6 ms·

Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

24 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

maxharris 6y ago
I am not surprised by this one bit. I've been looking at these charts daily, and it's a bit silly to need confirmation from a study: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  Agreed, however the media has been singularly focused on new cases as a measure of the pandemic's severity. To me the news here is as much "NPR reports on the falling COVID death rate." Even here they seem insistent that the lower death rate is attributable to "flattening the curve" even though there's almost no correlation at this point.
  - inyourtenement 6y ago
    What are you referring to? The bulk of the article is about hospitals having more experience and standardizing protocols. Then they mention masks and social distancing as possibly reducing the viral load. They never mention "flattening the curve", but one of the last things they mention is keeping hospitals under capacity.
- nikolay 6y ago
  Yes, and it's still at 4%, but, true, it fell down from over 20% in the early days, but the sample is big enough to know that it's not less than 1%.
m0zg 6y ago
Probably because governors are no longer deliberately putting COVID patients into nursing homes. This is why NY and NJ have 3 times (!) the death rate of Italy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  I'm shocked how many people think Cuomo is a good leader when he (along with Murphy) made perhaps the most catastrophic choice of the pandemic so far.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    Most people will believe whatever they read in the newspaper, and newspapers are unanimous in their opinion in this regard. As seniors were suffocating to death in the old folks homes, newspapers were pushing Cuomo as a _presidential candidate_.
    - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
      True. Cuomo is imo as close as you can get to a typical Democrat politician and we’re told that it’s obvious a Democrat president would have handled the pandemic better. The stats of hardest hit states are coincidentally blue states.
      - inyourtenement 6y ago
        By what metric? The top states by total cases per 100k are all red and purple. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k
        blmsjw 6y ago
        Arbitrary stat but ok. Deaths are kinda the most important otherwise we wouldn't be shutdown
        inyourtenement 6y ago
        Arbitrary!? This is nonsense. Are you suggesting that if this illness had all the same characteristics -- long hospital stays, long-lasting damage to the body, highly transmissible -- but didn't kill, then we would not be "shutdown"?
dragonwriter 6y ago
If low-risk groups engaged in more risky behavior and no other factor changed, you'd expect death rates of hospitalized patients to drop because a larger share of the hospitalized would be from groups at lower risk of death if hospitalized with COVID. Also, if hospitals learned more about interventions (like that ventilation wasn't appropriate as early or in as many cases as initially thought), and nothing else changed, same result. Or if at-risk populations became more cautious, and/or less exposed due to policy (like better approaches to nursing homes), same result. So, this is not even a tiny bit surprising. Nor does it indicate any reduced need for control measures.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  The article says the analysis controlled for age. Survival has improved in every age range.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The article says the analysis controlled for age Even if age was the only risk factor (in which case controlling for age would negate the first and third points), the second point would cover that. But age isn't the only risk factor, so all three points are still relevant.
    - legerdemain 6y ago
      I don't think your second point is up for argument. We're not trying to disambiguate whether doctors are getting better at treating COVID or COVID is itself getting easier for doctors to treat. Age is a strong predictor of COVID fatality, either directly or through correlates. In every US county whose stats I've spot-checked, deaths go up with age. It's also one of the best predictors, given that advanced age is much more common in populations than stronger, but more selective factors. Thus, controlling for age and nevertheless observing a reduction in mortality should be taken as an indicator that COVID is becoming comparatively more medically tractable.

24 points by AndrewBissell 6y ago

I am not surprised by this one bit. I've been looking at these charts daily, and it's a bit silly to need confirmation from a study: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

AndrewBissell 6y ago
Agreed, however the media has been singularly focused on new cases as a measure of the pandemic's severity. To me the news here is as much "NPR reports on the falling COVID death rate." Even here they seem insistent that the lower death rate is attributable to "flattening the curve" even though there's almost no correlation at this point.
- inyourtenement 6y ago
  What are you referring to? The bulk of the article is about hospitals having more experience and standardizing protocols. Then they mention masks and social distancing as possibly reducing the viral load. They never mention "flattening the curve", but one of the last things they mention is keeping hospitals under capacity.
nikolay 6y ago
Yes, and it's still at 4%, but, true, it fell down from over 20% in the early days, but the sample is big enough to know that it's not less than 1%.

m0zg 6y ago

Probably because governors are no longer deliberately putting COVID patients into nursing homes. This is why NY and NJ have 3 times (!) the death rate of Italy.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
I'm shocked how many people think Cuomo is a good leader when he (along with Murphy) made perhaps the most catastrophic choice of the pandemic so far.
- m0zg 6y ago
  Most people will believe whatever they read in the newspaper, and newspapers are unanimous in their opinion in this regard. As seniors were suffocating to death in the old folks homes, newspapers were pushing Cuomo as a _presidential candidate_.
  - gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
    True. Cuomo is imo as close as you can get to a typical Democrat politician and we’re told that it’s obvious a Democrat president would have handled the pandemic better. The stats of hardest hit states are coincidentally blue states.
    - inyourtenement 6y ago
      By what metric? The top states by total cases per 100k are all red and purple. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k
      - blmsjw 6y ago
        Arbitrary stat but ok. Deaths are kinda the most important otherwise we wouldn't be shutdown
        inyourtenement 6y ago
        Arbitrary!? This is nonsense. Are you suggesting that if this illness had all the same characteristics -- long hospital stays, long-lasting damage to the body, highly transmissible -- but didn't kill, then we would not be "shutdown"?

dragonwriter 6y ago

If low-risk groups engaged in more risky behavior and no other factor changed, you'd expect death rates of hospitalized patients to drop because a larger share of the hospitalized would be from groups at lower risk of death if hospitalized with COVID. Also, if hospitals learned more about interventions (like that ventilation wasn't appropriate as early or in as many cases as initially thought), and nothing else changed, same result. Or if at-risk populations became more cautious, and/or less exposed due to policy (like better approaches to nursing homes), same result. So, this is not even a tiny bit surprising. Nor does it indicate any reduced need for control measures.

legerdemain 6y ago
The article says the analysis controlled for age. Survival has improved in every age range.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The article says the analysis controlled for age Even if age was the only risk factor (in which case controlling for age would negate the first and third points), the second point would cover that. But age isn't the only risk factor, so all three points are still relevant.
  - legerdemain 6y ago
    I don't think your second point is up for argument. We're not trying to disambiguate whether doctors are getting better at treating COVID or COVID is itself getting easier for doctors to treat. Age is a strong predictor of COVID fatality, either directly or through correlates. In every US county whose stats I've spot-checked, deaths go up with age. It's also one of the best predictors, given that advanced age is much more common in populations than stronger, but more selective factors. Thus, controlling for age and nevertheless observing a reduction in mortality should be taken as an indicator that COVID is becoming comparatively more medically tractable.