3 ms·

Could you explain where you got that "less than 1%" figure from?

by titzer 7y ago

gpm 7y ago
The main thing to understand is that is infection fatality rate, not case fatality rate. IFR being the portion of the people who got the disease that died, and CFR being the portion of people who the medical systems finds out has the disease who die. The 1% number if support by a pretty wide variety of sources and studies that have all been relatively consistent in the 1%-0.1% order of magnitude - more recently they seem to have been converging on the 0.5% to 0.25% range (though I haven't been thorough enough in reading the literature to want to state that range confidently). A relatively recent and good example of such a study would be this one [1] from Germany. They sampled 600 people relatively randomly from the population, tested them all, and looked at the outcomes. [1] https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_en.pdf https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwis...
- titzer 7y ago
  "Using data through April 20, 2020, we fit a statistical model to COVID-19 case fatality rates over time at the US county level to estimate the COVID-19 IFR among symptomatic cases (IFR-S) as time goes to infinity. The IFR-S in the US was estimated to be 1.3% (95% central credible interval: 0.6% to 2.1%). County-specific rates varied from 0.5% to 3.6%." https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200506.159053/full/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200506.15905...
  - gpm 7y ago
    Have you read that study? It's over-extrapolating from shit data with a overly fancy mathematical model. I don't fault the authors for trying, it is an interesting attempt, but I weight their results substantially less heavily when forming my world view. Not to mention which, some estimates of asymptomatic case rate go up to 50% (others substantially less so, it probably depends both on age range and what you define as asymptomatic) By the way, direct link to the study is https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00455?utm_campaign=covid19fasttrack&utm_medium=press&utm_content=basu&utm_source=mediaadvisory https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020....
    - titzer 7y ago
      Remember 2 months ago when data from China indicated the CFR was 1-2%? And then it exploded in Italy and now we see CFRs in the 5-15% range worldwide? Yeah. I am really sick of flippant underestimates of the seriousness of this motherfucking disease. Deaths are still being underreported and no one has shown a statistically sound study of what the real infection rate is, even as it continues to climb, so both the numerator and denominator of this fickle IFR quantity have got massive errors on them.

Could you explain where you got that "less than 1%" figure from?

by titzer 7y ago

Could you explain where you got that "less than 1%" figure from?

gpm 7y ago

The main thing to understand is that is infection fatality rate, not case fatality rate. IFR being the portion of the people who got the disease that died, and CFR being the portion of people who the medical systems finds out has the disease who die. The 1% number if support by a pretty wide variety of sources and studies that have all been relatively consistent in the 1%-0.1% order of magnitude - more recently they seem to have been converging on the 0.5% to 0.25% range (though I haven't been thorough enough in reading the literature to want to state that range confidently). A relatively recent and good example of such a study would be this one [1] from Germany. They sampled 600 people relatively randomly from the population, tested them all, and looked at the outcomes. [1] https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_en.pdf https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwis...

titzer 7y ago
"Using data through April 20, 2020, we fit a statistical model to COVID-19 case fatality rates over time at the US county level to estimate the COVID-19 IFR among symptomatic cases (IFR-S) as time goes to infinity. The IFR-S in the US was estimated to be 1.3% (95% central credible interval: 0.6% to 2.1%). County-specific rates varied from 0.5% to 3.6%." https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200506.159053/full/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200506.15905...
- gpm 7y ago
  Have you read that study? It's over-extrapolating from shit data with a overly fancy mathematical model. I don't fault the authors for trying, it is an interesting attempt, but I weight their results substantially less heavily when forming my world view. Not to mention which, some estimates of asymptomatic case rate go up to 50% (others substantially less so, it probably depends both on age range and what you define as asymptomatic) By the way, direct link to the study is https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00455?utm_campaign=covid19fasttrack&utm_medium=press&utm_content=basu&utm_source=mediaadvisory https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020....
  - titzer 7y ago
    Remember 2 months ago when data from China indicated the CFR was 1-2%? And then it exploded in Italy and now we see CFRs in the 5-15% range worldwide? Yeah. I am really sick of flippant underestimates of the seriousness of this motherfucking disease. Deaths are still being underreported and no one has shown a statistically sound study of what the real infection rate is, even as it continues to climb, so both the numerator and denominator of this fickle IFR quantity have got massive errors on them.