4 ms·

Less than 2% mortality for those under 65 years of age in developed countries. I think we should have only quarantined the elderly.

rogerkirkness 6y ago
The CFR is under 2%, the IFR is way less than this for people under 67 years old who don't have other conditions.
- rurban 6y ago
  A good ballpark number is the IFR being a tenth of the CFR. And for under 65 divide by hundred.
NotSammyHagar 6y ago
Let's separate the mortality rate from the actual impacts, which are multiple. The hospitals in multiple places are overwhelmed for months with cv19 cases. The mortality doesn't matter when NYC, much of Italy and Spain, and now Texas and Florida hospitals are overfull with patients being treated for cv19, and other patients are hurt because they can't be treated or are afraid to go. There is excess deaths (ie more people dying than would otherwise, more than a typical flu year). In the us we went through a long period of shutdown and we still ended up with this happening in several places. If we only quarantined the elderly, we'd still have this happening, but it would have been much much worse. Even if the death rate ends up being low, like 2%, we'll still kill a lot of people through hospitalization overload. That's why we need to social distance and wear masks - we don't need to wear masks only if the death rate is > 2%. It's to decrease the whole impact. Plus when this article was written it was back in the magical thinking period that somehow in the summer the incidence would go to almost 0. We now see that it's still very infectious and will be ruining people's lives for a long time.
- tripletao 6y ago
  The IFR is far below 2% for young people--a recent meta-analysis[1] got 0.7% over all ages. That study didn't break it down by age, but an older one that did[2] (and got a similar IFR over all ages) got 0.14% for <60 years old, mostly from the older end of that. There's moderate evidence for seasonality, from studies comparing countries with different climates and trying to control for other factors, trying to regress against actual weather over weeks, etc. That's empirically not enough to bring R < 1 in the summer in the USA in combination with whatever we've been doing, but a big effect might still be there--we might just have relaxed the social distancing by enough to more than offset. If that's the case, then we're potentially in for a terrible fall and winter (and places that have built up some degree of herd immunity--whether quasi-intentionally like Sweden or accidentally like NYC--could end up better off in the end). As to excess deaths: As far as I understand, most of those actually observed are probably unconfirmed coronavirus deaths, rather than unrelated deaths due to an overrun medical system or people afraid to seek care. I've seen speculation that the latter may occur, but no strong evidence (since even NYC barely occupied the Navy hospital ship or other temporary facilities, and since no excess deaths have been seen in areas with the lockdowns that would discourage people from seeking care but without big coronavirus prevalence). To be clear, I'm strongly pro-mask, and pro-social-distancing. (I do think stuff like factory and school closures comes at an unacceptable social cost for the benefit to public health, though that's been reversed most places.) I just want to make the argument with the right facts. 1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v4.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v... 2. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
Zenst 6y ago
The driving factors for lockdown was driven by the need to manage hospital resources, and had they not had a lockdown, many who would've needed hospital admission would of not got that and the mortality rate would of escalated much more with people who would of survived with intervention being cut off from that support as it was saturated. Once you get to that stage, people lose hope, panic, riot and it would of been far worse IMHO. FWIW I worked on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project for the COVID project, so seen lots of data and projections.
rsynnott 6y ago
Totally cutting off everyone over 65 from contact with everyone under 65, for months, is impractical. The UK briefly considered this before backing rapidly away. And, er, 2% isn’t nothing.

rogerkirkness 6y ago

The CFR is under 2%, the IFR is way less than this for people under 67 years old who don't have other conditions.

rurban 6y ago
A good ballpark number is the IFR being a tenth of the CFR. And for under 65 divide by hundred.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago

Let's separate the mortality rate from the actual impacts, which are multiple. The hospitals in multiple places are overwhelmed for months with cv19 cases. The mortality doesn't matter when NYC, much of Italy and Spain, and now Texas and Florida hospitals are overfull with patients being treated for cv19, and other patients are hurt because they can't be treated or are afraid to go. There is excess deaths (ie more people dying than would otherwise, more than a typical flu year). In the us we went through a long period of shutdown and we still ended up with this happening in several places. If we only quarantined the elderly, we'd still have this happening, but it would have been much much worse. Even if the death rate ends up being low, like 2%, we'll still kill a lot of people through hospitalization overload. That's why we need to social distance and wear masks - we don't need to wear masks only if the death rate is > 2%. It's to decrease the whole impact. Plus when this article was written it was back in the magical thinking period that somehow in the summer the incidence would go to almost 0. We now see that it's still very infectious and will be ruining people's lives for a long time.

tripletao 6y ago
The IFR is far below 2% for young people--a recent meta-analysis[1] got 0.7% over all ages. That study didn't break it down by age, but an older one that did[2] (and got a similar IFR over all ages) got 0.14% for <60 years old, mostly from the older end of that. There's moderate evidence for seasonality, from studies comparing countries with different climates and trying to control for other factors, trying to regress against actual weather over weeks, etc. That's empirically not enough to bring R < 1 in the summer in the USA in combination with whatever we've been doing, but a big effect might still be there--we might just have relaxed the social distancing by enough to more than offset. If that's the case, then we're potentially in for a terrible fall and winter (and places that have built up some degree of herd immunity--whether quasi-intentionally like Sweden or accidentally like NYC--could end up better off in the end). As to excess deaths: As far as I understand, most of those actually observed are probably unconfirmed coronavirus deaths, rather than unrelated deaths due to an overrun medical system or people afraid to seek care. I've seen speculation that the latter may occur, but no strong evidence (since even NYC barely occupied the Navy hospital ship or other temporary facilities, and since no excess deaths have been seen in areas with the lockdowns that would discourage people from seeking care but without big coronavirus prevalence). To be clear, I'm strongly pro-mask, and pro-social-distancing. (I do think stuff like factory and school closures comes at an unacceptable social cost for the benefit to public health, though that's been reversed most places.) I just want to make the argument with the right facts. 1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v4.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v... 2. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

Zenst 6y ago

The driving factors for lockdown was driven by the need to manage hospital resources, and had they not had a lockdown, many who would've needed hospital admission would of not got that and the mortality rate would of escalated much more with people who would of survived with intervention being cut off from that support as it was saturated. Once you get to that stage, people lose hope, panic, riot and it would of been far worse IMHO. FWIW I worked on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project for the COVID project, so seen lots of data and projections.

rsynnott 6y ago

Totally cutting off everyone over 65 from contact with everyone under 65, for months, is impractical. The UK briefly considered this before backing rapidly away. And, er, 2% isn’t nothing.