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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

#91

Post by mcv »

ageitgey wrote: post #47
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.

People want this thing to be over, so there's a desire to find reasons to believe that we are further along than we thought. Combined with this being a novel disease that no one fully understands, there's a lot of room for those theories to develop. The current best science answer to how many people remain susceptible to infection is "nobody really knows but our best guess is not to assume the best case without bette…

From what I heard, about half the deaths are people under 55 (edit: I can't find that source anymore and all figures suggest it's wrong). The individual risk is still higher the older you are, but plenty of young people have died from this (610 in the US, for example).

But even if you don't know anyone who died from it, you can still know people who are ill. My ex-brother-in-law has been in and out of the hospital 4 times for COVID-19.

In many countries, old people are less likely to get infected, because those countries take special effort to protect old people. Some countries didn't or messed up, which has lead to massacres in elderly care homes.

Though the real big risk here is: it's possible to carry the virus without having any symptoms. So you can transmit it to other people without ever realising.

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

#92

Post by int_19h »

ageitgey wrote: post #75
ddxxdd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then we get to the question of whether those deaths were caused by COVID or other causes. We know that traffic fatalities in some areas have risen drastically due to the lockdowns: https://abc7.com/traffic-fatalities-california-highway-patro... We also know that doctor visits have gone down due to the coronavirus, leading to medical staff being laid off: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/02/826232…

You are conflating a lot of different things. Traffic fatalities were actually down overall (total numbers), but up per mile driven . In other words, people were driving much less and dying in lower total numbers, but the people who were driving were driving faster and thus a bit more likely to die. That article is poorly written to generate headlines and clicks. Arguing over a specific IFR is also kind of pointless…

> Hospitals are (possibly) financially incentivized to diagnose COVID in the US.

That depends. Some, apparently, are incentivized to do exactly the opposite.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/legal-regulatory-issue...

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

#93

Post by Shivetya »

m0zg wrote: post #49
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.

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…

This article [0] says over 4,500 covid-19 patients were sent to nursing homes in NY yet Cuomo pretty much has dodged liability for it, he is still pretty much is a press darling.

[0]https://apnews.com/5ebc0ad45b73a899efa81f098330204c

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

#94

Post by mcv »

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...

I also read that in Florida, the number of COVID-19 deaths is fairly low. Instead, the death rate from regular pneumonia is sky-rocketing.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

kolinko wrote: post #84
leereeves wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrariwise, people are avoiding treatment for other illnesses for fear of catching COVID in a hospital. Many people are depressed or even suicidal. And people are less active, which aggravates other health problems. All of these factors could increase the number of deaths.

If it was significant in comparison, we would not see a sharp drop in deaths after the lockdowns. Do people get depressed and die because of a lovkdown? Sure, I got depressed as well. But the numbers show that this issue is far less than the number of people that would die otherwise.

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by int_19h »

deathgrips wrote: post #48
xlii wrote: 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.

We had data to justify shutdowns on the basis of a possible (i.e. consistent with the data that we had) worst case scenario. Doing nothing while waiting for more data to narrow down is itself a risky choice.

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

#97

Post by cynusx »

chrisco255 wrote: post #22
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.

This is number of infections not number of hospitalizations. This study implies the disease is orders of magnitude less deadly than we thought.

I'm actually annoyed we still don't know the exact death rate of the virus.

I am not sure if it would be that unethical to call up volunteers that reflect the general population to establish the real death rate. (even less so if you reward them economically)

If it is orders of magnitude less deadly then that should have enormous policy implications.

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

#98

Post by lmilcin »

mcv wrote: post #91
ageitgey wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want this thing to be over, so there's a desire to find reasons to believe that we are further along than we thought. Combined with this being a novel disease that no one fully understands, there's a lot of room for those theories to develop. The current best science answer to how many people remain susceptible to infection is "nobody really knows but our best guess is not to assume the best case without bette…

From what I heard, about half the deaths are people under 55 (edit: I can't find that source anymore and all figures suggest it's wrong). The individual risk is still higher the older you are, but plenty of young people have died from this (610 in the US, for example). But even if you don't know anyone who died from it, you can still know people who are ill. My ex-brother-in-law has been in and out of the hospital 4…

That's not true. All believable statistics I have seen show only very small number of deaths in age group 55 and lower.

Outrageous claims require outrageous proofs, you need to volunteer your sources if you want to convince anybody that 55 and younger are large share of deaths.

"From what I have heard" is not an outrageous proof on HN.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...

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

#99

Post by mcv »

pengaru wrote: post #81
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.

> The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty Oh? Our local hospital recently had to take overflow from a neighboring county.

It depends on where you live of course. Some countries seem to have the spread of the virus well under control. Others don't.

I live in Netherland; at the height of the crisis here, Germany has to take some of our ICU cases. Now we regularly have days without any COVID-19 deaths at all, and number of cases is dropping rapidly while testing is finally increasing.

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

#100

Post by carey »

peteretep wrote: post #61
christkv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You will only get detectable antibodies if the virus activated the adaptive immune system. This could be the case if the infection was successfully and quickly controlled by the innate immune system.
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