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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]

#81

Post by hef19898 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #30
hef19898 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the social security network, doesn't it?

It does. This is part of what I mean: if say 70% of the country can go about its business as normal, this frees a lot of resources for the state to help the remaining 30%. Stable-ish economies can foot the bill for this as well. Simply caching away the unfit is not what I meant.

Me neither. In Europe we are lucky enough that most countries can maintain social networks for quite a while despite having mass unemployment and the like. But this only buys time. Hopefully enough.

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

#82

Post by dnautics »

dirkt wrote: post #4
rossdavidh wrote: post #2

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.

(1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. (2) We all have seen the images of hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, not having enough breathers, etc. For some reason this doesn't happen with the typical annual influenza ... If you reduce everything to statistics about mortality rates, you are missing very important parts of the picture.

> (1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people.

What is the rate of this?

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

#83

Post by sschueller »

What percentage of people who get the flu are asymptomatic?

I think the biggest issue with covid is people spreading it who don't even know they have it. A friend of mine just happened to get a test and was found positive. The only symptom they had was a headache.

Who can take a day of work because of a headache?

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

#84

Post by markus92 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #29
dirkt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. (2) We all have seen the images of hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, not having enough breathers, etc. For some reason this doesn't happen with the typical annual influenza ... If you reduce everything to statistics about mortality rates, you are missing very important parts of the picture.

> We all have seen the images of hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, not having enough breathers, etc. For some reason this doesn't happen with the typical annual influenza Are you sure about that? it's probably not the same extent as what has happened with covid-19, but some hospitals do get overwhelmed during flu season. A quick google search pre-2019 returns a lot of results, for instance: https://time.c…

It happened, but it is not even close to what COVID does. During influenza season, the hospital I work at sometimes cancel elective procedures if it's a particularly bad year for influenza. Luckily influenza season has an end date. With COVID, we hardly even had any capacity left for oncology, the last thing we might cancel. Luckily the lockdown effects happened just in time before we had to take drastic measures there. This was not just a local problem, as patients here are centrally spread over all hospitals in the country.

That's the real problem with the disease, not only the fatality rate and long-term effects, but how quickly and severely it can bring a hospital system and all associated healthcare to its knees.

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

#85

Post by noja »

rossdavidh wrote: post #2

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.

Apple and oranges. That flu fatality rate is without social distancing.

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

#86

Post by jdminhbg »

lima wrote: post #33
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…

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.

> 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.

This is the precautionary principle selectively applied, and it’s what’s so wrong with the “lockdown” debate.

What if lockdowns cause substantial health problems years to decades down the road? We can’t know that either. Acting like Covid is the only thing whose aftereffects might be worse than we can tell right now is ignorance.

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

#87

Post by jariel »

White_Wolf wrote: post #11
dirkt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. (2) We all have seen the images of hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, not having enough breathers, etc. For some reason this doesn't happen with the typical annual influenza ... If you reduce everything to statistics about mortality rates, you are missing very important parts of the picture.

(1) Is generic and not entirely true. Long term effects are indeed present but only in those genetically predisposed. Doesn't apply to the majority. (2) Actually we didn't. My wife works in a small city hospital. They only have 4 beds with respirators and almost never had more than 2-3 people at a time there. The city is being locked down the second time because we have 5 infected in 20k. We also had in the region of…

2 is obviously a real concern, where the cases spiked the hospitals ran into serious trouble - and they will spike if left unchecked.

Also, consider that they have to mostly shut down the rest of the hospital due to staffing issues - but also the highly infectious nature of COVID.

Left unchecked, every hospital will hit their limits quickly. That'a a distinguishing characteristic of this one.

Edit: here is what the curve looks like without suppression measures in place. In NYC they came essentially to capacity very quickly. Imagine if that curve had of kept going, it would have been very bad.

It's the same R0 everywhere, the 'effective R' will come down to the difference being the age and relative health of the population, and of course other suppressive measures being taken.

[1] https://forward.ny.gov/daily-hospitalization-summary-region [2] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

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

#88

Post by airstrike »

gridlockd wrote: post #78
airstrike wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (2) Actually we didn't. My wife works in a small city hospital. "It didn't happen to me so it must not be happening anywhere else"

It's about as valid an argument as appealing to the pictures of "overwhelmed hospitals". Yes, we've all seen those pictures. We've also seen pictures of empty emergency care units that were created in anticipation of a wave of illnesses that didn't materialize. In general, we can say that in the overwhelming majority of cases, hospitals did not get overwhelmed with COVID patients like some of the models predicted. Th…

Two things: first, you don't need every hospital to be overwhelmed for it to constitute an issue.

Second, every successful preemptive measure is by definition an overreaction. Perhaps you don't see more overwhelmed hospitals precisely because lockdowns are effectively preventing that.

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

#89

Post by ceejayoz »

dnautics wrote: post #82
dirkt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. (2) We all have seen the images of hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, not having enough breathers, etc. For some reason this doesn't happen with the typical annual influenza ... If you reduce everything to statistics about mortality rates, you are missing very important parts of the picture.

> (1) A COVID-19 infection can have long-term effects even in young people. What is the rate of this?

We don’t know yet, which is a reason to be cautious.

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

#90

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

nradov wrote: post #76
lima wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

That depends on what you mean by "little immunity". Many people appear to have some immunity based on prior exposure to similar coronaviruses. That won't prevent infection but tends to reduce disease severity. https://www.jci.org/articles/view/143380

That "some immunity" is clearly insufficient, because people who actually got infected with Covid itself and then again with Covid, in many if not most cases have more severe symptoms. In fact, the scarce evidence suggests Covid might be a subject to Antibody Enhancement; that would mean that every next infection will get worse and worse. In any case, Coronaviruses have long be known to cause very short term immunity. Even more importantly, constant reinfection may debilitate the organism so much, that even a healthy person will eventually fall into the risk group.
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