2 ms·

The best current estimate of the IFR of Covid is something like 0.5% with good medical care, or much higher without. If populations take no action whatsoever to

The best current estimate of the IFR of Covid is something like 0.5% with good medical care, or much higher without. If populations take no action whatsoever to curb spread, somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of people will likely be infected. If we multiply that by the population of the world, we get something on the order of 15–50 million people dead. Not as bad as the 1918 flu, but worse than any pandemic since, roughly comparable to the entire death toll of AIDS over the past 40 years. Thankfully all around the world people have taken significant steps to slow the virus down, and so hopefully the vaccine will arrive in time to save tens of millions. I am happy to agree with you that humanity could do a whole lot more to prevent deaths from infectious diseases, including tuberculosis.

shadowprofile77 6y ago
Truly, where do you keep pulling the most alarmist numbers you think you can plausibly get away with from? COVID IFR at 0.5% with exceptional treatment? No, none of the wider more recent data backs this up, and please, don't just take my word for it. The CDC's more recent overview results don't at all back up your claim even though they do state that IFR can vary by region due to demographic and other factors. https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html
- jacobolus 6y ago
  First, off the bat: why are you so aggressively hostile and abusive? Your link estimates the Covid IFR in the USA to be about 0.6%, compared to e.g. 0.4% for China where the population skews younger or 0.8–1.1% for several European countries and Japan where the population skews older. https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/images/november2020/1124_FIG3.png https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/images/november2020/1124... I’m somewhat suspicious about the numbers for lower-income countries though. In Mexico for example Covid deaths have been grossly undercounted. These kind of high-level estimates are hard to do reliably when they are built on poor-quality low-level data. I don’t know why you are pretending that “good medical care” (by which I mean, the average in a typical developed country with a well funded medical system that has not yet been completely overwhelmed; as compared to the “poor” level of care available in many developing countries or in places where hospitals are collapsing) is equivalent to “exceptional treatment”. I don’t know what you mean by “exceptional treatment”, but your link says nothing about it. There have been a large number of estimates of IFR, and they consistently range from about 0.4% to about 1.5%, mostly toward the middle of that range. Judging by the best current science, the 0.5% number I used is probably a slight underestimate, but it is at at any rate in the right ballpark. If you e.g. guess the actual number of deaths in absence of any countermeasures would be more like 10–20 million instead of the range I gave of 15–50 million, that seems plausible enough (though I stand by my estimate). It’s a counterfactual in any case, since in practice extreme countermeasures were adopted in many parts of the world.

shadowprofile77 6y ago

Truly, where do you keep pulling the most alarmist numbers you think you can plausibly get away with from? COVID IFR at 0.5% with exceptional treatment? No, none of the wider more recent data backs this up, and please, don't just take my word for it. The CDC's more recent overview results don't at all back up your claim even though they do state that IFR can vary by region due to demographic and other factors. https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html

jacobolus 6y ago
First, off the bat: why are you so aggressively hostile and abusive? Your link estimates the Covid IFR in the USA to be about 0.6%, compared to e.g. 0.4% for China where the population skews younger or 0.8–1.1% for several European countries and Japan where the population skews older. https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/images/november2020/1124_FIG3.png https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/images/november2020/1124... I’m somewhat suspicious about the numbers for lower-income countries though. In Mexico for example Covid deaths have been grossly undercounted. These kind of high-level estimates are hard to do reliably when they are built on poor-quality low-level data. I don’t know why you are pretending that “good medical care” (by which I mean, the average in a typical developed country with a well funded medical system that has not yet been completely overwhelmed; as compared to the “poor” level of care available in many developing countries or in places where hospitals are collapsing) is equivalent to “exceptional treatment”. I don’t know what you mean by “exceptional treatment”, but your link says nothing about it. There have been a large number of estimates of IFR, and they consistently range from about 0.4% to about 1.5%, mostly toward the middle of that range. Judging by the best current science, the 0.5% number I used is probably a slight underestimate, but it is at at any rate in the right ballpark. If you e.g. guess the actual number of deaths in absence of any countermeasures would be more like 10–20 million instead of the range I gave of 15–50 million, that seems plausible enough (though I stand by my estimate). It’s a counterfactual in any case, since in practice extreme countermeasures were adopted in many parts of the world.