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Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

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Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#51

Post by scarmig »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #41
crooked-v wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that obviously depends on where 'around you' is. Compare to New York City, where there have been an estimated 17,000 deaths (and even that's probably undercounted, going by some studies of excess deaths compared to previous years), and at the peak there were hundreds of unclaimed bodies per week being buried in mass graves.

Singapore has had a death rate of 0.06%, with ~42k cases. The main difference between them and the rest of the world has been how much they test. New York has more hospital beds per 1,000 than Singapore does for instance. There’s no other factor that could possibly explain the death rates being off by more than 3 orders of magnitude between those two places.

That doesn't explain it, though: the number of NYC deaths so far is 0.2% of its population. Assuming 100% of NYC is infected, that's a floor of 0.2% IFR. No amount of under testing can explain that.

Which isn't to say that Singapore's death rate is an undercount, but that higher testing rates can't explain it.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#52

Post by micmil »

ManlyBread wrote: post #12

I became numb to news like this because it doesn't seem to have any reflection in the reality around me. The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty and no one I asked knows anyone who was infected. The 80x number looks like science fiction to me.

My sister's friend is a nurse in Houston. Her hospital is one of the largest in Harris County and over the past month has gone from having one floor dedicated to Covid-19 patients to FOUR entire floors solely for Covid patients.

Shit is real, and will only get worse because complete fucking morons that can't see beyond their own little bubble think that just because things aren't completely screwed in their world, they aren't screwed elsewhere.

Just wear your fucking mask, stay the fuck inside unless absolutely necessary, and hope to holy fuck that you're not surrounded by people as stupid as your post makes you sound.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#53

Post by zaroth »

azinman2 wrote: post #31
adamhearn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely anecdotal, but my good friend’s brother is an ER doctor. He said the hospital required them to label the cause of death for all patients in the hospital as covid if there was as much as one symptom. I don’t want to downplay the sadness of the deaths, but I think it is a bit foolish for us to base our number of deaths of off untested patients...

Except you can see the excess total deaths compared to previous years and how well it correlates and is otherwise unexplained [1]. A lot of the labeling occurred because people couldn’t get tested yet presented symptoms that indicated covid. In that situation, you can’t say 100% without a test, yet it’s the reasonable conclusion in a pandemic. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Curious if we know specifically what caused the tens of thousands of excess deaths that showed up around January 2018? Was that a particularly bad flu season?

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#54

Post by hootbootscoot »

qeternity wrote: post #10

History books will not be kind to our past and present handling of covid-19. Incurring incredible economic and social damage without fully understanding the threat. It’s been very clear for some time that covid is not nearly as lethal as once feared AND even more clear that we over quarantined. In the UK we have hospitals built specifically for covid that are completely unused. This isn’t flattening the curve, it’s c…

Ha! That kinda flies in the face of facts. The UK and the US did NOT "over-quarantine" and this is precisely the problem.

Nations, even some bad-old-authoritarian ones, that didn't dilly-dally and turn the question of lockdown into a political issue, but took it as a public health issue, those are the nations that are re-opening now with low enough numbers to claim to be over the first wave.

The Tory's and GOP's treatment of a pandemia as a political football, instead of a public health menace, led to spotty lockdown actualities that precisely resulted in MORE spreading of the virus. I.E. The Wisconsin Supreme Courts decision and the immediate opening of the bars and no masks, no social distancing, etc. These are FAILED policies and the ideology behind them is incorrect.

What you are spouting might have been debatable several months ago, but I'm going to have to rub your nose in the reality that your entire set of talking points are demonstrably rubbish.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#55

Post by hexpwn »

jakeogh wrote: post #37
martin_bech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down, but speeding up?

These numbers would be much more useful if they were in pairs; (#people, #avg_years_lost). https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths... "Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Both…

500.000 and counting WITH 'excessive' quarantine measures.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#56

Post by Touche »

jakeogh wrote: post #37
martin_bech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down, but speeding up?

These numbers would be much more useful if they were in pairs; (#people, #avg_years_lost). https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths... "Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Both…

So covid-19 got to 500k, the high end of those other diseases, in 1/3rd the time and despite extreme measures to contain.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#57

Post by ageitgey »

adamhearn wrote: post #25
crooked-v wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that obviously depends on where 'around you' is. Compare to New York City, where there have been an estimated 17,000 deaths (and even that's probably undercounted, going by some studies of excess deaths compared to previous years), and at the peak there were hundreds of unclaimed bodies per week being buried in mass graves.

This is completely anecdotal, but my good friend’s brother is an ER doctor. He said the hospital required them to label the cause of death for all patients in the hospital as covid if there was as much as one symptom. I don’t want to downplay the sadness of the deaths, but I think it is a bit foolish for us to base our number of deaths of off untested patients...

How you label the deaths is not that big of a deal in the larger scale. If you want to know the true toll of the epidemic, just look at this year's deaths vs. an average of previous years. It's simple and transparent.

Here's that data for England:

https://imgur.com/sxoolBX

I get why everyone is questioning everything, but there isn't some big conspiracy here. Lots of people died of COVID. Most of them were 80+. You probably don't know any of them if you don't hang out with 80-90 year olds.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#58

Post by zaroth »

scarmig wrote: post #51
AmericanChopper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore has had a death rate of 0.06%, with ~42k cases. The main difference between them and the rest of the world has been how much they test. New York has more hospital beds per 1,000 than Singapore does for instance. There’s no other factor that could possibly explain the death rates being off by more than 3 orders of magnitude between those two places.

That doesn't explain it, though: the number of NYC deaths so far is 0.2% of its population. Assuming 100% of NYC is infected, that's a floor of 0.2% IFR. No amount of under testing can explain that. Which isn't to say that Singapore's death rate is an undercount, but that higher testing rates can't explain it.

I think the mistake that many people keep making is trying to nail down a single IFR. There isn’t one.

The fatality rate depends heavily on the demographics of the infected population. IFR of a entirely young demographic would be below 0.01%. IFR of a nursing home would be 3 orders of magnitude higher.

If someone shows me a low IFR I can safely bet that they surely aren’t finding 50% of their cases in their nursing homes.

Conversely, if 50%+ of your cases are in nursing homes, your population IFR is going to look a lot worse than if you had kept that relatively small population safe.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#59

Post by grey-area »

jakeogh wrote: post #37
martin_bech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down, but speeding up?

These numbers would be much more useful if they were in pairs; (#people, #avg_years_lost). https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths... "Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Both…

The final total for deaths due to Coronavirus is likely to be in the millions globally now, as it is spreading out of control and most countries have given up on lockdowns. Had it occurred in the conditions of 1918, it's likely millions would be dead already, but luckily we haven't just come out of a world war and healthcare is more advanced.

The one bright spot in this otherwise gloomy picture is that we don't fully understand immunity - NYC for example is seeing very low cases, despite being surrounded by plenty of infection in surrounding states and no travel lockdown - that seems to indicate heavily infected areas might escape a second wave, perhaps due to T-Cell immunity and a much higher infection rate than antibody tests would indicate. It's hard to explain the massive and continued drop in NYC otherwise after very high infection/death rates.

https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/hdxwf5/intrafamili...

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#60

Post by crooked-v »

scarmig wrote: post #51
AmericanChopper wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore has had a death rate of 0.06%, with ~42k cases. The main difference between them and the rest of the world has been how much they test. New York has more hospital beds per 1,000 than Singapore does for instance. There’s no other factor that could possibly explain the death rates being off by more than 3 orders of magnitude between those two places.

That doesn't explain it, though: the number of NYC deaths so far is 0.2% of its population. Assuming 100% of NYC is infected, that's a floor of 0.2% IFR. No amount of under testing can explain that. Which isn't to say that Singapore's death rate is an undercount, but that higher testing rates can't explain it.

The difference with Singapore probably has more to do with how (a) face mask wearing was and still is compulsory for everyone at all times outside of their homes (the fine for not doing so is the equivalent of $210 USD), and (b) every single government-run community center in the city had free reusable face masks available for months for anyone who didn't already have one.
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