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]

#231

Post by moralsupply » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #201

wedn3sday wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What if I disagree and at the same time I don't harm anyone? Would you live with the idea that I may have my freedoms and property arrested by the government in order to make you supposedly safe?

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

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

#232

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

ajb wrote: post #225

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…

Wait, is that the same John Ioannidis who wrote "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False", pretty much the most influential paper on statistical error for the last 50 years?

Yes it is and that doesn't make his current fraudulent shenanigans any better. It makes them more disheartening, however.

I'm not an expert in the replication crisis but I have to say that as a conceptual framework, it has the problem of pointing a finger at all research - saying "Most Published Research" etc, when the replication crisis is quite concentrated in experimental psychology, complex biomedical causation research and fields with pretty specific difficulties (humans taking simple psychology tests seem to be easily influenced by outside factors, the biochemistry of mammals seems to incredible variations in it's operations). The germ theory of disease doesn't by itself fall into this paradigm (even if humans are complex, the transmission mechanism of a germ is simple). And there's the problem, it's as if Ioannidis decided, "nothing is true, I'll claim what I want".

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

#233

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #97

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.

What you need to look is not fatality rate, but total fatalities caused by the disease. Flu kills 60000 a year max in US, Covid kills 5x that number. And it is unclear what will be a fatality rate for younger people whose organs are damaged by previous infection.

Well, the 2017 flu was a little over 60,000, but it was close to 60k, so we could say that, but the 1968 and 1957 flus were worse than that. Covid-19 isn't to 300,000 (5x 60k) yet, but I suppose it could get there. However, the idea of organs damaged, resulting in future fatalities, is not just "unclear". We could speculate the same about almost any virus, or for that matter any vaccine. Until time has passed, we won't know, but at this point neither northern Italy nor any other region that had early waves of Covid-19 have reported any such problem in even 1% of cases (not even 0.01% of cases, that I'm aware of).

If a vaccine is tested on 10,000 people, and appears safe, we call it good enough, without waiting for several years to check on the possibility of long-term affects. It's not like vaccines have never had problems, but at some point you need to go by what you actually know and have seen, and the same logic applies to viruses (or any other risk). We haven't in fact seen anything that suggests a widespread problem in people who recover from covid-19, and given past results with SARS, MERS, and the four other coronaviruses which cause "colds", we don't have much reason to expect it. Could it happen in some significant percentage? Sure. The same is true of any virus, or for that matter any vaccine. But we don't gain anything from speculating on that.

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

#234

Post by dabbledash » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

jointpdf wrote: post #228

dabbledash wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disagree strongly with the notion that mitigating risk of harm to others via awareness and simple action somehow makes society less human. I live in DC, a notoriously cold and closed off city as far as social interaction goes. Mask usage (even outdoors) is close to 100% here. When I see someone wearing a mask, I’m filled with a sense of warmth and camaraderie—that person cares about me and others. Someone else may…

It goes far beyond masks. No hugging. No shaking hands. No singing. No bars. Masks and plexiglass for kids who are lucky enough to actually get school. Not having funerals for the dead. We can put up with these things in the short term to protect the vulnerable, and you’re right that people’s concern for others speaks well of them.

But the logic some people use to support these things veers into territory where it sounds like they would be willing to make (or demand) any sacrifice for literally any increase in safety. I worry about how that will play out long term.

But that’s just my fear. Hopefully it’s overblown (and it probably is).

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

#235

Post by thebruce87m » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #176

ekianjo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flu kills 60000 a year max in US These numbers are patently false. If this was even remotely true pretty much every family would know someone who has died from the flu at some point. The flu numbers are statistical evaluations based on no actual death counts. The real numbers of deaths from the flu are very likely much, much smaller.

Your logic is actually backwards. Flu is extrapolated but it’s extrapolated fairly. Whereas for COVID-19 we perform mass testing and label every PCR-positive death a COVID death. I hope it’s self evident why that approach will massively inflate COVID deaths but if you would like I can break it down in detail for you.

That’s why you look at excess mortality to see what’s actually happening and see how covid is being undercounted. You can’t hide the bodies:

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking...

You can look at past graphs here for a number of European countries to see how countries like Norway and Finland compare to e.g. the U.K. and Sweden. This helps dispel any myths about lockdowns themselves causing significant excess mortality: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

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

#236

Post by anoncake » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

noja wrote: post #146

anoncake wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not affect the IFR, it just make it harder to measure.

You don't know the number of people who die who were infected if you didn't test them. I think your argument is only valid when the death rate is the same amongst tested and untested people.

I don't know how, but epidemiologists are able to estimate it.

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

#237

Post by supernovae » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

qwerty1234599 wrote: post #93

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.

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.

We flattened the curve... we bought time... most of us took active measures. It's helped. We have evidence it works.

Yet, people, who i assume are smart people, say that we're overreacting and we're causing societal harm and taking away their freedoms.

I can only laugh and cringe...

History shows that those cities that took active measures in every prior epidemic survived better and recovered better and thrived after.

This isn't our first pandemic, wont' be our last. Where we failed is we were woefully unprepared, our administration convinced people it's not that bad but here we are months later, deaths are still pushing upwards of 1,000 americans a day and people are saying its no worse than the flu.

There is no evidence to support this argument unless you're trying to deceive people.

You don't even need to know statistics. Take the worst flue year where we had 48k deaths that year. Covid is 5x worse that and we still haven't even made it through an entire year.

Take our best flue year - 1986-87 - where only 2,868 or so died. We'll be 100x times worse than that year with COVID alone and we're just NOW entering the common flu season.

The basic math doesn't support some of these studies that seem to use statistics for political gain rather than simple math for communicating the obvious differences.

And lets not forget - the death toll is only under control because we are taking active measures.

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

#238

Post by anoncake » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #171

ceejayoz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've got plenty of concrete evidence COVID infections can result in long-lasting chronic symptoms. That's sufficient reason to be cautious until we know the rate.

We actually don’t have this evidence. If anything we have strong evidence of the opposite. SARS-2 radiological abnormalities resolve in months and this is for hospitalized cases which are by definition more severe than your usual cases. There is really no evidence of what you claim. We’re now 7 months into the major part of this pandemic and people are still stuck citing the fears we all had in April.

Thank you for this post and all the others. Where can I find the evidence you mention?

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

#239

Post by timr » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #168

timr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are beginning to be data on this available around well defined, young, and ultra healthy groups such as athletic leagues. Look within a given league at these long term effects / organ damage / health problems among those who recovered to rule out a lot of the self-selection or other variables." I'm aware of one publication, which showed 4 athletes with heart-inflammation markers in a sample of 26 athletes: htt…

BTW I’m on mobile so didn’t re read that study but when I read the myocarditis study a month ago it turned out that the base rate of myocarditis was really no different than the COVID-19 rate and thus the whole scare was more or leas unfounded. For studyi these supposed long-term effects I like to look at SARS-1 studies since we’ve had almost two decades. What we find is a few months of raidological ling abnormalitie…

"I’m on mobile so didn’t re read that study but when I read the myocarditis study a month ago it turned out that the base rate of myocarditis was really no different than the COVID-19 rate and thus the whole scare was more or leas unfounded."

Generally agreed. There have been a few papers on this, and most of them were...flawed. To say the least.

This paper is the latest to suggest lurking heart problems in young healthy people, and while the sample is quite small and the observed metrics are questionable, I haven't seen anyone seriously attack the methodology. But in general, I'm skeptical of the claim as well, and I wouldn't suggest that this paper is definitive evidence of anything.

"Unfortunately reading these studies requires a very critical lens. You showed that in your above comments but, for example, the person alleging these unproven and speculative long term impacts appears not to take that critical approach."

100% agreed. It's been a general problem with all of these Covid-related pre-prints. Terrible, flawed studies get picked up by the media and credulously reported. By the time the flaws are found by serious researchers, the media is on to the next headline, never taking time to correct the record.

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

#240

Post by supernovae » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #164

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.

> It's not as if we decided out of thin air the virus was dangerous. But this is kind of exactly what we did. Go look at a yearly all-cause mortality chart going back the last 110 years. You’ll see this year is a noticeable but not so great uptick (of which many of the deaths will be overdoses, suicides, lack of medical treatment for preventable diseases etc btw). Whereas say the 1918 Flu pandemic was much more deadl…

In the worst flu seasons we have 50k people die. In the easiest flu seasons we have 3k people die.

So if you take the worst flu season - which we count as a year - we're almost 5x that with covid and its not even a full year yet...

If you take the best flu year, we're pushing 100x that.

Where are we over estimating anything when we break it down into simple terms?

Which btw, these current death rates are with active measures in place. If we didn't have these measures then the trends set early on would be off the charts by now.