I'm very glad fewer people are dying, but Most people didn't die with Polio... they were somehow crippled for life... I suspect the same is true with Covid-19. We need to eliminate it, not manage it.
It's impossible to eliminate it.
Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#22Ummm, no? https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths#what-is-the-daily-nu... First graph is global deaths daily. Pretty linear to me. Second grapn is per country/continent. Third graph plots cases vs deaths. From this it seems that we detect more cases but same amount of people are dying. We are testing more. Thats it sadly. All
Classic problem with derivatives: when you have a "rate" of something, it's with respect to a second thing. Most often it's time, which is what people usually default to if you leave out that piece of information. And that's what your chart shows: steady number of deaths per week. But the article is talking about number of deaths per person hospitalized. That is the rate that is decreasing... with respect to time.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#23"So have death rates dropped because of improvements in treatments? Or is it because of the change in who's getting sick? "
No, it's likely dropping because the virus is changing. There were several hundred variants of the virus by May (in the UK, most of which were found worldwide). It is a completely normal and expected event that a virus new to humans, will evolve to become less likely to either kill the host, or stir up a counter-response from the immune system, since variants that do either of those have a harder time spreading than variants that don't (or do them less).
John Ioannidis (https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf) has demonstrated that the virus' mortality rate is around 0.39% among those under 70. The study here is looking at the mortality rate among those hospitalized, which could be changing simply because those who get sick are more or less willing to go to the hospital, or for half a dozen other reasons that have nothing to do with either who's getting sick or how they are being treated.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#24I'm very glad fewer people are dying, but Most people didn't die with Polio... they were somehow crippled for life... I suspect the same is true with Covid-19. We need to eliminate it, not manage it.
I'm not aware of any epidemiologist who believes Covid-19 can be globally eliminated without decades of work. (This shouldn't be surprising, given how few diseases we've managed to eliminate in the past.) By all means let's work on it, but we're going to need to do some management in the meantime.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#25Regeneron has 300,000 doses and plans on making hundreds of thousands more in a short time period. If it’s as effective as Trump’s experience has shown, this could have the potential of saving many or most of the US deaths going forward.
One person's experience doesn't really demonstrate efficacy; in his age group, the survival rate is still ~94%.
The costs of Trump's extremely aggressive treatment course - a dedicated staff of 12 doctors, a private suite, experimental expensive therapies, etc. - aren't feasible for the general population, either.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#26Ummm, no? https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths#what-is-the-daily-nu... First graph is global deaths daily. Pretty linear to me. Second grapn is per country/continent. Third graph plots cases vs deaths. From this it seems that we detect more cases but same amount of people are dying. We are testing more. Thats it sadly. All
It's a shame you're not a referee for the Journal of Hospital Medicine; you might have caught that embarrassing error.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#27"So have death rates dropped because of improvements in treatments? Or is it because of the change in who's getting sick? " No, it's likely dropping because the virus is changing. There were several hundred variants of the virus by May (in the UK, most of which were found worldwide). It is a completely normal and expected event that a virus new to humans, will evolve to become less likely to either kill the host, or…
a virus new to humans, will evolve to become less likely to either kill the host
Oh, come on, the pox had mortality > 30 %. Evolutionary pressure favours easy spreading.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#28This may be uncomfortable to point out, but at some point, the virus has to run out of susceptible people to kill. The real chance of dying from COVID for an individual is not the average of ~0.4%. It's 0.0% for the vast majority of people, but for people whose immune system fails them, it's closer to 100%. Such a condition usually takes years to build up. Excess mortality graphs show that a lot of people dodged the…
Of course you are getting downvoted but you are 100% correct
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#29What about the vitamin D hypothesis that HN loves so much? I'm far from sold on it yet, but summer in the northern hemisphere should correlate with increased Vitamin D levels, which is hypothesized to be protective from severe results in COVID-19. The concern here then of course is that the death rate is about to start going back up.
Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates
#30Its 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.
Yeah I had started lying to both get tests, and get results back quicker
There was no sacrifice at the expense of other people that needed a scarce resource more, only complete mismanagement and disorganization