4 ms·

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

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...

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...