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

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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course you haven't seen papers describing long-term effects, simply because the virus hasn't been around long enough for any long-term conclusions. Therefore there are no studies saying there are NO long term effects either. There are clues that long term effects/permanent effects even in mild cases may exist. E.g. some six scuba divers with mild symptoms/asymptomatic progression were checked afterwards (Innsbruck…

> Of course you haven't seen papers describing long-term effects, simply because the virus hasn't been around long enough for any long-term conclusions.

So you'd support locking down based on something for which we don't have any evidence yet?

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

#62

This is a different disease based on age brackets. National health policy should not be based on personal outcomes.

> National health policy should not be based on personal outcomes. I'm not sure I understand what that even means. What should national health policy be based on?

What's best for the nation. Having blanket lockdowns with no timeline for lifting them, while also wrecking the economy because people don't want their 80+ grandma to die of covid isn't necessarily good for the country, even if it makes people feel better in the short term.

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) long covid is still being studied, obviously, but there are many cases of it - https://bgr.com/2020/08/21/coronavirus-symptoms-long-covid-s... It’s a disease that attacks your organs, there’s going to be damage.

I don't think anybody's denying it exists. What hasn't been shown is if long-term consequences are more prevalant with covid than with other viral lung infections.

Studies on long-term consequences of a virus that has been around for <1 year?

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

#64
post #54
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.

Less than you might think, because we know the value of lockdowns for an contagious respiratory disease varies based on conditions, including the current infection and immunity rates on the local population, for which we have inadequate surveillance pretty much everywhere. It also varies by the degree of enforcement, which is also inadequately measured but probably was lowest in the same places that are inclined to remove lockdowns entirely. So we're missing lots of data necessary to interpret both the local meaning and the meaning for other places of any numbers that come of a one-jurisdiction top-level policy change.

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

#65

For comparison, from what I've read the typical annual influenza fatality rate is around 0.1% (don't know what the under-70 rate would be). So, this puts covid-19 solidly in the uncanny valley of viral mortality rates; not low enough to be "just like a flu", not high enough to justify shutting down the world. No wonder opinions on it are so divided.

I guess not so many people get flu? I don't regularly get vaccinated, and I only had 1 flu-like disease in the last decade.

Covid is way more virulent. If 10x more people get it, it doesn't need to be more deadly in terms of IFR to be a concern.

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

#66
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

>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.

But it does make it highly inconsistent to adopt policies so extremely destructive to economic and mental health when the same wasn't done for other viruses with similar long-term effects.

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

#67

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 medicine, people like to talk about quality-of-life-adjusted years. Why? Because there's no point in making somebody live more years that are subjectively bad (e.g due to treatment side-effects), rather than less years that are subjectively good. When it comes to policy-making that affects us all, it's time to extend that to the collective level.

We need to ask ourselves, how much suffering can younger generations be expected to endure to make the older generations live statistically a bit longer? Remember, the average COVID death is in their eighties, which is already beyond life expectancy.

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

#68

So, can someone tell me again what fatality rate defines a pandemic?

As far as I know a pandemic is defined by the spread rate not by fatality rates. Doesn't include flu and the sorts. You can have a virus that doesn't qualify as pandemic but can reach 100% kill rate or one that can hit 100% of planet with 0 dead.

Thank you.

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

#69
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anybody's denying it exists. What hasn't been shown is if long-term consequences are more prevalant with covid than with other viral lung infections.

Studies on long-term consequences of a virus that has been around for <1 year?

People are claiming "long covid" for a virus that's been around for <1 year, so presumably the prevalence of this "long covid" could be studied?

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

#70

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…

You’re proposing “aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people”. ...so does that not mean a strong lockdown for those people?

> and lack of economic collapse

In your model you’re calling for a strong lockdown of 30% of the population. How is that not going to have a powerful negative impact on the economy?

Also, as a practical matter, I doubt society will accept a strategy that minimizes the impact of covid-19 on one group of people at the expense of another group of people when the other group of people are politically powerful (and, not incidentally, a great number of various types of leaders are part of the other group).

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