital stays are around 3 to 4 weeks long. By the time your hospital beds are 50% full, you're already out of capacity - the next wave is going to be being denied treatment. And in fact, anyone else who has an otherwise treatable but potentially life-threatening condition is also going to be denied treatment. At which point a lot of your deaths aren't going to be directly due to COVID-19...but that's really not going to matter.
- jeffreyrogers 7y ago
  Okay, but this appears to not be happening in Japan. Why not? If your answer is, it's going to happen, then why hasn't it happened already if things are truly as dire as the original essay is saying? Edit: It also appears to not be happening in Sweden. I think a lot of the modeling of this is flawed.
  - XorNot 7y ago
    I'll be a lot more interested when it hasn't happened 2 weeks from now.

XorNot 7y ago

The death rate from COVID-19 is a constant: about ~1% of all cases, so far as is currently known. If the R0 of the virus is about 2 (which from evidence is about the case for uncontained spread, possibly higher) then half of your entire case load is discovered in the last increment. That period is (roughly) 14 days from infection to the onset of symptoms. We cannot build a hospital, nor train doctors and nurses, in 14 days. But here's the thing: the hospitalization rate - which is what keeps the death rate at 1% - is around 10 - 15%. And both those numbers are constants, multiplied against an exponential factor. And hospital stays are around 3 to 4 weeks long. By the time your hospital beds are 50% full, you're already out of capacity - the next wave is going to be being denied treatment. And in fact, anyone else who has an otherwise treatable but potentially life-threatening condition is also going to be denied treatment. At which point a lot of your deaths aren't going to be directly due to COVID-19...but that's really not going to matter.

jeffreyrogers 7y ago
Okay, but this appears to not be happening in Japan. Why not? If your answer is, it's going to happen, then why hasn't it happened already if things are truly as dire as the original essay is saying? Edit: It also appears to not be happening in Sweden. I think a lot of the modeling of this is flawed.
- XorNot 7y ago
  I'll be a lot more interested when it hasn't happened 2 weeks from now.