5 ms·

The chance of death is not 1%. Here are a couple of reviews: https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/ https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/

The chance of death is not 1%. Here are a couple of reviews: https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/ https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v3 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v... Across 32 different locations, the median infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.24%). Most studies were done in pandemic epicenters with high death tolls. But recall that these IFRs are calculated with a very questionable definition of COVID death (see my other comment). Real IFRs are much lower when you take into account that many people who have "died of COVID" have in reality died of something else, even perhaps the supposedly no longer existent condition of old age. This is how you can have countries that have hundreds of thousands of cases yet totally flat excess death charts. I suspect these kind of inflated figures are partly what's driving people's over-reactions (look at how my post was voted). And there's some evidence for this. Today there was a poll released with truly shocking results. page 12 here: https://www.kekstcnc.com/media/2793/kekstcnc_research_covid-19_opinion_tracker_wave-4.pdf https://www.kekstcnc.com/media/2793/kekstcnc_research_covid-... In polls Brits are estimating that 7% of the population has died of COVID. In other words they think it's 100x more deadly than current government stats claim, and those stats are themselves currently suspended due to rampant over-counting. But Americans are even further out. They believe the death rate is 225x higher than it really is. They also believe the virus is 20x more prevalent than in reality. Top marks go to Germans who believe 300x more people have died of COVID than is really true.

Someone 6y ago
I wouldn’t know how to test for it (maybe by checking for a bimodal distribution in answers, with a fairly narrow ‘hump’ near the correct number?), but I think that more shows many people are awfully bad at this kind of math, in particular probabilities.
mindslight 6y ago
Even accepting your figure of a 1 in 400 chance, it is still foolish to needlessly take on that risk. You can't complain about the innumeracy of the population when they overestimate, while taking advantage of 0.24% seeming like some infinitesimally small number for the same reason. Ultimately you're getting downvoted because you're pushing politically-filtered numbers with copious hand waving. That whitepaper seems tailor made for business owners pushing their employees back into the office. These downplaying narratives are responsible for our current approach of doing nothing but watching the economy crumble, and it's not surprising that most people have grown tired of them. Most developed countries have gotten this under control. The US has chosen not to. Until the virus is contained, the economy we knew is dead in the water. This is only hard to understand if you deny that there is any problem whatsoever, as most of our "leadership" has been doing from day one.
- thu2111 6y ago
  What risk, exactly? The risk of going outside, going on holiday, spending time with other people? If the risk is the same or lower than flu, which these studies say it is, then we should act as we do in flu years, which is every year, i.e. we shouldn't be changing anything. you're pushing politically-filtered numbers with copious hand waving No, I'm providing hard data in the face of people who have been misled into thinking the virus is more dangerous than it really is. That isn't "copious hand waving". Perhaps though, you wish it was? The virus became long ago a deeply ideological matter for the left, some of whom seem to almost hope it's very deadly. But my points here aren't ideological, they're factual. Most developed countries have gotten this under control. The US has chosen not to. I'm not American but this strange "we Americans uniquely suck" narrative just seems silly. In the past few days the UK decided everyone returning from Spain must go into 14 day quarantine where they aren't allowed out of their house for any reason, not even to buy food, and this must be done even if they are healthy. It was done without any warning and there will be no wage compensation for those who can't work because they're quarantined. Then almost immediately after they decided that actually 14 days wasn't necessary after all (science!!), and dropped it to "only" 10 days. The justification for this was a supposed "surge" in Spanish cases. Absolute numbers are of course still tiny, but a quick check of the data shows that the surge started at exactly the same time that test volumes started ramping up, and the proportion of tests coming back positive has hardly changed. There are similar stories of self-inflicted wounds from nearly every country except, it seems, Sweden and bizarrely, Belarus. And that was my original point. COVID-19 is an entirely artificial disaster, made by the absurd and illogical reactions of people. It's not a natural biological disaster. The bad effects are all coming from the decisions people are making.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    > I'm providing hard data Your "hard data" has been drawn from the pool of all studies using a political filter, meaning it has sampling bias and is no longer hard data. I am guessing that is the lowest IFR number you can find, therefore its reasonable to assume that the true one is decently higher. Here is an example of your hand waving: > Real IFRs are much lower when you take into account that many people who have "died of COVID" have in reality died of something else, even perhaps the supposedly no longer existent condition of old age. If one is not thinking critically, this can sound reasonable. But rather this is a huge back door because nobody dies "of COVID" - it's always going to be some other medical condition caused by COVID. In the short time frame involved, there aren't going to be too many people who test positive for COVID then die of unrelated causes. On the longer term, we can simply look at excess deaths. > I'm not American but this strange "we Americans uniquely suck" narrative just seems silly. For one, the fact that Americans haven't been able to do basic things like wear N95 masks starting in February. For two, the death toll. The differences between countries are easily explained with culture. Japan had no formal shutdown but yet stayed in control because Japanese citizens did the right thing anyway. Many Americans seem hell bent on doing the exact opposite, in some simulation of rebelling. In general, it seems like you're skating as close as possible to calling the topic a hoax, without directly doing so.

Someone 6y ago

I wouldn’t know how to test for it (maybe by checking for a bimodal distribution in answers, with a fairly narrow ‘hump’ near the correct number?), but I think that more shows many people are awfully bad at this kind of math, in particular probabilities.

mindslight 6y ago

Even accepting your figure of a 1 in 400 chance, it is still foolish to needlessly take on that risk. You can't complain about the innumeracy of the population when they overestimate, while taking advantage of 0.24% seeming like some infinitesimally small number for the same reason. Ultimately you're getting downvoted because you're pushing politically-filtered numbers with copious hand waving. That whitepaper seems tailor made for business owners pushing their employees back into the office. These downplaying narratives are responsible for our current approach of doing nothing but watching the economy crumble, and it's not surprising that most people have grown tired of them. Most developed countries have gotten this under control. The US has chosen not to. Until the virus is contained, the economy we knew is dead in the water. This is only hard to understand if you deny that there is any problem whatsoever, as most of our "leadership" has been doing from day one.

thu2111 6y ago
What risk, exactly? The risk of going outside, going on holiday, spending time with other people? If the risk is the same or lower than flu, which these studies say it is, then we should act as we do in flu years, which is every year, i.e. we shouldn't be changing anything. you're pushing politically-filtered numbers with copious hand waving No, I'm providing hard data in the face of people who have been misled into thinking the virus is more dangerous than it really is. That isn't "copious hand waving". Perhaps though, you wish it was? The virus became long ago a deeply ideological matter for the left, some of whom seem to almost hope it's very deadly. But my points here aren't ideological, they're factual. Most developed countries have gotten this under control. The US has chosen not to. I'm not American but this strange "we Americans uniquely suck" narrative just seems silly. In the past few days the UK decided everyone returning from Spain must go into 14 day quarantine where they aren't allowed out of their house for any reason, not even to buy food, and this must be done even if they are healthy. It was done without any warning and there will be no wage compensation for those who can't work because they're quarantined. Then almost immediately after they decided that actually 14 days wasn't necessary after all (science!!), and dropped it to "only" 10 days. The justification for this was a supposed "surge" in Spanish cases. Absolute numbers are of course still tiny, but a quick check of the data shows that the surge started at exactly the same time that test volumes started ramping up, and the proportion of tests coming back positive has hardly changed. There are similar stories of self-inflicted wounds from nearly every country except, it seems, Sweden and bizarrely, Belarus. And that was my original point. COVID-19 is an entirely artificial disaster, made by the absurd and illogical reactions of people. It's not a natural biological disaster. The bad effects are all coming from the decisions people are making.
- mindslight 6y ago
  > I'm providing hard data Your "hard data" has been drawn from the pool of all studies using a political filter, meaning it has sampling bias and is no longer hard data. I am guessing that is the lowest IFR number you can find, therefore its reasonable to assume that the true one is decently higher. Here is an example of your hand waving: > Real IFRs are much lower when you take into account that many people who have "died of COVID" have in reality died of something else, even perhaps the supposedly no longer existent condition of old age. If one is not thinking critically, this can sound reasonable. But rather this is a huge back door because nobody dies "of COVID" - it's always going to be some other medical condition caused by COVID. In the short time frame involved, there aren't going to be too many people who test positive for COVID then die of unrelated causes. On the longer term, we can simply look at excess deaths. > I'm not American but this strange "we Americans uniquely suck" narrative just seems silly. For one, the fact that Americans haven't been able to do basic things like wear N95 masks starting in February. For two, the death toll. The differences between countries are easily explained with culture. Japan had no formal shutdown but yet stayed in control because Japanese citizens did the right thing anyway. Many Americans seem hell bent on doing the exact opposite, in some simulation of rebelling. In general, it seems like you're skating as close as possible to calling the topic a hoax, without directly doing so.