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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]

#381

Post by cblum »

dpc_pw wrote: post #380
cblum wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or make any large scale sacrifice Sacrifice is exactly what people aren't doing and why we're living through this disaster. The sacrifice we should be looking at is not the risk of catching COVID-19. It's that of following a set of rules that drastically minimize the spread of the disease. Simple rules, by the way. If everyone had the kind of thinking some (most?) Asian societies have (collective first, individual…

Yeah, I'm sure you are making such a sacrifice, working from home, having to eat doordash delivered food instead of a proper restuarant one. So virtuous. Here, have this medal.

You presume to know me.

I actually pick up food from local restaurants around me.

I (and many other people) continued to pay my gym membership when they had to close due to the lockdown, to support them during that time.

And so on.

I don't even have the option not to wfh (and even if I had, why would I go to the office and risk unnecessary exposure to the virus?), since my office closed for our safety even before government lockdowns became a thing.

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

#382

Post by nopzor »

Barrin92 wrote: post #373
nopzor wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

singapore has a special factor that you didnt mention. the very large majority of their cases were in foreign worker dorms. almost none of these workers are over 40, and are generally in good health. so the demographics are very different.

>so the demographics are very different. yeah sure but that's the point. the demographics in much of the world are more favourable. The median age in Nigeria is 18 years, on the African continent 20. Much of Asia is relatively young as well. It's the Western places who are the outlier.

you’re missing my point.

singapore has a more elderly population than the usa. the covid outbreak was largely in foreign worker forms which have a much lower average age than the rest of singapore. singapore is not nigeria. it’s quite an elderly society.

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

#383

Post by [deleted] »

chillwaves wrote: post #299
ceejayoz wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity > Herd immunity was first recognized as a naturally occurring phenomenon in the 1930s when A. W. Hedrich published research on the epidemiology of measles in Baltimore, and took notice that after many children had become immune to measles, the number of new infections temporarily decreased, including among susceptible children. (To be clear, though, I don't think the herd i…

The concept makes no sense. As soon as a carrier hits a group that does not have widespread immunities, you will get a disease cluster. Not only do you have to have a huge portion of the population exposed to the disease, you need to maintain that proportion indefinitely AND will still deal with occasional flair ups among vulnerable communities. That's not what most people think when they hear the word "immunity".

[deleted]

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

#384

Post by agapon »

onecommentman wrote: post #304
rndgermandude wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This isn't good news, really, not for middle-aged-adults anyway. Or for anybody who knows middle aged and older people, especially if you spend time with them. I am honestly more concerned about killing my parents than dying myself of covid-19. This is why I skipped my mom's birthday for example, because I had pretty mild cold-like symptoms... or maybe mild covid-19.

BTW, for those substantially younger than dirt. You may be wondering why your elder elders aren’t particularly frightened by this, but folks 40 to 60 are more sensitized. After a certain age momento mori , a reminder that you will die, start coming at you fast and furious. This is just one more. They probably care more about seeing you than this next scheduled flight to Heaven. What unique about the shutdowns and soc…

I think it's "memento" not "momento".

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

#385

Post by thu2111 »

mrb wrote: post #359
petertodd wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 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 » Without lockdowns these people would probably not have been able to access health care either, because of, well, the pandemic.

That's not correct. Sweden, which did not restrict healthcare access, and has one of the lowest ICU capacities in Europe, did not see hospital overload or healthcare rationing at any point.

Lockdowns have certainly created a death toll, that is by now mainstream consensus. The debate is about whether it's most of the excess death or only a large chunk of it.

But it's worth remembering that even then excess death numbers are low in absolute terms. A lot of people can't see that because for some reason it's standard for statistical agencies to only give a few years of data in convenient graphs on their websites, but older data is there, and it puts things in proportion. In the UK for example, which has one of the worst excess death rates in Europe, 2020 is so far a bit less deadly than 1999/2000 and the gap is widening [1]. But nothing remarkable happened in the UK in 1999/2000, nobody talks with sadness about those who were lost at the millennium. Nobody noticed anything at all. The idea that we've had some sort of terribly high or remarkable levels of excess death isn't the case: it's being noticed because people were told to expect enormous levels so started tracking the data with a microscope, and then it went up partly due to lockdowns.

In many other countries excess death is even less remarkable than that. Germany and Switzerland have seen years no different to the previous years for example. Cumulative death in Switzerland for 2020 is by now completely average, for example. There was no plague in Switzerland at any point.

[1] http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/

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

#386

Post by thu2111 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #242
tsimionescu wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your analysis falls apart at one crucial point: all of the data we have are for Covid19 IFR given the massive lockdowns and dedicated hospital infrastructure . If you look at regions that were ineffective in handling the spread and had their hospital capacity overwhelmed, mortality jumps through the roof - I think it was higher than 10% in Lombardia before the lockdowns. And remember that hospitals can't work…

I am genuinely baffled by the number of people who are slipping around this point. We don’t regularly have hospital ITUs stuffed full of people with influenza, threatening to overwhelm capacity. We don’t generally have city-, region- and country-wide lockdowns where transmission is massively curtailed. Even a very casual look at what happened in different countries makes it clear that this disease has an obviously di…

We don’t regularly have hospital ITUs stuffed full of people with influenza, threatening to overwhelm capacity

Who/where is we, here? Because that's absolutely not true for many countries, where seasonal flu is routinely reported by the press as creating overloaded hospitals. Here are some examples:

https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20190205/bad-...

"Bad flu seasons test US hospitals: Hospitals in the United States have implemented new policies based on last year’s severe influenza season, but infectious disease experts agree that America’s health care systems would still be seriously challenged by another bad influenza season."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nhs-winter-p...

"NHS winter pressure: Hospitals report 99 per cent capacity over festive period as flu season looms"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-5279685/Californi...

"Flu drives hospitals into 'war zone' conditions: Tents on the street in California, 'state of emergency' in Alabama, and Boston is using GATORADE to plug shortage of IV drips"

https://www.thelocal.fr/20170111/french-hospitals-stretched-...

"Hospitals in France at breaking point as flu epidemic spreads"

etc. Reports like this are common across the world. Partly it's that the press like reporting crisis stories and in any large medical system they can always find health workers willing to give them dramatic quotes. Partly it's that surge capacity is always inherently limited.

every single post mentioning COVID is full of these shallow armchair analyses that seem to think rejecting all prevailing wisdom is an inherent good

I've not seen anyone claim that rejecting all prevailing wisdom is inherently good. That seems like a strawman. The posts arguing about COVID aren't rejecting panic just for the sake of it, they're arguing about it because they disagree that the severity of the problem supports the consequent social policies.

HN is also full of people posting comments decrying the awful people who double check what government officials are claiming against data, facts and logic. Those are equally aggravating to those of us who don't see a problem with critical thinking: especially when the "prevailing wisdom" is a subjective assessment of who thinks what. One that's being seriously distorted by media hype and censorship, to boot. The "wisdom" many governments are listening to is sadly very far from wise.

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

#387

Post by tsimionescu »

thu2111 wrote: post #386
matthewmacleod wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am genuinely baffled by the number of people who are slipping around this point. We don’t regularly have hospital ITUs stuffed full of people with influenza, threatening to overwhelm capacity. We don’t generally have city-, region- and country-wide lockdowns where transmission is massively curtailed. Even a very casual look at what happened in different countries makes it clear that this disease has an obviously di…

We don’t regularly have hospital ITUs stuffed full of people with influenza, threatening to overwhelm capacity Who/where is we, here? Because that's absolutely not true for many countries, where seasonal flu is routinely reported by the press as creating overloaded hospitals. Here are some examples: https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20190205/bad-... "Bad flu seasons test US hospitals: Hospitals in the Un…

For the US 2018-2019 flu season ( https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html ):

> CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza

Covid19 has killed ~220,000 people so far in 2020 in the US.

From the same article you quoted about the epidemic in California (from 2018, mid-January):

> This year's outbreak is on track to becoming one of the worst flu seasons in recent history due to a deadly strand that has so far killed 85 adults and 20 children nationwide as the numbers continue to climb.

Covid19 has killed ~16,000 people so far in 2020 in California.

Related to the UK 2017-18 flu season that saw hospitals stretched ( https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/18/flu-outbreak... ):

> After 35 more deaths last week, 120 people across the country have died of flu-related symptoms since early October, compared with 45 in the same period in 2016-17.

Covid19 has killed ~43,000 people in the UK so far in 2020.

For the France 2016-2017 flu epidemic ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321906828_Influenza... ):

> During the epidemic wave, a marked excess mortality estimate at 14,400 deaths attributable to influenza was observed.

Covid19 has killed ~34,000 people in France in 2020 so far.

Point being, perhaps it is the old news that were a bit exaggerated; either way, Covid19 is measurably worse than then any recent flu, and this is after extreme lockdown measures compared to any flu pandemic in living memory.

Note: I am fully aware that some of the lower numbers are partial numbers from about the middle of the flu season. Feel free to look up the final numbers for that season as well - they will be at worst half the Covid19 numbers.

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

#388

Post by marcell »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #365
marcell wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you summarize the objections? I skimmed the BuzzFeed article and it is very long, filled with vague innuendo. I couldn’t find any argument on the merits. Similarly your post is an ad hominem, but you didn’t make any arguments based on merits.

No.

...? So it’s just an ad hominem?

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

#389

Post by mkolodny »

nradov wrote: post #331
mkolodny wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people in Mumbai get Covid-19 positivity tests for free? If not, then I'd be surprised if all of the 18 million people in Mumbai have been able to afford them.

Did you read the article? They gave free tests to a random sample of Mumbai residents.

Antibody tests check whether someone has had Covid-19 in the past. Those tests are different from tests which check to see whether someone currently has Covid-19.

If someone dies without having already tested positive for Covid-19, in many places they won't be counted as having died from Covid-19. So it's likely that many Covid-19 deaths haven't been counted - especially in places where most people can't afford the tests that check whether they currently have Covid-19.

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

#390

Post by __blockcipher__ »

anoncake wrote: post #238
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sorry for the delay.

https://pastebin.com/GeCpFhih

very haphazard but at least will give you pointers to most of the studies

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