4 ms·

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down,

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down, but speeding up?

jakeogh 6y ago
These numbers would be much more useful if they were in pairs; (#people, #avg_years_lost). https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths-15-times-higher/story?id=16646281 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths... "Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Both pale in comparison to the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide."
- crooked-v 6y ago
  Sure... and then consider that, unlike swine flu or seasonal flu, COVID-19 has already killed hundreds of thousands of people even with near-total lockdowns to the point of dystopic absurdity in many countries†, has done so over the course of only a few months, and due to lackluster government response in some countries is still increasing exponentially in some places. † See China's brief use of 'only specific designated people per apartment building are allowed to leave the building for specific designated shopping trips, under the threat of military force' policies at the worst of the peak in its cities.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    You can't deduce the gravity of a threat from the state's response to it. Just consider the ~0 killed by terrorism each year in western countries vs the security theater at airports.
    - Touche 6y ago
      Terrorism isn't an infectious disease.
      - anoncake 6y ago
        Your point?
        Touche 6y ago
        That your analogy doesn't hold. We do know that infectious diseases with a median R0 of 5.7 will spread exponentially, as was the case with covid-19 in the January-March timeframe. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article
        anoncake 6y ago
        And that means that you can deduce something about the danger of something from the reaction to it because...?
- hexpwn 6y ago
  500.000 and counting WITH 'excessive' quarantine measures.
- Touche 6y ago
  So covid-19 got to 500k, the high end of those other diseases, in 1/3rd the time and despite extreme measures to contain.
- grey-area 6y ago
  The final total for deaths due to Coronavirus is likely to be in the millions globally now, as it is spreading out of control and most countries have given up on lockdowns. Had it occurred in the conditions of 1918, it's likely millions would be dead already, but luckily we haven't just come out of a world war and healthcare is more advanced. The one bright spot in this otherwise gloomy picture is that we don't fully understand immunity - NYC for example is seeing very low cases, despite being surrounded by plenty of infection in surrounding states and no travel lockdown - that seems to indicate heavily infected areas might escape a second wave, perhaps due to T-Cell immunity and a much higher infection rate than antibody tests would indicate. It's hard to explain the massive and continued drop in NYC otherwise after very high infection/death rates. https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/hdxwf5/intrafamilial_exposure_to_sarscov2_induces/ https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/hdxwf5/intrafamili...
- DanBC 6y ago
  You're counting covid-19 and flu death differently. For covid-19 you're using numbers of people who were confirmed with a test to have had covid; for flu you're looking at complex statistical modelling.
- DanBC 6y ago
  So far the best data we have shows that for people in their 60s covid-19 is killing them about ten years early. See eg this from Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-most-covid-19-victims-have-died-soon-without-the-virus https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-mo... https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_720672_en.html https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_720672_en.html > “As most people dying with COVID-19 are older with underlying chronic conditions, some have speculated that the impact of the condition may have been overstated, and that the actual number of years of life lost as a result of COVID-19 are relatively low,” said Dr McAllister. > “This new analysis found that death from COVID-19 results in over 10 years of life lost per person, even after taking account of the typical number and type of chronic conditions found in people dying of COVID-19. Among people dying of COVID-19, the number of years of life lost PER PERSON appear similar to diseases such as coronary heart disease. Information such as this is important to ensure governments and the public do not wrongly underestimate the effects of COVID-19 on individuals,” he added. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 > Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (13 and 11 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6). > Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and interventions.
  - sershe 6y ago
    So what this says, basically, that if comparing to the deaths and other effects from lockdowns on general population, given its age, covid deaths are to be divided by 5 or so, before even adjusting for age (I'd assume most would rather lose their 80ies than their 30ies). Then you can consider even trivial DALY adjustments for e.g. starvation (at some point, it was expected to affect 130 million extra people, by some relevant UN body), unemployment, lack of "non essential" medical care (see estimates for excess cancer deaths from the last financial crisis due to lack of care), etc., and multiply by numbers affected.
zaroth 6y ago
What is speeding up, exactly? Our ability to detect marginal cases, certainly. Not the death rate.
qeternity 6y ago
Do you realize how many of those people would have perished this year anyway? Do you realize how many hundreds of millions of people die every year and that covid barely registers as a blip? Do you realize the enormous human cost of quarantine has to be weighed against this?
- DanBC 6y ago
  We have pretty good ideas of what normal death rates are like, and we see huge numbers of excess mortality. > that covid barely registers as a blip? What figures are you looking at for all cause mortality please?
  - qeternity 6y ago
    This year, some 60m people will die of non-covid causes. Let's double the current 500k death toll AND presume that none of those fatalities would have occurred anyway. With covid: 61m deaths...out of 7b people.

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down, but speeding up?

jakeogh 6y ago

These numbers would be much more useful if they were in pairs; (#people, #avg_years_lost). https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths-15-times-higher/story?id=16646281 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths... "Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Both pale in comparison to the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide."

crooked-v 6y ago
Sure... and then consider that, unlike swine flu or seasonal flu, COVID-19 has already killed hundreds of thousands of people even with near-total lockdowns to the point of dystopic absurdity in many countries†, has done so over the course of only a few months, and due to lackluster government response in some countries is still increasing exponentially in some places. † See China's brief use of 'only specific designated people per apartment building are allowed to leave the building for specific designated shopping trips, under the threat of military force' policies at the worst of the peak in its cities.
- anoncake 6y ago
  You can't deduce the gravity of a threat from the state's response to it. Just consider the ~0 killed by terrorism each year in western countries vs the security theater at airports.
  - Touche 6y ago
    Terrorism isn't an infectious disease.
    - anoncake 6y ago
      Your point?
      - Touche 6y ago
        That your analogy doesn't hold. We do know that infectious diseases with a median R0 of 5.7 will spread exponentially, as was the case with covid-19 in the January-March timeframe. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article
        anoncake 6y ago
        And that means that you can deduce something about the danger of something from the reaction to it because...?
hexpwn 6y ago
500.000 and counting WITH 'excessive' quarantine measures.
Touche 6y ago
So covid-19 got to 500k, the high end of those other diseases, in 1/3rd the time and despite extreme measures to contain.
grey-area 6y ago
The final total for deaths due to Coronavirus is likely to be in the millions globally now, as it is spreading out of control and most countries have given up on lockdowns. Had it occurred in the conditions of 1918, it's likely millions would be dead already, but luckily we haven't just come out of a world war and healthcare is more advanced. The one bright spot in this otherwise gloomy picture is that we don't fully understand immunity - NYC for example is seeing very low cases, despite being surrounded by plenty of infection in surrounding states and no travel lockdown - that seems to indicate heavily infected areas might escape a second wave, perhaps due to T-Cell immunity and a much higher infection rate than antibody tests would indicate. It's hard to explain the massive and continued drop in NYC otherwise after very high infection/death rates. https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/hdxwf5/intrafamilial_exposure_to_sarscov2_induces/ https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/hdxwf5/intrafamili...
DanBC 6y ago
You're counting covid-19 and flu death differently. For covid-19 you're using numbers of people who were confirmed with a test to have had covid; for flu you're looking at complex statistical modelling.
DanBC 6y ago
So far the best data we have shows that for people in their 60s covid-19 is killing them about ten years early. See eg this from Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-most-covid-19-victims-have-died-soon-without-the-virus https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/05/02/would-mo... https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_720672_en.html https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_720672_en.html > “As most people dying with COVID-19 are older with underlying chronic conditions, some have speculated that the impact of the condition may have been overstated, and that the actual number of years of life lost as a result of COVID-19 are relatively low,” said Dr McAllister. > “This new analysis found that death from COVID-19 results in over 10 years of life lost per person, even after taking account of the typical number and type of chronic conditions found in people dying of COVID-19. Among people dying of COVID-19, the number of years of life lost PER PERSON appear similar to diseases such as coronary heart disease. Information such as this is important to ensure governments and the public do not wrongly underestimate the effects of COVID-19 on individuals,” he added. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75 > Results: Using the standard WHO life tables, YLL per COVID-19 death was 14 for men and 12 for women. After adjustment for number and type of LTCs, the mean YLL was slightly lower, but remained high (13 and 11 years for men and women, respectively). The number and type of LTCs led to wide variability in the estimated YLL at a given age (e.g. at ≥80 years, YLL was >10 years for people with 0 LTCs, and <3 years for people with ≥6). > Conclusions: Deaths from COVID-19 represent a substantial burden in terms of per-person YLL, more than a decade, even after adjusting for the typical number and type of LTCs found in people dying of COVID-19. The extent of multimorbidity heavily influences the estimated YLL at a given age. More comprehensive and standardised collection of data on LTCs is needed to better understand and quantify the global burden of COVID-19 and to guide policy-making and interventions.
- sershe 6y ago
  So what this says, basically, that if comparing to the deaths and other effects from lockdowns on general population, given its age, covid deaths are to be divided by 5 or so, before even adjusting for age (I'd assume most would rather lose their 80ies than their 30ies). Then you can consider even trivial DALY adjustments for e.g. starvation (at some point, it was expected to affect 130 million extra people, by some relevant UN body), unemployment, lack of "non essential" medical care (see estimates for excess cancer deaths from the last financial crisis due to lack of care), etc., and multiply by numbers affected.

zaroth 6y ago

What is speeding up, exactly? Our ability to detect marginal cases, certainly. Not the death rate.

qeternity 6y ago

Do you realize how many of those people would have perished this year anyway? Do you realize how many hundreds of millions of people die every year and that covid barely registers as a blip? Do you realize the enormous human cost of quarantine has to be weighed against this?

DanBC 6y ago
We have pretty good ideas of what normal death rates are like, and we see huge numbers of excess mortality. > that covid barely registers as a blip? What figures are you looking at for all cause mortality please?
- qeternity 6y ago
  This year, some 60m people will die of non-covid causes. Let's double the current 500k death toll AND presume that none of those fatalities would have occurred anyway. With covid: 61m deaths...out of 7b people.