3 ms·

Yes. It is raw data. I believe Massachusetts comes as close to capturing 100% of infections as anyone at this point, although that wasn't always the case. Ther

Yes. It is raw data. I believe Massachusetts comes as close to capturing 100% of infections as anyone at this point, although that wasn't always the case. There is a lot of test infrastructure. CFR can overestimate or underestimate IFR. In most past pandemics, CFR significantly UNDERestimated IFR during the pandemic, because the raw numbers include a lot of people who are sick, but haven't died YET. There is a tendency to take CFR, apply very liberal corrections, sometimes multiple times, and get artificially low IFR numbers. Those aren't really plausible, even looking at scenarios where we could catalog all cases (e.g. the cruises had an IFR just over 2%, with state-of-the-art medical). My general impression, looking at data, is that the IFR was around 3-ish percent early on, and got better, potentially due to mutations making the virus less fatal, lower initial viral loads due to precautions, and/or better treatment.

anoncake 6y ago
> I believe Massachusetts comes as close to capturing 100% of infections as anyone at this point, although that wasn't always the case. So it does not capture 100%. > CFR can overestimate or underestimate IFR. Incorrect. CFR cannot be higher than IFR. The number of deaths per confirmed infection obviously isn't higher than the number of deaths per infection (confirmed or unconfirmed). I'll continue to believe epidemiologists who actually have a clue what they are doing over your "general impression".
- woofie11 6y ago
  The arrogance. If you want, an exert from an epidemiology text: "A CFR can only be considered final when all the cases have been resolved (either died or recovered). The preliminary CFR, for example, during an outbreak with a high daily increase and long resolution time would be substantially lower than the final CFR." The cited numbers are preliminary CFR, not final CFR. The key question is final IFR. Final IFR can be lower or higher than preliminary CFR. I'm done here.
  - jsight 6y ago
    At least in the US, we are no longer in a period that qualifies as an "outbreak with a high daily increase". That implies a high increase relative to the current case count, which really isn't the case any more once you have a population case rate of 5%. I would be cautious about estimating countries that are only now having their first major outbreak (for example Czechia) for exactly the reason that you cite, but not every country is in that state. Put another way, we are no longer living with preliminary data in much of the world.
    - woofie11 6y ago
      Let's toss some real numbers here. * Last death of Diamond Princess occurred after more than 2 months. * Over the past two months, the number of known cases in the US roughly doubled from 8 million to 16 million. This means there are a lot of people who haven't died yet, and dividing deaths by cases is an underestimate of CFR by up to a factor of 2. That doesn't mean we don't have the data. We could e.g. take the infections from June and look at how many of those resulted in death as a final CFR estimate. However, the number I gave (deaths over cases) didn't do that. It's a preliminary CFR without that sort of correction, and a correction to final IFR can go up (people who haven't died yet) or down (unidentified cases). anoncake argued this was an overestimate by definition, and anyone who said otherwise didn't have a clue. anoncake was wrong.

anoncake 6y ago

> I believe Massachusetts comes as close to capturing 100% of infections as anyone at this point, although that wasn't always the case. So it does not capture 100%. > CFR can overestimate or underestimate IFR. Incorrect. CFR cannot be higher than IFR. The number of deaths per confirmed infection obviously isn't higher than the number of deaths per infection (confirmed or unconfirmed). I'll continue to believe epidemiologists who actually have a clue what they are doing over your "general impression".

woofie11 6y ago
The arrogance. If you want, an exert from an epidemiology text: "A CFR can only be considered final when all the cases have been resolved (either died or recovered). The preliminary CFR, for example, during an outbreak with a high daily increase and long resolution time would be substantially lower than the final CFR." The cited numbers are preliminary CFR, not final CFR. The key question is final IFR. Final IFR can be lower or higher than preliminary CFR. I'm done here.
- jsight 6y ago
  At least in the US, we are no longer in a period that qualifies as an "outbreak with a high daily increase". That implies a high increase relative to the current case count, which really isn't the case any more once you have a population case rate of 5%. I would be cautious about estimating countries that are only now having their first major outbreak (for example Czechia) for exactly the reason that you cite, but not every country is in that state. Put another way, we are no longer living with preliminary data in much of the world.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    Let's toss some real numbers here. * Last death of Diamond Princess occurred after more than 2 months. * Over the past two months, the number of known cases in the US roughly doubled from 8 million to 16 million. This means there are a lot of people who haven't died yet, and dividing deaths by cases is an underestimate of CFR by up to a factor of 2. That doesn't mean we don't have the data. We could e.g. take the infections from June and look at how many of those resulted in death as a final CFR estimate. However, the number I gave (deaths over cases) didn't do that. It's a preliminary CFR without that sort of correction, and a correction to final IFR can go up (people who haven't died yet) or down (unidentified cases). anoncake argued this was an overestimate by definition, and anyone who said otherwise didn't have a clue. anoncake was wrong.