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> For society to resume, measures designed to reduce aerosol transmission must be implemented This is an opinion piece disguised as science. It’s presumptuous

> For society to resume, measures designed to reduce aerosol transmission must be implemented This is an opinion piece disguised as science. It’s presumptuous of a science writer to make determinations about whether and how society will be permitted to resume. If we want people to be perfectly safe we’d also ban fast food, meat, alcohol, nicotine, driving and sex. But the goal of society is not to keep people 100% safe. Why are we okay with having our liberties trampled over an illness that the CDC estimates has a 0.26% death rate?

djsumdog 6y ago
This entire thing has showed what happens when political leaders don't properly evaluate risk. It's difficult to do so when something new comes along. I think Wendover did a great job of address this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-Ibi21tU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-Ibi21tU
sacred_numbers 6y ago
Because the death rate is way higher than 0.26%. If the CDC really thinks it's that low for the general population then they are wrong. The general consensus I have seen, based on antibody tests in New York, Italy, Sweden, and Spain point to a death rate between 0.75% and 1.25% for most developed nations. For less developed nations (which, to be fair, is most of the world) the death rate will be lower because there are fewer old people. I agree that we don't have to shut down everything, but everyone should be wearing masks as much as possible in public. Public smoking is highly restricted, at least partially because of the risks of secondhand smoke, and the risks of COVID-19 are way higher than that. People can do what they want at home, but we have to share public spaces. It's not right for someone else to make decisions that endanger me and my family just because they don't care about the risk.
- marcell 6y ago
  The CDC latest best estimate is 0.4% death rate from Covid. This compares to a death rate from the flu of around 0.2%, also based on CDC estimates [1]. Every death is a tragedy, but we didn't do half-lockdowns for the flu before. Why are we doing a full lockdown for something that is 2x the flu. Antibody testing largely supports a 0.4% death rates conclusion, I've tracked this data in a spreadsheet I made [2]. 0.4% is close to the mean and median of the studies I recorded. Edit: I know it's gauche to complain about downvotes, but this post is just citing data to make a point. Even if you are worried about Covid, it seems dishonest to downvote data. [1] https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cdc-estimates-covid-19-mortality-rate/275-fc43f37f-6764-45e3-b615-123459f0082b https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cd... [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTlad1jnQZ9W7p_P_yS-0D6j1-8/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTla...
  - ido 6y ago
    I genuinely mean this with no disrespect but how knowledgeable are you about this & if you aren't why do you think some data collecting from the internet & "back of the envelope" spreadsheet-ing makes you able to reasonably question world experts that dedicated their careers to virology and pandemics? If you are a programmer how much would you appreciate a medical doctor with no training or experience in software development questioning your technical decisions about what to use when building a software service?
    - marcell 6y ago
      The 0.4% fatality estimate is from the CDC, presumably full of credentialed experts. My spreadsheet is a collection of studies from experts who have presumably dedicated their careers to virology and pandemics. The 0.2% number is also from the CDC. I’m not out there doing science, I’m just looking at the data. I’m not sure what the basis is if your criticism. If a medical doctor wants to submit a PR I would review it based on merits.
      - retsibsi 6y ago
        It looks like your spreadsheet divides deaths on a given date by (confirmed and estimated) cases on that same date? This will bias your estimate downward. There is a significant lag between diagnosis and death (and even more so between infection and death -- which of these is relevant depends on how you are estimating unreported cases), but you're implicitly assuming that 100% of unresolved cases will end in recovery.
        marcell 6y ago
        You are correct, deaths lag a bit, as does reporting of the deaths, which downward biases the IFR. Antibodies also lag before they show up in the serology tests, which upward biases the IFR. But broadly, the studies I've cited largely back up the CDC's estimate of 0.4% IFR. Some of them have methodology in the papers themselves which give similar numbers, and I encourage you to read the raw data. But an IFR close to the flu is not at all surprising. Covid is a respiratory infection. It kills the same way the flu kills (eg. pneumonia), so you'd naively expect them to have similar fatality rates and outcomes, and they do.
- disabled 6y ago
  Comparing deaths from previous years for the same month(s) (of the pandemic), along with the expected number of deaths (projected) for 2020, is how this sort of calculation is made, on a preliminary basis. There is an (older) Financial Times article that did an excellent analysis on this (free to read): https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06... But, this article (also free to read) came out today from the Financial Times and is way better. The UK is doing far worse than the US interestingly: https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0 https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71... Countries like France, Spain, and Italy (Mediterranean countries) in particular rank badly (besides having an uncontrollable infection problem) for the calculation of total excess deaths (compared to previous years) because they have some of the highest average lifespans in the world, largest percentages of elderly populations, and have extremely high quality universal healthcare (for example, the third leading cause of death in the US is actually preventable medical errors, so we really do not have phenomenal healthcare, even if you have “great insurance” and “can pay for it”).

djsumdog 6y ago

This entire thing has showed what happens when political leaders don't properly evaluate risk. It's difficult to do so when something new comes along. I think Wendover did a great job of address this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-Ibi21tU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtX-Ibi21tU

sacred_numbers 6y ago

Because the death rate is way higher than 0.26%. If the CDC really thinks it's that low for the general population then they are wrong. The general consensus I have seen, based on antibody tests in New York, Italy, Sweden, and Spain point to a death rate between 0.75% and 1.25% for most developed nations. For less developed nations (which, to be fair, is most of the world) the death rate will be lower because there are fewer old people. I agree that we don't have to shut down everything, but everyone should be wearing masks as much as possible in public. Public smoking is highly restricted, at least partially because of the risks of secondhand smoke, and the risks of COVID-19 are way higher than that. People can do what they want at home, but we have to share public spaces. It's not right for someone else to make decisions that endanger me and my family just because they don't care about the risk.

marcell 6y ago
The CDC latest best estimate is 0.4% death rate from Covid. This compares to a death rate from the flu of around 0.2%, also based on CDC estimates [1]. Every death is a tragedy, but we didn't do half-lockdowns for the flu before. Why are we doing a full lockdown for something that is 2x the flu. Antibody testing largely supports a 0.4% death rates conclusion, I've tracked this data in a spreadsheet I made [2]. 0.4% is close to the mean and median of the studies I recorded. Edit: I know it's gauche to complain about downvotes, but this post is just citing data to make a point. Even if you are worried about Covid, it seems dishonest to downvote data. [1] https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cdc-estimates-covid-19-mortality-rate/275-fc43f37f-6764-45e3-b615-123459f0082b https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cd... [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTlad1jnQZ9W7p_P_yS-0D6j1-8/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTla...
- ido 6y ago
  I genuinely mean this with no disrespect but how knowledgeable are you about this & if you aren't why do you think some data collecting from the internet & "back of the envelope" spreadsheet-ing makes you able to reasonably question world experts that dedicated their careers to virology and pandemics? If you are a programmer how much would you appreciate a medical doctor with no training or experience in software development questioning your technical decisions about what to use when building a software service?
  - marcell 6y ago
    The 0.4% fatality estimate is from the CDC, presumably full of credentialed experts. My spreadsheet is a collection of studies from experts who have presumably dedicated their careers to virology and pandemics. The 0.2% number is also from the CDC. I’m not out there doing science, I’m just looking at the data. I’m not sure what the basis is if your criticism. If a medical doctor wants to submit a PR I would review it based on merits.
    - retsibsi 6y ago
      It looks like your spreadsheet divides deaths on a given date by (confirmed and estimated) cases on that same date? This will bias your estimate downward. There is a significant lag between diagnosis and death (and even more so between infection and death -- which of these is relevant depends on how you are estimating unreported cases), but you're implicitly assuming that 100% of unresolved cases will end in recovery.
      - marcell 6y ago
        You are correct, deaths lag a bit, as does reporting of the deaths, which downward biases the IFR. Antibodies also lag before they show up in the serology tests, which upward biases the IFR. But broadly, the studies I've cited largely back up the CDC's estimate of 0.4% IFR. Some of them have methodology in the papers themselves which give similar numbers, and I encourage you to read the raw data. But an IFR close to the flu is not at all surprising. Covid is a respiratory infection. It kills the same way the flu kills (eg. pneumonia), so you'd naively expect them to have similar fatality rates and outcomes, and they do.
disabled 6y ago
Comparing deaths from previous years for the same month(s) (of the pandemic), along with the expected number of deaths (projected) for 2020, is how this sort of calculation is made, on a preliminary basis. There is an (older) Financial Times article that did an excellent analysis on this (free to read): https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06... But, this article (also free to read) came out today from the Financial Times and is way better. The UK is doing far worse than the US interestingly: https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0 https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71... Countries like France, Spain, and Italy (Mediterranean countries) in particular rank badly (besides having an uncontrollable infection problem) for the calculation of total excess deaths (compared to previous years) because they have some of the highest average lifespans in the world, largest percentages of elderly populations, and have extremely high quality universal healthcare (for example, the third leading cause of death in the US is actually preventable medical errors, so we really do not have phenomenal healthcare, even if you have “great insurance” and “can pay for it”).