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Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

reuters.com

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Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#261

Post by dboreham »

trianglem wrote: post #106
snewman wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't change the actual odds, it changes the perceived / measured odds. Imagine 100 people contract the virus, 10 develop serious symptoms, and one dies. In country A, with widespread testing, 40 of the 100 are identified. The visible statistics are 40 cases, one death, death rate of 2.5%. In country B, with poor testing, only the 10 with serious symptoms are identified. The visible statistics are 10 cases, one…

So based on that Italy’s true infected count is 15 times what they’re reporting or closer to 225,000 cases.

There was a Dr from John's Hopkins on CNBC tonight who said he estimated there are 250k-500k infected people in the US right now.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#262

Post by dboreham »

marcinzm wrote: post #186
landryraccoon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I remember 9/11, and this feels worse. The world won’t be the same for a decade. Are you too young to remember when you could just walk straight onto a plane without being searched? Those days never came back.

I remember 9/11, saw the second plane hit with my own eyes. Other than airports and flying being more inconvenient nothing fundamental really changed as I saw it. People still traveled, people still flew and so on. Now you just budget an extra hour before a flight.

Pretty much the US just introduced the security measures other countries had had for years before.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#263

Post by mantap »

m_mueller wrote: post #214
ivanhoe wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also cultural differences, Italians like to hang out in groups, outside, personal space is much smaller, people hug and kiss and touch all the time. Also they're not really the most disciplined nation, lots of them simply ignored the safety rules, continued to go out, there were even some cases where infected people run away from quarantine. And additionally the spread of virus is not uniform as it depends…

I think there is another factor as well: have a look at train stations during rush hour on East Asia currently vs. Europe. 1) the density is significantly higher but 2) nearly everyone is wearing surgical masks now. I think that mask wearing is an effective measure to slow down the spread, acting at the sender side rather than the receiver (which Western people tend to focus on). You can see a similarly lower exponen…

Part of the problem is that pretty much everybody in East Asia already owned at least one mask.

In Europe pretty much nobody owned a mask prior to COVID-19. And masks have been sold out for weeks. If masks were easily available you'd see people wearing them I'm sure.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#264

Post by FriendlyNormie »

dragonwriter wrote: post #225
FriendlyNormie wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand that everything would have been fine if we simply pretended this virus didn’t exist, right? A few extremely old people would have died slightly sooner. That’s it.

Wrong. The short explanation is the chart on this page: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/science/coronavirus-curve... And that's not even addressing that the at-risk group isn't just the old.

Wrong. The short explanation is the chart at this link:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES5U9YUXkAA1e7H?format=jpg&name=...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#265

Post by netsharc »

Retric wrote: post #62
T-A wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3.65% / 1.75% ~ 2.09, so the difference in age profile might explain a factor 2 in the mortality ratio of Italy vs South Korea. The actual ratio is currently 7.9: 827 out of 12462 cases in Italy (6.6%), 66 out of 7869 cases in South Korea (0.84%).

A large number of South Korea infections are even younger due to how it spread. Italy: Above 80: 1,532 (18.4)% vs age 20-29: 296 (0.0)% South Korea: Above 80: 243 (3.1)% age 20-29: 2,261 (28.7)% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I... Of note, neither country has had anyone under 30 die. Deaths in the 80+ age range are 8.23% in So…

The numbers for 20-29 are probably not comparable. South Korea has been testing a lot of people per day. Italy, like many other countries, is overwhelmed, so there are probably many healthy-feeling infected 20-somethings who haven't been tested and aren't counted.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#266

Post by chiefalchemist »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #147
nostromo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how the media should report on deaths over 80, or even over 90. It's not that old people aren't worthy of protection, but when you're 85 in the US you have a 10% chance of dying in the next year for any and all reasons. So saying this disease kills 15% (for example) of 80+ year olds without context sounds horrific, but contextualized in the actual risks of just being very old to begin with, sounds much l…

Fatality numbers won't reflect those who developed permanent lung damage or had to go into intensive care. Best not to suggest anything that might down play the seriousness considering how infectious this virus is. (Otherwise it may encourage risky behavior.)

Permanent lung damage? Link please?

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#267

Post by jennyyang »

toolz wrote: post #218
danso wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the worst hit region in Italy (Lombardy) confirmed covid 19 cases represent enough cases to take up less than 10% of their hospital beds. Do you have a source for this comment? This WaPo story from 6 hours ago says differently: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/italy-coronaviru... > Giulio Gallera, Lombardy’s health chief, said Thursday that the region would reach its capacity in “five, six or seven da…

lombardy has 7280 confirmed cases [1] lombary has a population of 10MM (wikipedia) italy has 3.18 hospital beds per 1000 [2] the math for that adds up to 31,800 hospital beds 7280 confirmed cases is 22% - so my sources were off or wiki is wrong as originally I recall reading lombardy has a 16MM population. I will say that your article claims they haven't run out of ICU beds yet but that number is surprisingly high fo…

Italy has about 12.5 ICU beds per 100,000 people. ICU beds are not the same as hospital beds.

https://www.statista.com/chart/21105/number-of-critical-care...

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#268

Post by marcinzm »

neuronic wrote: post #198
marcinzm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember 9/11, saw the second plane hit with my own eyes. Other than airports and flying being more inconvenient nothing fundamental really changed as I saw it. People still traveled, people still flew and so on. Now you just budget an extra hour before a flight.

Geopolitics has seen massive impact since then. For example, the rise of ISIS is a direct descendant of the Iraq war which is a direct consequence of corrupt and criminal decision making by the Bush/Cheney admin in response to 9/11. Debatable if the Arab Spring would have occurred without it, as the Middle East might have been much more stable.

Sure but the comment I responded to wasn't about geopolitics but daily life changes.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#269

Post by chiefalchemist »

brokenmachine wrote: post #253
toolz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really hard thing to say this early. For all we know many 80+ people are asymptomatic and most older people aren't negatively affected at all by covid 19. It seems really dangerous to conflate actual mortality rate with mortality rate among the confirmed cases. Those numbers will be drastically different with diseases that have many asymptomatic carriers.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se... 80+ age category has a 21.9% death rate in confirmed cases.

Of those in that group what % had a pre-existing condition? That is, is it age or age + illness? My sense is it's the latter.

Re: Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics

#270

Post by zanny »

js8 wrote: post #255
2019-nCoV wrote: post #13

This outbreak is a litmus test for the competence of countries. It's already shone a bright light on the fragility of global supply lines, cheap travel and open borders. These are the aspects of life most likely to change after this is all over.

IMHO one consequence will be death of neoliberalism (started with Reagan/Thatcher but going philosophically to Hayek and Friedman). It is quite likely that U.S. will nationalize health care as a response to this crisis. But more broadly, the idea that government is a useless economic actor and shouldn't dictate economic policy will become laughable in the response to the crisis.

> It is quite likely that U.S. will nationalize health care as a response to this crisis.

If you think half the country infected with a virus and a million deaths is enough to topple a several hundred billion dollar insurance racket that has endured for over half a century exploiting health and wellbeing for profit...

I wish we would get single payer out of this, but the plague of greed in medicine is way too deep to be excised in a few months from a regular old viral plague.

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