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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

#341

Post by twotwotwo »

nik_s wrote: post #164
contravariant wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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 case that end in death). Unless I'm mistaken, that would only be true if cases that end in death are much faster than the cases that end in recovery. I have found it difficult to find detailed statistics on the topic, so I cannot tell you that it's definitely tru…

With many viral respiratory bugs, symptoms appear a few days after infection, peak a few days after that, and then there's a long tail of sniffling and coughing. Deaths happening in the peak and recovery being declared nearer the end of the tail leads to the intuition that maybe deaths could cluster earlier than recoveries. Of course, I don't know how/when recoveries are being tallied right now and don't want to guess.

Bigger picture: lots of factors go into a good estimate, and epidemiologists are not new to mathematical modeling. When back-of-the-envelope math doesn't get the same prediction as the consensus models of what's going on, we shouldn't assume the epidemiologists are wrong.

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

#342

Post by boplicity »

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #95
dredmorbius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And screencapped image: https://imgur.com/a/Ve5gT3O (posted by me)

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

According to today's interview with a NY Times reporter on The Daily podcast, the immunity is explained by the close relationship to the common cold. Children tend to get lots of common colds. Around 1/3rd of common colds are a form of coronavirus, because of this, their immune systems are more prepared for this new coronavirus. Over time, this immunity fades, but it takes many years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/podcasts/the-daily/corona...

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

#343

Post by jimhi »

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…

Did you move to Hubei? I have been in Shanghai through this entire thing and have an extremely hard time believing you saw any corpses ferried out of your apartment complex. 94% of the reported deaths are in Hubei - what city are you in exactly?

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

#344

Post by entee »

cryptonector wrote: post #305
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is in the healthcare capacities. I live in a country with ~2mio people. If you're patient zero here, you get a comfy private room, your own bed, 5 doctors, 10 nurses, whole research teams, respirators, priority with all the tests, examinations, etc. Same for patient 1, 2, 3. If 200k people get infected (10% of population), and only 10% of those need extra medical care, that's 20.000 people. We don't have…

The numbers probably get worse with scale rather than better because larger countries can get away with having lower medical capacity than smaller countries (i.e., larger countries will be more efficient). The U.S. could probably build a hospital very quickly, but neither China nor the U.S. can build enough hospitals quickly enough, let alone equip them, let alone train nurses and doctors quickly enough. If the brown…

I thought you had a good take till I got to the end and saw a conspiracy theory that to my knowledge has very little basis in fact. Simple explanations (species jump, evidence of similar viruses in adjacent species) are way more likely than some arcane BSL 4 leak. We shouldn’t compound hysteria with wild conspiracies.

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

#345

Post by watwut »

fragmede wrote: post #332
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is in the healthcare capacities. I live in a country with ~2mio people. If you're patient zero here, you get a comfy private room, your own bed, 5 doctors, 10 nurses, whole research teams, respirators, priority with all the tests, examinations, etc. Same for patient 1, 2, 3. If 200k people get infected (10% of population), and only 10% of those need extra medical care, that's 20.000 people. We don't have…

I don't disagree with your position - if there's a wide-spread epidemic, things will go bad, especially as the healthcare system gets overwhelmed. But that's not a novel or interesting point of view, and I doubt many would disagree. So why go around inciting panic? Lets try some other numbers. If 1% of the population gets infected, and 1% needs extra medical care, that's 200 people. If 0.1% of the population is infec…

That is where speed of spreading the disease comes in. If you can limit it so that 1% of population in local area is sick simultaneously, then it is fine.

If you cant limit the speed of spreading the disease, then the hospitals will miss those needed respirators and more people will die. Cause respirator is necessary if you are one of the unlucky ones.

Which is where "hysteria" around locking areas, washing hands and testing people on airports comes in. That is why locking cities, working from home and having some reasonable amount of food so that you are comfortable. The whole point is to slow down spreading, so that resources are available for sick people.

> I feel powerless in the face of this epidemic and being told to wash my hands a bit more, and touch my face less only serves to reiterate my impotence. Is that where the thirst for disaster potential comes from? An addiction to the panic endorphins?

It is not impotent to wash hands and touch face less and avoid unnecessary crowd. That done in masses is to slow down the spread. It is all actually useful.

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

#346

Post by john_moscow »

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 dead / (recovered + dead) is the worst-case assessment, since most of the people who have not technically recovered yet (but may not even have any symptoms anymore), won't die either.

The dead / (infected + dead) is the best-case assessment, since some of the people who have not recovered yet, will die.

A somewhat better metric would be dead / (infected X days ago) where X is the median time for the illness to fully develop.

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

#347

Post by kipchak »

Loughla wrote: post #183
ableal wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days ago I looked up the numbers for the 1918 flu - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu - world population: 1800 million - infected: 500 million - dead: 50 million I did not know it had been that bad.

There's this weird social media thirst for this to become the next spanish flu. My family (midwest conservatives) fall into one of two camps: 1. This was sent by Jesus and is a prelude to the rapture, literally. 2. The spanish flu happened 100 years ago, and 100 is a big round number, so this is going to do the same things. It's very strange and surreal around the home town right now. Many elderly are openly embracin…

I think religion near the end of life, like the phrase "there are no atheists in foxholes" can be a powerful coping method to give the end of their lives perceived meaning. My Grandma is around that age and has grown more religous - looking at the end from a more pessimistic perspective for her likely seems rather bleak. Hopefully it's more that and less enjoying the idea of the end of the world.

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

#348

Post by lake_vincent »

mns wrote: post #141
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 dr…

I'll be the guy. Yeah, I do want a pandemic. My reasons are my reasons, but a very dark part of me is incredibly excited about the prospect of millions of people dying. Just like how wildfires actually lead to healthier and more robust forests in the long-term, I think a real pandemic could be the bitter medicine we all need.

For context: I am a millenial. As the status quo currently stands, I have absolutely NO hope that I will have an enjoyable life in the long term. The world will be a much bleaker, hostile place by the time I am nearing retirement age. It's not a world I want to raise kids in, and if it weren't for my loved ones, I would probably just check out once I get bored and things get REALLY bad - maybe in my mid 40s or thereabouts. And without a major global incident that completely alters the status quo, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that I'm wrong. The writing has been on the wall for decades, and the Old Guard has done nothing about it. Covid is only really deadly for older/sick people? Good. Take them. I'll happily trade them for a future that I actually want to live for.

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

#349

Post by downerending »

jfk13 wrote: post #165
rkachowski wrote: post #96

what css artifact is causing the last "e" in "Rate" to be consistently out of the bold formatting?

Not CSS's fault, it's just how the document is marked-up: * Death Rat e = (number of deaths / number of cases) ... The fact that it happens consistently is probably a result of copy-and-paste (or equivalently, it's wrong in a report-generating template of some kind that produced each section).

Looks like a WYSIWYG wreck.

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

#350

Post by clon »

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…

It is interesting how in times of crisis, people start looking for a heavy handed, authoritative response to the situation. Moderates will be brushed aside as weak and impotent.

I do not disagree with you on the point that China's response has been herculean, but we must not forget that this also comes at a hefty price, one that I am personally not willing to pay.

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