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]

#191

Post by watwut » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

__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…

Influenza mortality rates are subject to exactly same problems as covid rates. The same caveats apply. And, influenza deaths are estimated - we assume that some percentage of pneumonia deaths are flu deaths without ever doing test.

You debunked nothing. All the per age IFR comparisons of flu vs covid I had seen has covid killing more people for 30 years old too.

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

#192

Post by petertodd » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expec…

> COVID is the only remotely plausible explanation for those excess deaths.

I personally know someone whose father likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion, as well as someone else who died of cancer after their chemotherapy was postponed. And I also know of two suicides in my extended social group in the past few months. It's tough to pin specific blame on lockdown for things like that. But it's certainly plausible that deaths like that would lead to excess deaths.

In the UK specifically the health authorities were estimating in late July that around 21,000 people had died due to lack of access to health care during lockdown: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/29/lockdown-has-kil...

In the US there are a lot of concerns that dementia patients in particular are dying due to the isolation caused by lockdown measures: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/09/16/coronavirus...

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

#193

Post by wonnage » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

butthewho wrote: post #163

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…

This is a peer-reviewed article published by the World Health Organization, not a press release from an individual Stanford lab. Could you please enumerate your specific concerns with this study?

He references his own terrible seroprevalence study in this paper.

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

#194

Post by jmull » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

bitcurious wrote: post #112

jmull wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> You’re proposing “aggressively protecting old and vulnerable people”. ...so does that not mean a strong lockdown for those people? > In your model you’re calling for a strong lockdown of 30% of the population Why ask a question and then assume an answer? Precautionary measures for the elderly can be food delivery, direct financial support, free N95 masks, free healthcare, priority vaccination, etc.

Food delivery and direct financial support don’t protect people from getting covid by themselves. They would help people isolate... so you’re still talking about locking people down to protect them.

Free N95 masks would help to the extent it increases the number of people wearing them. But that’s hardly aggressive. Aggressive would be mandating that old/vulnerable people wear masks (which is another form of lockdown).

Free healthcare would help with the financial situation of those that get the virus and survive, which isn’t exactly the goal.

Priority vaccination... well, there is no safe and effective vaccine. Maybe that will be a good path six months from now. But if we had one, the goal would be to vaccinate everyone. Priority would be nice, but would ultimately only shorten the months-long window for infection (vs those without priority) by a matter of weeks. So that would be helpful, but not a game changer.

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

#195

Post by bonzini » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

gridlockd wrote: post #152

airstrike wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Two things: first, you don't need every hospital to be overwhelmed for it to constitute an issue. Of course, but you need a significant amount of hospitals to be overwhelmed to cause significant excess death. Remember, we're trying to minimize excess death of all causes , not just COVID-19. > Second, every successful preemptive measure is by definition an overreaction. Perhaps you don't see more overwhelmed hospita…

Excess death in places where hospitals were overwhelmed (Lombardy, NYC, Madrid) was so many standard deviations above normal values that I am not even sure how we can be having this discussion.

Sweden could be a special case, but Brazil literally had 0.1% of its population wiped out. In Manaus there were five time as many excess deaths as confirmed COVID deaths. If that's not healthcare collapsing I don't know what it is.

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

#196

Post by irq11 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 expec…

The numbers you cite aren’t 10x higher than median.

Observing that mortality is above median doesn’t prove that the virus is the cause of those excess deaths (e.g. we know that there were a lot of unreported heart attacks during a the same period), and it doesn‘t prove the specific claim that the IFR is 10x higher than the flu.

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

#197

Post by kvez » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #179

BlewisJS wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know you have the flu (or COVID-19), surely you know you are likely contagious and can spread it to more vulnerable people. Yes, it is your fault and you deserve blame if you knowingly spread it to others through negligence. Stay home if you're sick.

I agree those who are symptomatic should stay home. But for COVID we go further and tell asymptomatic people to perform (flawed) transmission control measures. Where do we do that with Flu? The point is if I don’t know I have COVID and spread it to Grandma at the grocery store, in your eyes I’ve killed Grandma. I wonder why we don’t apply that logic everywhere.

The influenza vaccine is a flawed transmission control measure and is the best we have available, same as masks. We do blame people who skip those, although it doesn't show on their faces like the absence of a mask does.

The spreadability of the flu is also much lower than that of COVID-19 (largely thanks to the vaccines), which is really why people never regarded masks as necessary for the flu.

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

#198

Post by dabbledash » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

jointpdf wrote: post #169

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true, but COVID hysteria has taken hold across the entire world, and HN is no exception unfortunately. You are being reflexively down voted because people view any comparison to Influenza as illegitimate, not realizing that you are making a broader point about risk management and attribution of blame for infection as opposed to saying that SARS-2 and Influenza are literally the same viruses. Personally I…

I can only speak for myself here, but COVID-19 has increased my awareness of the impact of flu season and I will endeavor to mitigate the risk of infecting others in the future. In the past, I hardly gave it a second thought—it never occurred to me that I could kill or harm someone by being careless (e.g. riding the metro to/from the climbing gym during flu season and indiscriminately spreading germs). Masks, giving…

This is something I really worry about: that people are so risk averse and so invested in the COVID response that society is going to permanently become more cold, more closed off, and less human. 2020 life is no way to live long term, and I don’t even want to take a step in this direction. If I found out tomorrow that there would never be a cure or vaccine for COVID, I would just go back to living like I lived before.

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

#199

Post by jariel » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:47 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…

'Lockdown' is only one artifact of net social distancing.

People's individual decisions to distance probably are the most important factors - in soft-lockdowns, some people might not have trouble having parties, hanging out with friends etc. but depending on the culture, directives by government, the level of 'fear' from the daily results ... people may adjust their behaviour.

I wish there was much more study on exactly what social distancing means in material reality, not just 'policy'.

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

#200

Post by bonzini » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

moralsupply wrote: post #135

bleepblorp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally illegal, outside of narrow circumstances, to fire guns in populated areas largely because stray bullets will kill people. Stray respiratory droplets exhaled by people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will also kill people. Presumably you're OK with rules that prevent people from firing guns in public. Why are you not OK with rules that are intended to reduce the risk of people unnecessarily spreading fatal inf…

The idea of a "causal nexus" is not accepted in any law system (natural or positive). The fact something can happen due to your actions can't be used as an ethical argument to limit your freedom of action. From the perspective of individual freedoms the ban of guns is unacceptable under the pretense they might end up harming others by chance; if that's the case, the police and the military themselves shouldn't have g…

> populations that live under strict gun control surprisingly have more people being harmed by guns than populations that don't have strict gun controls

Last time I checked the US was firmly at the top of the charts for homicides within developed countries.