351–360 of 462 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> together with tracing This is key — these countries were able to avoid lockdown by testing and tracing early, before the case load became unmanageable. In the US, we’ve missed that opportunity
South Korea, with one-sixth the population of the US, peaked at 10,000 cases. We haven't passed that per capita case load - and even if we do, lower population density should make it easier to get the virus under control in the US (except in NYC).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So the situation is either that Italy is vastly underestimating cases, or Germany and South Korea have lost a magnitude of corpses somewhere. There is a third possibility. False positive tests: Germany and South Korea may have less cases than they think they do.
Prof. Drosten who developed the test says that cannot happen in practice. One would get a false positive result with SARS-1 (de facto extinct) and related coronavirus strains in Asian bats (that have not crossed into humans). Source: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript132.pdf#3
Obviously not true
False positives are always possible in practice even if they aren't possible in theory
Get a bunch of tired lab techs running tests 24/7 and one of them will accidentally write down the wrong result at some point
Imagine this. Your driving down the freeway at 60 mph, accelerating at 30%. The car in front of you puts on the breaks. Before you react, you first gather your speed gun, check the deceleration rate of the car in front, then calculate based on your speed when you should put your breaks on. I'm all for the scientific approach, but in this particular instance, our survival instincts need to take precedence. Please, we…
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
We should criticize and point out mistakes, but let's not demonize.
The world is complex and interdependent, overreacting can be just as bad as not doing anything, what we need to find is the right balance between the two approaches.
If we check back and he was right then what? You, like everyone else, will be elated.
Completely dismissing certain observations early on as 100% wrong is not the right approach. One has to navigate the path balancing the tradeoffs.
It’s much easier to quantify the harms of allowing business as usual and letting the infection spread (namely # of deaths) than it is quantifying the cascading repercussions of a massive global economic meltdown. Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. As a society we are faced with navigating the delicate balance between how m…
> Accordingly, world leaders are being judged based on their ability to contain the spread rather than prevent economic devastation. Actually I am judging countries by their ability to face facts, act proactively Over the last few months, act responsibly by making sensible decisions that are effective in controlling their outbreaks, while keeping their economy functioning. A++ for Taiwan (they started acting on Dec 3…
What do you like about their approach?
Firstly, there is 10 weeks of evidence on what other countries have done to avoid transmission. Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and Japan all show a variety of strategies and have some successes under their belts. Sure, it’s messy social data, and they have systematic differences from other countries, but it’s real data about what is working. Ioannidis says: “If we assume that case fatality rate among individual…
> Ioannidis says: “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.” For anyone wondering, this quote is from [1] and doesn't appear in the linked article. I think the linked arti…
How does he know that this is not happening? It's been published for Sweden that they now moved to use "Sentinel tests" to track the spread of the virus (https://www.thelocal.se/20200320/fact-check-has-sweden-stopp...). This might explain the reason why the Swedish government is still quite relaxed. However, I would be very surprised if other governments would not be doing the same. Maybe this is the reason why governments really increased the response, because they are acting on this data.
[edit typo]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
0.3% & 0.9% are optimistic. South Korea's naive case fatality rate (CFR) is already 120 deaths/9037 cases = ~1.3% today, gradually going up from ~0.5-0.6% a few weeks ago. Why? People in a functioning healthcare system take time to die and these people were infected during an expansion phase of spread which rapidly increases #cases (denominator). SK's cohort CFR is even higher. More properly, we should use the infect…
>South Korea's naive case fatality rate (CFR) is already 120 deaths/9037 cases But the denominator in this formula strongly depends on who and how often you test. In other words: You don't know the number of cases. Obviously, people who are severely affected are tested more often. People with mild or no symptoms might never be tested, even if they want to (I'm not sure about South Korea but for sure this is happening…
Credible estimates of IFR from noted epidemiologists I've seen are around 1%, assuming that the healthcare system still functions, and much higher otherwise.
COVID-19's CFR & IFR might not even be the biggest problem. High rate of hospitalization and broken healthcare system, with all their ramifications, could be considered even worse.
Imagine this. Your driving down the freeway at 60 mph, accelerating at 30%. The car in front of you puts on the breaks. Before you react, you first gather your speed gun, check the deceleration rate of the car in front, then calculate based on your speed when you should put your breaks on. I'm all for the scientific approach, but in this particular instance, our survival instincts need to take precedence. Please, we…