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

news.psu.edu

61–70 of 210 posts

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

#61
post #9

How does this reconcile with the actual data we have on total infection rate in e.g. Spain where a representative poll was done?

We now know a significant amount of people have no symptoms or very light symptoms and no antibody response. An anecdote. My friend and his wife got tested when giving birth. She was positive for antibodies he was not. It is quite possible that for ever person who had antibodies there is some unknown x of people who got it and never developed antibodies.

How would you end up without antibodies? The virus just failed to replicate in your system and died out of its own accord? Or are we suggesting the people with no symptoms are still asymptomic carriers?

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

#62
post #8

Whats the non-COVID-19 pneumonia# for 2019-2020? CDC Influenza and pneumonia deaths by influenza season and age: United States, 2008–2015: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/health_policy/influenza-and-pn...

Irrelevant, that's what the number is.

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

#63
post #51

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.

Singapore’s actual death rate is also a much more reliable number than New York’s. The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death. There are some other confounding factors too, like SG infections being primarily among young people, and NY state discharging Covid patients to nursing homes. But none of that explains the monumental difference in death rates between SG and pretty much the entire rest of the world. The virus is certainly far less deadly than most reported statistics would have you believe.

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

#65

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.

"There's no other factor" Yes there is. In singapore the death rate was much higher until covid moved into foreign worker dorms, where everyone is younger on average than the general population... You need to look at mortality rate by age group. South Korea also has relatively complete testing/tracing, you can find that data on the wikipedia page on covid19 in s. korea.

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

#66
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the exactly case, though? It's not about how infectious it is, but how severe. Early reports said that 90% or more [1] people develop symptoms and that the average death rate is 3.5% (with some outlets even suggesting 10%...). If we divide those estimates by 10 we're getting 9% of symptoms and 0.35% lethality. While I won't argue for 80 as being the number that's almost 2 degrees of magnitude. That would m…

There wasn't a consensus back in February that covid19 was the black plague. Even though we didn't have the data to justify shutdowns, governments everywhere shutdown businesses because politicians won't personally feel the pain of job loss.

> Even though we didn't have the data to justify shutdowns

0.2% of the entire population of New York City died over the course of a few months, even with a full lockdown in place.

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

#67
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Singapore’s actual death rate is also a much more reliable number than New York’s. The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death. There are some other confounding factors too, like SG infections being primarily among young people, and NY state discharging Covid patients to nursing homes. But none of that explains the monumental…

The criteria don't really matter, because we can look at the total number of excess deaths to reliably see that an absurdly excess number of people died in NYC compared to previous years.

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

#68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Singapore’s actual death rate is also a much more reliable number than New York’s. The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death. There are some other confounding factors too, like SG infections being primarily among young people, and NY state discharging Covid patients to nursing homes. But none of that explains the monumental…

> The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death.

This is false. Even if it were true, you could look to NYC's excess deaths and see a huge surge in them that would correspond to a similar IFR.

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

#69

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.

Definitely it can happen.

Some time ago I have to deal with a particularly annoying disease. Thousands of healthy animals dying in mass overnight by asphyxia. A few hours before they where perfectly healthy. First asymptomatic, then mostly asymptomatic, then just a mild symptoms and then massive strike and death. Covid reminds me a lot to that time.

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

#70
post #49

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.

Unclaimed bodies have been buried in "mass graves" in NY for many years. It's just it didn't occur to anyone to film this from a drone before to drive clicks and outrage. The real scandal is that NY, NJ, CT, MA and a few other states allowed C19 to spread in elderly care facilities and nursing homes. NY and NJ inexplicably _sent COVID patients_ there. As of Jun 2nd, nursing homes are responsible for 40% of all US COV…

Same for Sweden.
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