Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
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Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#2Summary:
> Studying changes in death rate is tricky because although the overall U.S. death rate for COVID-19 seems to be dropping, the drop coincides with a change in whom the disease is sickening.
> So have death rates dropped because of improvements in treatments? Or is it because of the change in who's getting sick?
> To find out, Horwitz and her colleagues looked at more than 5,000 hospitalizations in the NYU Langone Health system between March and August. They adjusted for factors including age and other diseases, such as diabetes, to rule out the possibility that the numbers had dropped only because younger, healthier people were getting diagnosed. They found that death rates dropped for all groups, even older patients by 18 percentage points on average.
> The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#3Aside from other factors like better treatments, it seems logical that mutations of the virus that make it less severe and therefore less detectable would spread more easily. Social distancing could inadvertently be breeding the virus towards banality
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#4Its crazy they didn't talk about testing. In April if you were a 25 year old with a mild cough you couldn't get a test even if you begged for one. Now you can get a test easily, its little wonder the denominator has gone up a lot.
Edit: Yeah I see its hospitalized and they tried to control. I'm not convinced its a useful study but at least dont upvote this.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#5Aside from other factors like better treatments, it seems logical that mutations of the virus that make it less severe and therefore less detectable would spread more easily. Social distancing could inadvertently be breeding the virus towards banality
That might happen eventually but so far there is no evidence that any of the newer strains are less lethal than the original one. They seem to be clinically equivalent. Coronaviruses mutate slowly.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#6Summary: > Studying changes in death rate is tricky because although the overall U.S. death rate for COVID-19 seems to be dropping, the drop coincides with a change in whom the disease is sickening. > So have death rates dropped because of improvements in treatments? Or is it because of the change in who's getting sick? > To find out, Horwitz and her colleagues looked at more than 5,000 hospitalizations in the NYU La…
Thanks!
> mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.
It's strange to phraseit like that; I would have phrased it as "mortality has dropped by a factor of 3"
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#7Its crazy they didn't talk about testing. In April if you were a 25 year old with a mild cough you couldn't get a test even if you begged for one. Now you can get a test easily, its little wonder the denominator has gone up a lot. Edit: Yeah I see its hospitalized and they tried to control. I'm not convinced its a useful study but at least dont upvote this.
The studies here attempt to sidestep the question of testing by measuring only hospitalized patients, adjusting for age and health conditions to try and rule out the "otherwise healthy people couldn't get into the hospital before" hypothesis.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#8Its crazy they didn't talk about testing. In April if you were a 25 year old with a mild cough you couldn't get a test even if you begged for one. Now you can get a test easily, its little wonder the denominator has gone up a lot. Edit: Yeah I see its hospitalized and they tried to control. I'm not convinced its a useful study but at least dont upvote this.
Important to note that their findings are of hospitalized patients. Even back in April, nearly all admitted patients were being tested.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#9Its crazy they didn't talk about testing. In April if you were a 25 year old with a mild cough you couldn't get a test even if you begged for one. Now you can get a test easily, its little wonder the denominator has gone up a lot. Edit: Yeah I see its hospitalized and they tried to control. I'm not convinced its a useful study but at least dont upvote this.
Important to note that their findings are of hospitalized patients. Even back in April, nearly all admitted patients were being tested.
It could also be that back in April not all patients that should have been hospitalised were indeed hospitalised (for lack of beds/doctors), presumably the threshold for "you should be admitted into the hospital" was higher in April compared to lets say July or August. As such, a lower "hospitalisation threshold" for July or August (compared to April) should have indeed caused a lower death-rate.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#10Summary: > Studying changes in death rate is tricky because although the overall U.S. death rate for COVID-19 seems to be dropping, the drop coincides with a change in whom the disease is sickening. > So have death rates dropped because of improvements in treatments? Or is it because of the change in who's getting sick? > To find out, Horwitz and her colleagues looked at more than 5,000 hospitalizations in the NYU La…
Thanks! > mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance. It's strange to phraseit like that; I would have phrased it as "mortality has dropped by a factor of 3"
I prefer the original - it tells me that 18% of all hospitalised patients are alive today where they would not have been before.
Yours tells me 2/3 of them that were dying are no longer, but it puts me on edge like I might be being baited into clicking - a 2/3 drop isn't necessarily impressive, like in normal times if 0.5% of ED patients are dying, dropping by a factor of three might just be the difference between a good and bad month.
18pp is always a big chunk (~1/5) of the total, it's notable whether the starting point was 90% or 20%.