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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]

#181

Post by petertodd »

morsch wrote: post #170
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I view doubling a chance of dying in a year, and then returning to normal mortality for the next year, as far preferable to mass business closures, suspension of civil liberties, pulling kids out of school without evidence, mandating everyone wear masks, etc. I guess I never realized how risk averse people apparently are. I imagine these same people never drive a car since those things are deatht…

[A]n English person aged 55–64 years who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 faces a fatality risk that is more than 200 times higher than the annual risk of dying in a fatal car accident. 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...

The US has a mortality rate from car accidents per capita of 0.01%/year(1). The CDC's best guess infection fatality rate estimate(2) for the 20-49 age group is 0.02%/infection.

With a conservative herd immunity threshold of 50%, that'd put an uncontrolled COVID-19 pandemic and random car accidents about equal for that age group. For the 50-69 age group, the CDC estimates a 0.5% IFR, so COVID-19 would be 25x higher mortality than random car crashes.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... 2) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

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

#182

Post by morsch »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #178
morsch wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[A]n English person aged 55–64 years who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 faces a fatality risk that is more than 200 times higher than the annual risk of dying in a fatal car accident. 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...

I glanced at the study and the fatality rates they use are absurdly high. They estimate .7% IFR for that age range which is way too high. Anyway, my point was simply that if we took the same attitude towards risk that you all do with COVID and applied that elsewhere, we’d all be rolling around in hermetically sealed hamster balls until we died of boredom.

How convenient.

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

#183

Post by in_cahoots »

ColanR wrote: post #162
NelsonMinar wrote: post #155

The author, John Ioannidis, is a discredited researcher on Covid-19. He and his Stanford colleages are responsible for a terribly written antibody study done back in March on residents of Santa Clara County. The statistics in that paper were egregiously bad and seem cooked to meet foregone political conclusions. Some reporting: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/ioannidis... https://www.mercurynews.co…

I'm interested, but it seems like you'll need more than buzzfeed news as a source if you're claiming that Stanford scientists are unreliable.

Here’s a rebuttal from a statistician at Columbia University: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw...

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

#184

Post by kgwgk »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #12
asadkn wrote: post #5

Some people will misinterpret the conclusion. It varies significantly by age brackets not considered in the paper. A 40 year old would be mistaken to assume their fatality chance is 0.31%.

Big time. This is a different disease based on different age brackets. Under 48 there basically similar chance of dying as the flu. National health policy should not be based on personal outcomes.

> Under 48 there basically similar chance of dying as the flu.

Numbers? Or maybe "basically similar" means "an order of magnitude larger".

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

#185

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #154
DangerousPie wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu is about 1/10 as deadly as coronavirus. And there’s a vaccine.

This is a debunked claim that arose from conflating IFR vs CFR. Please source your claim. In terms of overall IFR Influenza and COVID-19 appear to be comparable. Influenza kills at least an order of magnitude more children, and for those in between roughly 35-55 they both kill about the same, and for the very elderly COVID-19 is multiple times more deadly. The overall IFRs are very comprable except COVID-19 preferent…

This is trivially disproven by the excess mortality figures from earlier in the year.

By the start of the Summer the UK had around 60,000 excess deaths above the five year median - which included at least one fairly severe flu season.

Later in the Summer when lockdown was still in place and/or infection rates were still very controlled, the number of excess deaths dipped slightly below the median - as you would expect it to, given that people weren't commuting and there were far fewer road accidents.

The figures also disprove the usual talking point that other deaths had increased dramatically because hospital care and chronic medical attention were hard to access. There were certainly some extra deaths, but not on the scale of COVID itself.

Unless you're going to claim that some other lethal illness was stalking the land and no one had noticed, COVID is the only remotely plausible explanation for those excess deaths.

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

#186

Post by petertodd »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #160
seanbecker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I view doubling a chance of dying in a year, and then returning to normal mortality for the next year, as far preferable to mass business closures, suspension of civil liberties, pulling kids out of school without evidence, mandating everyone wear masks, etc. I guess I never realized how risk averse people apparently are. I imagine these same people never drive a car since those things are deatht…

I was quite amused early on when people were talking about how brave truck drivers were for risking a COVID-19 infection. The per-year-worked fatal injury rate for truck drivers(1) is 0.024%. Meanwhile, a COVID-19 infection for the 20-49 age group has just a 0.02% fatality rate. Logging is even worse, at 0.14%/year-worked.

More than just risk adverse, I think a lot of people don't understand how risky life in general is.

edit: ...and I'll point out, those truck drivers may still have been brave! If you mistakenly think the risk is higher than it actually is, you're still brave for taking it on.

1) https://www.trucks.com/2017/12/26/trucking-deadliest-jobs/

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

#187

Post by dougk16 »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #154
DangerousPie wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu is about 1/10 as deadly as coronavirus. And there’s a vaccine.

This is a debunked claim that arose from conflating IFR vs CFR. Please source your claim. In terms of overall IFR Influenza and COVID-19 appear to be comparable. Influenza kills at least an order of magnitude more children, and for those in between roughly 35-55 they both kill about the same, and for the very elderly COVID-19 is multiple times more deadly. The overall IFRs are very comprable except COVID-19 preferent…

Thanks for all your comments in this thread. I looked at your profile to try and find an email address to say this personally but I figure it's good to say this in public too. You're writing all the things I would if I had a bit more time and inclination. I know it takes a good chunk of time and courage and mindspace to go against the current like you are, but just know there are a lot of people reading comments like yours and nodding their head but just don't want to join the fray. There are also a lot of people waking up from the virus fear only to confront the way scarier danger of the agendas driving things. Your comments are helpful to them too. Anyway keep it up!

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

#188

Post by bonzini »

timr wrote: post #144
qwerty1234599 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daily reminder: new respitory diseases come and go, nobody usually cares. What makes Covid different and what caused the shutdowns was when Lombardy alone had 450 deaths a day. No regular influenza could do that. It's not as if we decided out of thin air the virus was dangerous.

"No regular influenza could do that." Sure it could. The whole point of the IFR calculation is that it gives you an average perspective on how fatal a disease is, relative to other diseases. It's not an absolute maximum fatality rate, for every circumstance. Put a strain of "normal" flu in a vulnerable population with no pre-existing immunity, and it would do a lot of damage. But if you don't count all the other peop…

450 deaths a day was not the total, those were only those from confirmed COVID patients. Excess mortality was more like 650.

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

#189

Post by morsch »

petertodd wrote: post #181
morsch wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[A]n English person aged 55–64 years who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 faces a fatality risk that is more than 200 times higher than the annual risk of dying in a fatal car accident. 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...

The US has a mortality rate from car accidents per capita of 0.01%/year(1). The CDC's best guess infection fatality rate estimate(2) for the 20-49 age group is 0.02%/infection. With a conservative herd immunity threshold of 50%, that'd put an uncontrolled COVID-19 pandemic and random car accidents about equal for that age group. For the 50-69 age group, the CDC estimates a 0.5% IFR, so COVID-19 would be 25x higher mo…

a) IFR is in fact higher according to that research, and b) US roads are far more dangerous than UK roads.

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

#190

Post by drran »

cma wrote: post #133
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.

0.1% for flu is of symptomatic infections. I think covid would get another near ~2X multiplier under the same measure.

Currently, CFR for covid is 4%, so 40x multiplier.
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