6 ms·

It is that high now, it would not have been that high early on, especially considering that mortality is most likely closer to 0.5%. It simply would not have r

It is that high now, it would not have been that high early on, especially considering that mortality is most likely closer to 0.5%. It simply would not have registered among the usual deaths from viral pneumonia, which has a year over year variance of a similar magnitude. The actual death numbers are also highly dependent on the age groups affected, in Germany for instance there is no discernible excess mortality because most of the infected are below the age of 65.

foobarian 6y ago
I want to believe that a bunch of us already had and got over Covid, I really do. I am in northeastern USA and a lot of people around me had this "unusually bad" flu this year. Coworkers, kids, me and family - took us a month to get over it. But, that would mean the disease was super widespread and we couldn't call that period "early on". Based on anecdata and Bayes it means a lot of people had it already in Feb, as many as during peak flu season. This is why I believe it's just a bad flu after all - the spread pattern matches the usual seasonal flu/cold; and we would have noticed an elevated mortality.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  We'll never know because we won't know how the disease would've spread without all these measures. If we adjust for years of life lost, as opposed to just lives lost, COVID-19 may be less severe than seasonal H1N1 Influenza, which kills a lot of young people. On the other hand, COVID-19 also seems to be far more infectious.
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  If you want to convince me everyone had it in feb you need to show me the bodies
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    There are several European countries that right now have no discernible excess mortality despite having hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases and thousands of deaths. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ Outside of NY/NJ, the excess mortality in the US is within 20% of the normal rate, no different than the variance expected from a bad/mild flu season. If you were to transpose those cases back to February, what would you have seen in the death statistics? Nothing suspicious at all. There could have been hundreds of thousands of cases that have gone unnoticed, because there wasn't any testing - and that's assuming a mortality rate of over 2%. If the mortality rate is lower than 0.4%, as some studies suggest, it could've been millions of cases.
    - dilyevsky 6y ago
      You do realize we’ve been waiting it out at home since early march here in CA? The only real reason why no of deaths is not through the roof yet. If you divide number of confirmed (!) covid deaths in nyc by total pop it’s already over 0.2% Edit: actual calc i did is 13k confirmed deaths in nyc / 70% herd immunity magic number of 8.4 mil
      - gridlockd 6y ago
        That's besides the point. Let's look at Germany from that EUROMOMO map. Despite all the measures, they have had over 150k cases and over 6k deaths (a death rate of over 2%), but it doesn't show up on the graph. All the deaths that have happened in Germany in the past weeks could've happened months earlier and it wouldn't have shown up either. This disproves the idea that there couldn't have been any mass infections earlier, because we would've seen that from excess deaths. That's the point I am making. The only way to know would've been through testing, but there wasn't any testing then.
        rjtavares 6y ago
        You can only disprove this idea: "we can't contain this with measures - including massive testing and quarantine". You can't really disprove the idea that "without measures excess mortality will always happen".
        gridlockd 6y ago
        What does this have to do with my point? Let me reiterate: Hypothesis: "If there had been mass spread outside of Asia as soon as January or February, we would have been able to tell because of unusually high excess deaths" Contradicted by: "There are known cases of mass spread that didn't result in unusually high excess deaths" Therefore, excess death is an insufficient metric to reveal a mass spread of COVID-19 - it could have been spreading undetected. Whether there have been any measures to limit the spread is irrelevant to that conclusion.

foobarian 6y ago

I want to believe that a bunch of us already had and got over Covid, I really do. I am in northeastern USA and a lot of people around me had this "unusually bad" flu this year. Coworkers, kids, me and family - took us a month to get over it. But, that would mean the disease was super widespread and we couldn't call that period "early on". Based on anecdata and Bayes it means a lot of people had it already in Feb, as many as during peak flu season. This is why I believe it's just a bad flu after all - the spread pattern matches the usual seasonal flu/cold; and we would have noticed an elevated mortality.

gridlockd 6y ago
We'll never know because we won't know how the disease would've spread without all these measures. If we adjust for years of life lost, as opposed to just lives lost, COVID-19 may be less severe than seasonal H1N1 Influenza, which kills a lot of young people. On the other hand, COVID-19 also seems to be far more infectious.
dilyevsky 6y ago
If you want to convince me everyone had it in feb you need to show me the bodies
- gridlockd 6y ago
  There are several European countries that right now have no discernible excess mortality despite having hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases and thousands of deaths. https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ Outside of NY/NJ, the excess mortality in the US is within 20% of the normal rate, no different than the variance expected from a bad/mild flu season. If you were to transpose those cases back to February, what would you have seen in the death statistics? Nothing suspicious at all. There could have been hundreds of thousands of cases that have gone unnoticed, because there wasn't any testing - and that's assuming a mortality rate of over 2%. If the mortality rate is lower than 0.4%, as some studies suggest, it could've been millions of cases.
  - dilyevsky 6y ago
    You do realize we’ve been waiting it out at home since early march here in CA? The only real reason why no of deaths is not through the roof yet. If you divide number of confirmed (!) covid deaths in nyc by total pop it’s already over 0.2% Edit: actual calc i did is 13k confirmed deaths in nyc / 70% herd immunity magic number of 8.4 mil
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      That's besides the point. Let's look at Germany from that EUROMOMO map. Despite all the measures, they have had over 150k cases and over 6k deaths (a death rate of over 2%), but it doesn't show up on the graph. All the deaths that have happened in Germany in the past weeks could've happened months earlier and it wouldn't have shown up either. This disproves the idea that there couldn't have been any mass infections earlier, because we would've seen that from excess deaths. That's the point I am making. The only way to know would've been through testing, but there wasn't any testing then.
      - rjtavares 6y ago
        You can only disprove this idea: "we can't contain this with measures - including massive testing and quarantine". You can't really disprove the idea that "without measures excess mortality will always happen".
        gridlockd 6y ago
        What does this have to do with my point? Let me reiterate: Hypothesis: "If there had been mass spread outside of Asia as soon as January or February, we would have been able to tell because of unusually high excess deaths" Contradicted by: "There are known cases of mass spread that didn't result in unusually high excess deaths" Therefore, excess death is an insufficient metric to reveal a mass spread of COVID-19 - it could have been spreading undetected. Whether there have been any measures to limit the spread is irrelevant to that conclusion.