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The CDC’s Coronavirus Death Rate Estimates Are Too Low, Many Scientists Say

34 points by georgecmu 6y ago

FreedomToCreate 6y ago
The integrity of all new sources have been challenged to such a degree that the real loser here is the average person. There is no way for many of us to assess who to trust and we are being mired in confusion and smokescreens created by the powers that be. There is no denying that it is being done intentionally and its just sad.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It's partially the fault of the sources, but I also feel like there are unrealistic expectations. Most people I've seen discuss it online expect a lot more details with a lot more certainty than could possibly be available.
- Aloha 6y ago
  This is why half the country is willing to buy whatever the loudest voice in the room is willing to say.
enahs-sf 6y ago
I wonder how many states are also cooking the stats amidst the flurry of reopening.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  It doesn't seem like there'd be much incentive to. If they have an uncontrolled outbreak, people are gonna notice regardless of what the stats say.
  - kitotik 6y ago
    You really don’t see the incentive to underreport? Just being open for business is one thing, getting workers and consumers to fulfill their roles in the system is another. If people see the death rates are still quickly growing, they’ll be less likely to resume working and spending.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      If death rates are still quickly growing, people are going to see that regardless of what the official statistics say.
    - Consultant32452 6y ago
      I've been fortunate so far that I personally do not know a single person who has died of covid. I am aware of a family member of an acquaintance died of covid. If the death rate really spikes, more and more people will start to have someone in their personal circle who has died of covid. And people who had someone in their personal circle die will change their behavior in some way.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      I agree there's a lot of incentive to reduce the counts in states where for political reasons in party they opened up their states aggressively, one example is Georgia. Georgia has somewhat surprising overall positive counts trending down. Compare them to Alabama which has been consistently going up. Georgia has reported incorrect results and Florida fired someone working on their website. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/us/florida-georgia-covid-19-test-data/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/us/florida-georgia-covid-19-t...
nerdbaggy 6y ago
The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside this is a hard problem to solve. Some states are over reporting some are under reporting, there just isn’t much consistency. And of course there is tons of political bias so who actually knows.
- swiley 6y ago
  Maybe Americans are just way less social than everyone thought? So there’s less viral load and less deaths.
- adventured 6y ago
  > The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside The US was fortunate to have considerable ICU capacity. That has kept the mortality rate far lower than it otherwise would have been had the US been overloaded to the extent that some other nations were. Immense ICU capacity is one of the reasons Germany faired so well compared to most other nations in Europe. By the time Italy and Spain were reporting a mere 20,000 cases, their healthcare systems were already crashing and they were forced to let older patients die because they didn't have the capacity to treat everyone. The same thing quickly happened in France and Britain as well, producing high mortality rates. Also, most European nations are dominated in terms of population by one or two cities, as a percentage share of the overall population. You can see this in the list of primate cities [1]. So if your national population is 50 million and you have a primate city the size of NYC, and it gets hit hard by the virus, it's going to produce an extreme mortality rate nationally. With the US, you see a far more spread out context because NYC as one example doesn't represent nearly so large a share of the national population, with the US having few hyper dense cities vs its 330m population and few major cities in the climate zone that was ideal for SARS-CoV-2 to spread. If Los Angeles had NYC's climate, it would have produced a horrific outcome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    I think we should set Italian stats aside. It turns out that they used nursing homes to bed corona patients, so the residents were wiped out. I'm curious why NY had such a bad time compared to SF. Was it because in a cold climate central heating circulated the corona virus droplets?
boomboomsubban 6y ago
From the CDC report making those "estimates" >The parameters in the scenarios .. Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19. They are demonstrating ways of modeling the effects based only on the the available evidence of the viruses biological and epidemiological characteristics. These can later be used in more detailed models. The observers using them to support reopening the country are misusing them, but this article is also missing the point.
FriendlyNormie 6y ago
Buzzfeed lol. Fuck off.
ars 6y ago
I think the problem is that tons of people get infected without bothering to get tested. It's not a simple process to get tested and if you are not very sick, you just won't bother.
- alwillis 6y ago
  In much of the country, you can’t get tested unless you have symptoms, which means you’ve been infectious for 2–14 days. Even now, we’re still in single digits in terms of the percentage of the population that’s been tested.
Simulacra 6y ago
This is buzz feed, not exactly a source of factual news.
nerdbaggy 6y ago
The local hospital around me has about 600 beds. And the highest number of patients they had was 54. Nurses hours were cut back severely since there just wasn’t much to do in the hospital. I think the us numbers are so slow because of the highish bed to person ratio. And we had plenty of warning time to free up beds and such. I’m only aware of a few hospitals that actually had major issues.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
The problem arises when people talk about a single "death rate" without the proper caveats. It is well understood that the infection fatality rate varies with age, from 0.001% for those under 20 to ~10% for those over 80.[1] When you apply this to the entire US population, you get ~0.7%. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2020/05/12/science.abc3517.DC1/abc3517_Salje_SM.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2020/05/12/...

34 points by georgecmu 6y ago

The integrity of all new sources have been challenged to such a degree that the real loser here is the average person. There is no way for many of us to assess who to trust and we are being mired in confusion and smokescreens created by the powers that be. There is no denying that it is being done intentionally and its just sad.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It's partially the fault of the sources, but I also feel like there are unrealistic expectations. Most people I've seen discuss it online expect a lot more details with a lot more certainty than could possibly be available.
Aloha 6y ago
This is why half the country is willing to buy whatever the loudest voice in the room is willing to say.

enahs-sf 6y ago

I wonder how many states are also cooking the stats amidst the flurry of reopening.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It doesn't seem like there'd be much incentive to. If they have an uncontrolled outbreak, people are gonna notice regardless of what the stats say.
- kitotik 6y ago
  You really don’t see the incentive to underreport? Just being open for business is one thing, getting workers and consumers to fulfill their roles in the system is another. If people see the death rates are still quickly growing, they’ll be less likely to resume working and spending.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    If death rates are still quickly growing, people are going to see that regardless of what the official statistics say.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    I've been fortunate so far that I personally do not know a single person who has died of covid. I am aware of a family member of an acquaintance died of covid. If the death rate really spikes, more and more people will start to have someone in their personal circle who has died of covid. And people who had someone in their personal circle die will change their behavior in some way.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    I agree there's a lot of incentive to reduce the counts in states where for political reasons in party they opened up their states aggressively, one example is Georgia. Georgia has somewhat surprising overall positive counts trending down. Compare them to Alabama which has been consistently going up. Georgia has reported incorrect results and Florida fired someone working on their website. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/us/florida-georgia-covid-19-test-data/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/20/us/florida-georgia-covid-19-t...

nerdbaggy 6y ago

The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside this is a hard problem to solve. Some states are over reporting some are under reporting, there just isn’t much consistency. And of course there is tons of political bias so who actually knows.

swiley 6y ago
Maybe Americans are just way less social than everyone thought? So there’s less viral load and less deaths.
adventured 6y ago
> The only rational option I see is Americans must be some of the healthiest people. Kidding aside The US was fortunate to have considerable ICU capacity. That has kept the mortality rate far lower than it otherwise would have been had the US been overloaded to the extent that some other nations were. Immense ICU capacity is one of the reasons Germany faired so well compared to most other nations in Europe. By the time Italy and Spain were reporting a mere 20,000 cases, their healthcare systems were already crashing and they were forced to let older patients die because they didn't have the capacity to treat everyone. The same thing quickly happened in France and Britain as well, producing high mortality rates. Also, most European nations are dominated in terms of population by one or two cities, as a percentage share of the overall population. You can see this in the list of primate cities [1]. So if your national population is 50 million and you have a primate city the size of NYC, and it gets hit hard by the virus, it's going to produce an extreme mortality rate nationally. With the US, you see a far more spread out context because NYC as one example doesn't represent nearly so large a share of the national population, with the US having few hyper dense cities vs its 330m population and few major cities in the climate zone that was ideal for SARS-CoV-2 to spread. If Los Angeles had NYC's climate, it would have produced a horrific outcome. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_city
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  I think we should set Italian stats aside. It turns out that they used nursing homes to bed corona patients, so the residents were wiped out. I'm curious why NY had such a bad time compared to SF. Was it because in a cold climate central heating circulated the corona virus droplets?

boomboomsubban 6y ago

From the CDC report making those "estimates" >The parameters in the scenarios .. Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19. They are demonstrating ways of modeling the effects based only on the the available evidence of the viruses biological and epidemiological characteristics. These can later be used in more detailed models. The observers using them to support reopening the country are misusing them, but this article is also missing the point.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

Buzzfeed lol. Fuck off.

ars 6y ago

I think the problem is that tons of people get infected without bothering to get tested. It's not a simple process to get tested and if you are not very sick, you just won't bother.

alwillis 6y ago
In much of the country, you can’t get tested unless you have symptoms, which means you’ve been infectious for 2–14 days. Even now, we’re still in single digits in terms of the percentage of the population that’s been tested.

Simulacra 6y ago

This is buzz feed, not exactly a source of factual news.

nerdbaggy 6y ago

The local hospital around me has about 600 beds. And the highest number of patients they had was 54. Nurses hours were cut back severely since there just wasn’t much to do in the hospital. I think the us numbers are so slow because of the highish bed to person ratio. And we had plenty of warning time to free up beds and such. I’m only aware of a few hospitals that actually had major issues.

s1artibartfast 6y ago

The problem arises when people talk about a single "death rate" without the proper caveats. It is well understood that the infection fatality rate varies with age, from 0.001% for those under 20 to ~10% for those over 80.[1] When you apply this to the entire US population, you get ~0.7%. [1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2020/05/12/science.abc3517.DC1/abc3517_Salje_SM.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2020/05/12/...