Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#51

Post by dx87 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:29 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #35

lima wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of evidence of long-term damage even in young and barely symptomatic cases - it's not a binary "dead/not dead" outcome. What if the virus causes substantial disease burden years to decades down the road? We can't know, and should take every precaution to prevent its spread.

For example? I haven't seen a single paper showing such long-term consequences in healthy people are significantly more likely than from other viral infections. We'd especially expect to be seeing a large number of such cases in Sweden, should it be common, given they had no lockdown and a large number of infections.

I haven't seen any evidence, but there was a paper published recently that said that the lung damage dealt by covid is usually healed in ~3 months.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#52

Post by segmondy » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

thrav wrote: post #41

rich_sasha wrote: post #14

As others say, this is way too much to say "meh", but I do think it needs a rethink of the lockdown strategies. Lockdowns kill people; people with cancer, people who need surgeries, people who lose income to support themselves. Clearly, so does Covid, and we need to balance it. Can we do better, as societies, if we aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people, and let fitter people continue with their lives? Thi…

This is more or less what Texas has decided to do. I’m in California, but my entire family is there, and many of my younger family members are going about their lives relatively normally. At least one of my cousins caught it and their whole young family (parents 30’s, kids Everybody hated on Texas because of the Lt. Governor’s over the top declaration of sacrificing grandparents for the economy, but there are definit…

You have no idea how it would affect you or your family members until it does. This person lost 8 family members. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/us/phoenix-arizona-aguirre-fa...

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#53

Post by seanbecker » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

petertodd wrote: post #34

morsch wrote: post #16

Here's another recent meta-study (preprint) on the same topic: Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v... Abstract: This paper assesses the age specificity of the infection fatality rate (IFR) for COVID-19 using results from 29 seroprevalence studies as well as…

> > reaching 0.4% at age 55 > This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. Overall mortality at age 55 is about 0.5%: https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age... In general, COVID-19's IFR by age is pretty close to overall mortality. So even in unrestricted spread, limited by only herd immunity, at worst direct deaths from it would less than double your chances of dying in a ye…

> less than double your chances of dying in a year.

The way this is phrased makes it sound like it's not a big deal. Doubling every individual's chance of dying within an entire generation is not something we should say lightly. Imagine if the base fatality rate was 50% rather than .5%.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#54

Post by nradov » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:32 PM UTC

thrav wrote: post #41

rich_sasha wrote: post #14

As others say, this is way too much to say "meh", but I do think it needs a rethink of the lockdown strategies. Lockdowns kill people; people with cancer, people who need surgeries, people who lose income to support themselves. Clearly, so does Covid, and we need to balance it. Can we do better, as societies, if we aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people, and let fitter people continue with their lives? Thi…

This is more or less what Texas has decided to do. I’m in California, but my entire family is there, and many of my younger family members are going about their lives relatively normally. At least one of my cousins caught it and their whole young family (parents 30’s, kids Everybody hated on Texas because of the Lt. Governor’s over the top declaration of sacrificing grandparents for the economy, but there are definit…

Florida went even further and removed all state level lockdown orders on September 25. So far it's too early to tell what effect that will have on the death rate. Case numbers are roughly flat.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/

I'm not advocating for other states to follow Florida's approach. But it serves as a natural experiment. Depending on what happens to their daily death rate over the next couple weeks that will tell us a lot about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of lockdowns.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#55

Post by rich_sasha » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

bearjaws wrote: post #49

rich_sasha wrote: post #14

As others say, this is way too much to say "meh", but I do think it needs a rethink of the lockdown strategies. Lockdowns kill people; people with cancer, people who need surgeries, people who lose income to support themselves. Clearly, so does Covid, and we need to balance it. Can we do better, as societies, if we aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people, and let fitter people continue with their lives? Thi…

Only two states have continued preventing elective surgeries, one state (Texas) that was overwhelmed stopped but has since re-allowed them. Around 60,000 cancer patients will be under-treated due to corona virus. The current estimates are that 10,000 people will die due to missed treatment. Just for the "fun" of it, lets assume all of them died due to under-treatment, that is still 1/4th the death toll of the virus i…

In Poland, cancer prevention literally got obliterated this year. That's thousands people whose cancers could be found early and treated, but won't be.

That's not to mention any other long-term disease.

Just the GDP drop, and the ensuing under-financing of healthcare etc, I think may well easily kill more people than Covid.

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#56

Post by logicchains » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

bearjaws wrote: post #49

rich_sasha wrote: post #14

As others say, this is way too much to say "meh", but I do think it needs a rethink of the lockdown strategies. Lockdowns kill people; people with cancer, people who need surgeries, people who lose income to support themselves. Clearly, so does Covid, and we need to balance it. Can we do better, as societies, if we aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people, and let fitter people continue with their lives? Thi…

Only two states have continued preventing elective surgeries, one state (Texas) that was overwhelmed stopped but has since re-allowed them. Around 60,000 cancer patients will be under-treated due to corona virus. The current estimates are that 10,000 people will die due to missed treatment. Just for the "fun" of it, lets assume all of them died due to under-treatment, that is still 1/4th the death toll of the virus i…

>I am 100% sure that the number of people who have died due to the lock down is a tiny fraction of those that have died of covid...

Are you sure? The economic fallout of lockdowns is pushing millions of people in poorer countries into poverty, and causing thousands of children to starve: https://www.france24.com/en/20200728-coronavirus-linked-hung...

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#57

Post by rich_sasha » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

tdfx wrote: post #46

rich_sasha wrote: post #14

As others say, this is way too much to say "meh", but I do think it needs a rethink of the lockdown strategies. Lockdowns kill people; people with cancer, people who need surgeries, people who lose income to support themselves. Clearly, so does Covid, and we need to balance it. Can we do better, as societies, if we aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people, and let fitter people continue with their lives? Thi…

This same comment posted 3 or 4 months ago would have been downvoted into oblivion. Now it's the top comment on this article. It's good to see peoples' perspective is becoming more reasonable on this issue.

It was! I just refuse to optimise my posting for karma...

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#58

Post by logicchains » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #54

thrav wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more or less what Texas has decided to do. I’m in California, but my entire family is there, and many of my younger family members are going about their lives relatively normally. At least one of my cousins caught it and their whole young family (parents 30’s, kids Everybody hated on Texas because of the Lt. Governor’s over the top declaration of sacrificing grandparents for the economy, but there are definit…

Florida went even further and removed all state level lockdown orders on September 25. So far it's too early to tell what effect that will have on the death rate. Case numbers are roughly flat. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/ I'm not advocating for other states to follow Florida's approach. But it serves as a natural experiment. Depending on what happens to their daily death rate over the next…

>Depending on what happens to their daily death rate over the next couple weeks that will tell us a lot about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of lockdowns.

It's already been more than a couple weeks since September 25th; how many more "couple weeks" do we need until we can draw a conclusion?

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#59

Post by lima » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #35

lima wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of evidence of long-term damage even in young and barely symptomatic cases - it's not a binary "dead/not dead" outcome. What if the virus causes substantial disease burden years to decades down the road? We can't know, and should take every precaution to prevent its spread.

For example? I haven't seen a single paper showing such long-term consequences in healthy people are significantly more likely than from other viral infections. We'd especially expect to be seeing a large number of such cases in Sweden, should it be common, given they had no lockdown and a large number of infections.

It doesn't even have to be worse than post-viral syndrome caused by other severe viral infections for it to be a problem. There's little immunity to COVID-19 and it's highly contagious.

This is like saying "COVID isn't worse than the flu" - even if it was true, having another flu-sized disease burden would already be bad, so it's a bit of a weird goalpost.

That being said, there's a lot of literature describing post-covid symptomes and hypothesized mechanisms of action, like [1]. The virus has been around for less than a year, so a quantitative comparison with something we have studied for decades makes no sense.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7320866/

Re: Infection fatality rate of Covid-19 inferred from seroprevalence data [pdf]

#60

Post by claudeganon » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #48

claudeganon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere outside of places New Zealand and Taiwan has had long-term, unconditional lockdowns, and nowhere in the US has reached anywhere near this level of restrictions. I live in a state that ostensibly had “extreme” lockdowns and whole cities and communities decided themselves exempt from the orders with zero consequences. It’s also impossible to stratify people on the basis of health in the US because not everyone…

UK put everyone who cannot work due to Covid on 80% of their salary (sort of). So surely it could do that to a smaller cohort too. That US cannot do it is no reason to not consider it.

Oh, certainly. Apologies for my US-centric framing. I hope the rest of the world follows South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam’s example and not our’s. South Korea has only had limited, regional lockdowns and never closed their borders. If everyone followed their examples, lockdowns would likely be unnecessary to begin with.