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Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

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Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#271

Post by fcurts »

guscost wrote: post #141
paulryanrogers wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put another way: If you believe that X is a "serious enough" risk and I do not, but I believe that Y is a "serious enough" risk and you do not, how do we resolve that disagreement? Who gets the money? Worst possible outcome for overreacting could be severe economic hardship and domestic unrest. Worst possible outcome for under-reacting could be millions dead, leading to severe economic hardship and domestic unrest.…

Let's not be naive here, the worst possible consequence of overreaction is a war .

In that case, why wouldn't the same hold for underreaction?

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#272

Post by alkonaut »

2008guy wrote: post #267

The answer seems so obvious. Do a hard, air tight quarantine of people of advanced age. People who are borderline or sick are told to stay inside. Encourage the rest of society to go about business as usual. Provide government support for all of it. Some people will die but probably less than if we have to do this over and over again without ever gaining herd immunity. And few enough to massively ease the burden on h…

Those most at risk are those requiring care. An 80+ person with some illness with typical assistance at home might meet 20+ working age people in a week. That can probably be scaled down in the name of caution to say 5, but it's unlikely to be the same 5 every week because of staff turnover, illness.

It's the same whether you receive care at home or in an assisted living facility.

Even without such care, a lot of these people regularly need hospital care for things that aren't covid. Many have regular scheduled visits to doctors for blood pressure medication tweaks and similar. You could isolate the healthy 70 year olds quite well, but not the sick 80 year olds.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#273

Post by acqq »

odkamkfn wrote: post #105
acqq wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the data we need. We know how fast it grows, we know how bad it is. It's at least order of magnitude (as in, surely ten times) worse than flu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F... As shown, in Italy there were 55 times more deaths per week (two weeks already) than the peek during the flu season. And it continues to grow. > are people actually going to hospitals when they don't need…

We do not have all the data we need. Just for starters, we don't know why the situation is so much worse in Italy than in Japan.

> we don't know why the situation is so much worse in Italy than in Japan.

So... because we don't know why just Asian countries are better than Western in controlling the outbreak, the Western countries should just... do nothing to control the outbreak?

In spite already being in disadvantage?

And having the examples that we know worked?

Seriously?

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#274

Post by cycrutchfield »

vixen99 wrote: post #264
cycrutchfield wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an argument for letting this disease burn through our entire population. That's an argument for the government to step up and assist people during this time. Edit: and who gives a shit about your retirement account.

People who for whatever reason are utterly dependent on support from the state might well give a shit about the state's decreased capacity to provide aid thanks to additional demand on the part of those whose retirement funds (which allowed them to be self-sufficient) have been destroyed.

Still not a valid reason to just let grandma and grandpa die.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#275

Post by philwelch »

Barrin92 wrote: post #103
defen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths.” Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? Where does the idea of 1% come fro…

>Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? because everyone on the diamond princess was tested. So we know for sure how many cases we are dealing within the sample. ~0.3 and ~0.9% are also not optimistic guesses but the current numbers for Germany and SK. Italy sits at 9%. So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Kore…

Or Italy’s hospital system got overrun and people with survivable cases died for lack of treatment.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#276

Post by headmelted »

rramach wrote: post #174
Barrin92 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? because everyone on the diamond princess was tested. So we know for sure how many cases we are dealing within the sample. ~0.3 and ~0.9% are also not optimistic guesses but the current numbers for Germany and SK. Italy sits at 9%. So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Kore…

John's analysis is cherry picking in many ways. Death rate in Diamond Princess is 1.1% today and 2% is listed as severe. Assuming 50% of severe make it, final fatality rate for the ship may end up closer to 2%. John then adds a 50% discount factor but it is not clear how he picked that number. Also, the 1% of population infected seems to be another number pulled out of a hat. If we are basing our figures based only o…

Why 20%?

That also seems wildly optimistic. 80% seems like a more reasonable assumption than 20%.

Also - 99.9% of those patients (pulled out of a hat) wouldn't have access to health care because the capacity was already overwhelmed, so the death rate will jump markedly.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#277

Post by mns »

dannykwells wrote: post #20

Let's check back on this piece in...2 weeks, say, when there are 10,000+ Corona deaths in the US. Well see how it ages then. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/21/upshot/corona... 427× 16 =11102

Epidemiology is not putting numbers in excel and running a formula to generate a chart. Which seems like what half the world is doing now. US has already the same number of cases that Italy had one week ago when it had 4000 deaths (only 500 for US at this point). So some data is wrong and you can't model every country in the world based on data that is just plain misleading (Italy). Median age of tested people in Italy is 13.3 years higher than the general population median age, in Germany, the difference is just 0.7. Stop treating Italy as being the only point of truth and other countries (like Germany) like the anomaly.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#278

Post by giantDinosaur »

ant6n wrote: post #262
rramach wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John's analysis is cherry picking in many ways. Death rate in Diamond Princess is 1.1% today and 2% is listed as severe. Assuming 50% of severe make it, final fatality rate for the ship may end up closer to 2%. John then adds a 50% discount factor but it is not clear how he picked that number. Also, the 1% of population infected seems to be another number pulled out of a hat. If we are basing our figures based only o…

The Diamond Princess is also likely not a random sample of the population - they are healthy enough to be fit for travel.

You don't need to be particularly fit or healthy to go on a cruise. Yes, sure, you can't be on life support, but generally 'healthy enough' to travel on a cruise is exactly what I'd expect from any random sample of the overall population.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#279

Post by lazyjones »

Barrin92 wrote: post #103
defen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths.” Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? Where does the idea of 1% come fro…

>Why would we use the Diamond Princess CFR instead of China's, or Italy's, or South Korea's? because everyone on the diamond princess was tested. So we know for sure how many cases we are dealing within the sample. ~0.3 and ~0.9% are also not optimistic guesses but the current numbers for Germany and SK. Italy sits at 9%. So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Kore…

> Italy sits at 9%. So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Korea have lost a magnitude of corpses somewhere. I find the latter less likely than the former.

Both could be true. For example, Germany doesn't systematically test dead old and/or hospitalized people for Coronavirus infections while Italy apparently does. Germany has more resources to test potentially infected people than Italy, where all resources are needed for treatment of the hospitalized cases.

In reality, both Italy and Germany will have infections in the 100.000s, most of them with mild or no symptoms.

Re: Covid-19: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures

#280

Post by gpderetta »

listsfrin wrote: post #231
fbn79 wrote: post #213

"And yet it moves" Galileo Galilei https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves?wprov=sfla1 . I agree that in many axpects the situation is exagerated, in primis by general panic. But If the Covid is not much worse than flu why in Italy we have military trucks convoy that transport death to southern regions because the wait line for crematory in North is becomed too long?

In normal times Italy has a death rate of 10 deaths/1000 people. Which translates to ~1500 daily for a population of 60 millions. What were they doing previously with the dead?

Those people haven't stopped dying. As a comparison, 700 people have been dying every day for covid-19 in Italy. Also deaths are not (yet) evenly distributed but greatly concentated in the north.
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