Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by bsaul » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

arcticfox wrote: post #216

cm2187 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, there is a doomer mentality that applies to everything (climate change, geopolitical tensions, etc) and which the media are more than happy to fuel to sell paper and commercials.

While I agree with the overall sentiment, in the context of a novel pandemic, downplaying the risks is far worse than overplaying them IMO.

The problem with that reasonning is that it applies to pretty much every "risk", without consideration of quality. What you're saying is "better safe than sorry".

I'm sure you wouldn't suggest putting everybody systematically in quarantine for a flu epidemic, every year, makes a lot of sense. Yet the death rates for influenza is much higher than coronavirus atm..

edit: much lower -> much higher

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

#242

Post by ghostpepper » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

n0rbwah wrote: post #186

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…

The Spanish Flu was a hundred years ago, I highly doubt that what happened then in Iran has much relations to what's happening now. What's happening now has more to do with their theocratic regime that didn't take the threat seriously and doesn't care much about their people.

Wouldn't that require two unrelated explanations for higher viral-outbreak mortality rates? Isn't the explanation that doesn't require a coincidence more plausible?

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

#243

Post by companyhen » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

eecc wrote: post #35

People, if you haven’t yet go get the seasonal flu vaccine. Reduces burden on strained ops and your risk of getting double tapped

Are you saying the flu vaccine can help prevent covid-19? Just trying to clarify. I'm traveling to Asia in 3 weeks from US and haven't gotten the flu shot the past year. I got it in 2017 and got sick, 2018 and got sick, but last year I decided not to and didn't get sick at all. Maybe just a coincidence though.

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

#244

Post by remarkEon » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #201

mns wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dr…

My reasoning for thinking this is worthy of panic: I recently moved to China. The PRC has good numbers (internally) and knows more about COVID-19's severity and risk profile than anyone else. And, on the ground, the PRC is putting the entire country on what amounts to wartime footing (in a way that's unimaginable to most HN readers), to the point that it's willing to sacrifice a quarter or more worth of economic prod…

I agree with this sentiment, to a point. Economic growth is, at least to Western eyes, the main point of derived legitimacy for PRC. If the calculation is that blowing containment of the virus was a worse threat to that than 2 quarters of negative growth then, yeah, this is a big deal. I think I disagree a little with Western countries' governments not being able to enact policies for containment. What I'm more concerned about is people who live in Western countries actually following them, and the government failing to force compliance.

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

#245

Post by zaroth » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #230

scarmig wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As you said cruise ships skew much older than the general population, so this tells us very little about the actual mortality rate. All 4 people who died were in their 80s.

IMO it’s one of the best data points we have. As I understand it, everyone on the ship was exposed, everyone was tested, we know exactly how many people became infected, and under close to ideal treatment conditions, there have been (so far) 4 fatalities of elderly patients.

Yes, this doesn’t tell you what happens with less than ideal care (higher fatality rates), or under different populations (lower fatality rates) but it’s a world of difference from the 10% fatality rates being tossed around elsewhere in this thread.

4/800 = 0.5%. And if you accept the very reasonable likelihood that actually everyone on the ship was exposed, 4/3700 = 0.1%.

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

#246

Post by bluGill » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #182

mns wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dr…

I think being skeptical of numbers from China is reasonable. Historically speaking even inside China it is a pretty well known quantity (even openly spoken of in China) that local governments are hesitant to give bad news to the central government until it is too late and so on. The result usually is the central government is behind the ball dealing in broad (sometimes less than useful) strokes until things are resol…

I think China has reached a tipping point in this one though and local governments are giving the information they have to the central government. When this started hiding things was a reasonable policy for the local governments, but now that this has so much international attention I think it is clear to everybody in local governments that being caught hiding anything is worse than whatever good could come out of the best case of hiding something.

Do not mistake the above for local governments having good information to give. I'm also not sure if China is giving everything out either publicly or internationally.

Of course I'm just an outside observer with no inside knowledge making what I think are reasonable guesses.

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

#247

Post by Fnoord » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

Zero infants or children between 0-9 have died. The article mentions:

> In general, relatively few cases are seen among children.

How come? My expectation would be something akin to an elderly range.

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

#248

Post by Alex3917 » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

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…

Right. It takes 3+ weeks to die from CoVID-19, so if they're looking at people who were diagnosed as late as Feb. 11th then this is going to be a substantial underestimate of fatality. Especially since as awareness of the disease has increased, the time to diagnosis after first symptoms has fallen from 5 - 6 days to 1 - 2 days.

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

#249

Post by wtvanhest » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

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…

5 people have died that were on the princess cruise out of 705 infected. At just over 1/2 a percent, it is more deadly than the flu, but not 2% and certainly not 7.8%

The princess cruise gives us a crucial piece of information which is a fully tested population.

2 things to consider:

1) population is like older due to being a princess cruise which would increase death rate.

2) not everyone is cleared yet, so more deaths could come

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

#250

Post by nik_s » Thu, Feb 27, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

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.

Thank you - I came to the same conclusion while still editing my post - I think my edit and your post coincided. I clarified this edit in my original post.