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Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

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Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#141

Post by mns »

nik_s wrote: post #57

The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/(infected + dead)) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. In a disease that is exponentially growing, a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead)). Based on the available data [1], we are closer to 7.8% than 2% mortality, which is closer to the final mortality rate of…

I do have one question and I'm asking this seriously, not to start an argument or to attack someone. I also saw this here in a lot of the posts about covid-19. We have numbers, but every time people tend to ignore them or say we should not trust the numbers, take them with a grain of salt, "I think this is way worse, it's going to get way worse" and so on. It's like there is this thirst for disaster or some global drama everywhere, and this is not something that I would expect from Hackernews. If the numbers don't align with our hopes or fears, we should take them with a grain of salt and trust the gut feeling of whoever comments. It's quite weird to see that when it comes to this, people seem to think that it's some sort of conspiracy, China is hiding numbers, now EU is not doing things properly, as I see it everywhere "my country can't have 0 cases, I know that our airport is a big hub and it can't be, we will be doomed as we probably have hundred of cases instead of none and our government is not doing anything".

I'm not saying that this virus is not a threat and I worry for my parents as this could be a big issue for their condition, but we've gone down the rabbit hole with the hysteria in the press and online and it's scary to see this need for a global pandemic and the urge to constantly feed the panic monster.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#142

Post by scarmig »

Tenoke wrote: post #69
nik_s wrote: post #57

The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/(infected + dead)) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. In a disease that is exponentially growing, a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead)). Based on the available data [1], we are closer to 7.8% than 2% mortality, which is closer to the final mortality rate of…

>The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/infected) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. On the other hand, there are also a lot of infected who only have a mild version and are never checked and recorded, which swings it in the other direction. Edit: Seems like the parent post later edited their post to mention the above.

In the case of the Diamond Princess, all infections, mild to severe, have been identified. Out of ~800 infected, 4 have died, which suggests that with the best case scenario the mortality rate is 0.5%.

This also should be read with the context that cruise ship passengers tend to be older.

Also, that number will climb a bit.

The biggest risk isn't the bare mortality rate when properly treated, but the actual mortality rate when the healthcare system is loaded to capacity and there are additional patients to handle. And since the worst patients end up in respirators for a week or more... Well, it makes the problem of load balancing keepalives very literal.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#143

Post by swader999 »

joosters wrote: post #105
swader999 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the who presentation, Dr Bruce Aylward mentioned this. I'll try to dig up the exact spot in the clip for you. At 1:07:44 this is discussed in depth: https://youtu.be/-o0q1XMRKYM

Thanks for the link! He says that there have been door to door testing of temperatures, and I'd nitpick by saying that's not quite the same thing as testing everyone for the virus, but it is better coverage than I had realised.

Yeah he's rolling with what he's got. The antibody studies that come at the tail of these things would be definitive.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#144

Post by AndrewThrowaway »

bart_spoon wrote: post #119
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would explain kids being so immune? ~1000 confined cases under 19 year old while you have 10 000 50-59 year olds?

This is the aspect of the disease that is so interesting to me. With many diseases, like the flu, the most at risk are the elderly and the very young. But barely 1% of infections in China are children younger than 10, and 0 deaths.

Can it be that smoking plays big part in this? As this also explains gender statistics.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#145

Post by swader999 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #113
joosters wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link! He says that there have been door to door testing of temperatures, and I'd nitpick by saying that's not quite the same thing as testing everyone for the virus, but it is better coverage than I had realised.

Surprised! I worry about unintended consequences. During an epidemic, officials visit every home! Potentially spreading the virus unintentionally thru healthcare personnel. Don't know if I'd open the door to somebody who admits having visited thousands of people before getting to me...

I suspect this played out on the diamond princess.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#146

Post by bosswipe »

macinjosh wrote: post #103
drclau wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s something off about Iran. According to Wikipedia [0], Spanish Flu killed a much higher percentage in Iran too, in comparison with the rest of the world: “The World Health Organization estimates that 2–3% of those who were infected died (case-fatality ratio). [...] In Iran, the mortality was very high: according to an estimate, between 902,400 and 2,431,000, or 8% to 22% of the total population died.” — source…

> There’s something off about Iran. Iran is a theocratic authoritarian regime under extreme international sanctions. Might have something to do with that. Iran also only has 0.2 hospital beds per 1k people.

A bit off topic but Iran is mostly only under American and Israeli sanctions at this point after Trump unilaterally pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. The rest of the world can trade with Iran though many companies are still unwilling due to the American pressure.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#147

Post by ggreer »

dannyw wrote: post #2

How much can we trust the data coming out of China?

Let's look at China's flu death stats to get an idea of how honest the government tends to be. From a 2018 article in a CCP-owned newspaper[1]:

> The total number of flu deaths last year was 144, compared with 56 in 2016 and 41 in 2017.

A recent article in The Global Times (a tabloid owned by the CCP's official newspaper) gives similar figures.[2]

So China lies about flu deaths by 2-3 orders of magnitude. Who knows how much they're juking the stats on covid-19 deaths.

1. https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201902/22/WS5c6f11daa3106c65...

2. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177725.shtml

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#148

Post by wcoenen »

nik_s wrote: post #57

The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/(infected + dead)) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. In a disease that is exponentially growing, a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead)). Based on the available data [1], we are closer to 7.8% than 2% mortality, which is closer to the final mortality rate of…

> a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead))

This formula is still fundamentally wrong because it assumes that the time between infection and death is the same as the time between infection and recovery. I don't see why that would be true.

Re: Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths

#149

Post by swader999 »

contravariant wrote: post #137
nik_s wrote: post #57

The general issue with this measure of mortality (dead/(infected + dead)) is that you're assuming that the infected won't die. In a disease that is exponentially growing, a better approximation of evaluating your survival chances is to look at the death to recovery rate (dead / (recovered + dead)). Based on the available data [1], we are closer to 7.8% than 2% mortality, which is closer to the final mortality rate of…

Your formula has the opposite problem, by looking at cases that have a known outcome you are biasing results towards cases that end quickly (in particular cases that end in death). For a proper estimate we should look at cases where the infection is known to have begun e.g. a month ago. Then the mortality rate should be somewhere between dead/infected and dead/(dead + recovered).

There's also the possibility of reinfection and false negatives. The best data we have is not even close to perfect.
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