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]

#201

Post by hef19898 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

wedn3sday wrote: post #149

moralsupply wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is why there are so many shooting deaths in the UK, because they have strict gun control laws /s. I see this argument all the time from otherwise intelligent people and its amazing to me. Why bother making murder illegal? It will only stop law abiding people from killing anyone, and criminals will still murder people! Yes I know this is a reducto fallacy, however the argument you're making is fundamentally…

The only equivalent discussion to gun control I know a speed limits on the German Autobahn. Basically the same arguments.

That being said, governments are already restricting "freedoms": you are not allowed to drive 100 mph in towns, police and emergency services theoretically are. Ref traffic lights, obligatory insurance for cars and so on. All of these traffic rules are in place for safety purposes. And all of them commonly accepted. Personally, I can live with some COVID-19 related restrictions for safety purposes until this thing is sorted out.

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

#202

Post by NelsonMinar » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

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.

Buzzfeed is a solid journalism source. Yes, they also are famous for stupid clickbait articles, but if you read the article you will find it's quite solid.

I already posted a second link for you, from the SJ Mercury News, which you chose to ignore. Perhaps you didn't see it. Here are some more:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/stanford-...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/20/feud-over-stanford-co...

https://twitter.com/carlzimmer/status/1251176233594949632

These are all popular articles (and one tweetstorm) because that's what I have collected. If you spend just moments looking in scientific community discussions you will also find many, many critiques. But really it's that first Buzzfeed article you have to go back to because it establishes the motive for the badly conducted and analyzed study, a political agenda and a foregone conclusion. It's the worst form of scientific corruption.

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

#203

Post by irq11 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

wonnage wrote: post #193

butthewho wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The paper you’re criticizing was upheld by many other subsequent papers, around the world, which have found similar IFR estimates.

The methodological criticisms of the paper that you’re making, while relevant, in no way invalidate the work. While the estimate may have been off by a factor of 2-3, overall, that’s well within the margin of error for a study of IFR on a small sample.

This comment, downthread, cites a paper which finds similar estimates to Ionnadis’ original paper:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24810409

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

#204

Post by NelsonMinar » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:52 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?

Plenty of other folks in this thread have done a great job linking to critiques or pointing out flaws. The part I'm contributing is the corrupting influence, the political agenda.

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

#205

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #165

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 totally unproven speculation. We can’t even prove this happens for SARS-1 which per case is far more severe than SARS-2, its less deadly yet more infectious brother. (2) absolutely does happen in bad flu seasons, and by the way most of those images are misleading or taken from prior years. Seriously. Even in say, New York, you’d have hospital A overflowing yet hospital B 10 miles away was at 30% capacity remai…

> its less deadly yet more infectious brother.

Nitpicking here, Sars-1 is, as I understand, more infectious but also more obvious. So you don't have asymptomatic spread and other things. This ultimately comes down to exactly what you mean by "infectious" though.

> is totally unproven speculation.

At this point we have more known Covid-19 long haulers in the US than there are Sars-1 infections globally. Comparisons to SARS-1 don't much matter.

> absolutely does happen in bad flu seasons

Indeed it does, most people weren't aware of this, and covid-19 making people more aware of the danger of the flu isn't a bad thing. Get vaccinated!

> you’d have hospital A overflowing yet hospital B 10 miles away was at 30% capacity remaining.

There was a period of time when NYC was globally short on ventilators and ICU beds. Raw hospital beds were never a real concern.

Also worth remembering that NYC would have run out of hospital beds entirely if they didn't implement strict lockdown measures. The NYC (or really NY) stay at home order went into effect on March 20, and daily cases peaked plateaued 1.5 weeks later.

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

#206

Post by throwaway_pdp09 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

petertodd wrote: post #192

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I believe what you're talking about ("...likely died due to being unable to access health care in a timely fashion" etc). is is exactly what contributes to an excess death. That's why excess deaths are important, they take into account exactly those deaths caused indirectly. (a bit unclear, but you get me I hope).

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

#207

Post by sterlind » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

dabbledash wrote: post #198

jointpdf wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 befor…

I sure hope that sick people continue to wear masks once this is all over. It's basic human decency to avoid spreading germs - even the flu - to others, especially elders. This is the norm in Asia.

After COVID ends, I won't wear a mask if I'm healthy but I sure as hell will if I have a cough or fever.

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

#208

Post by petertodd » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #189

petertodd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> IFR is in fact higher according to that research,

By "that research" you mean https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v... right?

Because it actually gives a slightly lower IFR than the CDC at age 55 (0.4% vs 0.5%), not higher. So I'm not sure what you mean.

> US roads are far more dangerous than UK roads.

Yes, according to the WHO(1) the US has a 3.6x higher mortality rate from car accidents than the UK, which gets us to 90x higher for the age group I quoted.

Anyway, I didn't want to contradict that figure. Just give perspective.

1)https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_safety_s...

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

#209

Post by amelius » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #157

amelius wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the point. There are rules now, so not following them would indeed make it your fault if someone gets sick because of your actions that were not in accordance with the rules.

Because if I go out into the world and get infected with a disease, that’s one of the risks of living life, and we have always understood that. That’s why if you catch the flu nobody blames the man next to you at the grocery store. For COVID we throw this out the window. When you take the approach to its logical conclusion you end up in a very scary place.

> That’s why if you catch the flu nobody blames the man next to you at the grocery store.

I would if he wasn't sufficiently careful about it.

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

#210

Post by __blockcipher__ » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #182

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The study linked in the OP estimates a median .27% IFR across all populations.

The following numbers are from several month old seroprevalence studies so take them with a grain of salt but:

https://www.ryankemper.io/post/2020-04-29-the_case_for_endin...

Pegs the 50-59 age range around the median IFR. Whereas the >70 mortality is where things really start falling off of a cliff.

BTW my point was never “your chance of dying in a car crash is >= COVID”...although that statement would be very true for <40 age populations. My point was more broadly that people have a risk aversion to COVID that is unmatched by their attitudes towards risk in all other areas of life.