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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

#81

Post by freeflight »

notankies wrote: post #51
oefrha wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point to me a single country or state "with no mask wearing". There are sane people (and believe it or not, a lot of them) everywhere, even where politicians are insane.

Uhh, famously, Sweden? Where have you been?

Sweden, along with the other Scandinavian examples, are also way less densely populated, particularly compared to a place like NYC.

There's also completely different base-levels for access to healthcare, different climates, a ton of factors besides masks.

One might as well point at Asian countries like Taiwan, Vietnam or Korea. Those are densely populated countries were mask-use is wide-spread and generally considered to have done best in their response, with the numbers to back it up.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#82

Post by alexchantavy »

mrkstu wrote: post #13
xpe wrote: post #2

Summary: > 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…

So the remaining question is, has the virus changed (mutated) to be less deadly, or have masks lessened the viral load on initial infection enough to give the immune system a better chance of fighting it off, or have treatments become that much more effective? Or a combination of the above?

I wonder if there are also statistics on permanent damage caused by the virus because death isn't the only risk - I've heard of 30-somethings being told they'd never be able to ski again after getting it.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#83

Post by jpambrun »

OJFord wrote: post #10
dnautics wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

With the 18% figure I need to know the starting point to get the picture. It could still be 82% or all the way down to 0%. Three fold increase in survivability is more informative.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#84

Post by treeman79 »

oefrha wrote: post #54
notankies wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, famously, Sweden? Where have you been?

As I said, politicians asking people not to wear masks != no people wearing masks. And here's a Reuters report from two months ago saying mask sales soared, picturing at least one person wearing mask: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden...

People forget that early on masks were almost impossible to get. And hospitals needed what few could be found.

So telling people to wear what they couldn’t get was awkward.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#85

Post by rossdavidh »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #79
rossdavidh wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, evolution pressure favors easy spreading, but if sick people stay home or go to the hospital, and non-sick people go out, then that pressure is to make the host sick less often. Early estimates for mortality in Wuhan were 3-5%. Later estimates kept dropping, and are now at 0.39%. Most viruses do not make the host sick, and the longer it's been in humans, the more likely it is that this is so. If the mortality r…

Coronaviruses mutate quite slowly, this one has been around for less than a year, you would not expect to see much change in virulence over that timespan. Any lowering of mortality is best explained by more thorough testing.

From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200409085644.h...

"There are too many rapid mutations to neatly trace a COVID-19 family tree. We used a mathematical network algorithm to visualise all the plausible trees simultaneously," said geneticist Dr Peter Forster, lead author from the University of Cambridge.

Also here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200505190550.h...

"They identified 198 mutations that appear to have independently occurred more than once, which may hold clues to how the virus is adapting..."

It may "mutate quite slowly" compared to, say, influenza, but compared to anything else it is mutating quite a lot, in only a matter of months. Virus generations are pretty fast.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#86

Post by HarryHirsch »

rossdavidh wrote: post #85
HarryHirsch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coronaviruses mutate quite slowly, this one has been around for less than a year, you would not expect to see much change in virulence over that timespan. Any lowering of mortality is best explained by more thorough testing.

From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200409085644.h... "There are too many rapid mutations to neatly trace a COVID-19 family tree. We used a mathematical network algorithm to visualise all the plausible trees simultaneously," said geneticist Dr Peter Forster, lead author from the University of Cambridge. Also here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200505190550.h... "They identified 198 muta…

This report takes the exact opposite viewpoint: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

"A typical SARS-CoV-2 virus accumulates only two single-letter mutations per month in its genome."

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#87

Post by bennyelv »

gridlockd wrote: post #17

This 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…

It’s a satisfying rationale, but it doesn’t take into account a range of unknown factors. What about different strains and variability in how deadly they are? What about the difference that the size of the initial dose of the virus makes to the end outcome? What about the effect of chance in how quickly and effectively a person’s immune system deals with it?

The rationale relies on a set of constants which are... probably not constant.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#88

Post by johbjo »

"Dry tinder" hypothesis: the massive (but hidden) early spread exposed vulnerable people, whereas now they are protecting themselves and possibly receiving smaller inoculations.

The magnitude of the early spread in cities like NY is difficult to estimate. Antibodies does not tell the full story.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#89

Post by gridlockd »

bennyelv wrote: post #87
gridlockd wrote: post #17

This 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…

It’s a satisfying rationale, but it doesn’t take into account a range of unknown factors. What about different strains and variability in how deadly they are? What about the difference that the size of the initial dose of the virus makes to the end outcome? What about the effect of chance in how quickly and effectively a person’s immune system deals with it? The rationale relies on a set of constants which are... pro…

Of course there's lots of factors, but this is one obvious factor that must not be ignored.

> What about different strains and variability in how deadly they are?

Is there any evidence that the variations spreading now are different from those spreading earlier this year?

> What about the difference that the size of the initial dose of the virus makes to the end outcome?

There was a study done on hamsters that only showed a minimal impact of initial dose on disease severity.

On the other hand, you have increased mortality among healthcare worker, which could be caused by higher exposure. However, there's also the impact of such a stressful situation on the immune system.

Re: Studies Point to Big Drop in Covid-19 Death Rates

#90

Post by rossdavidh »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #86
rossdavidh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200409085644.h... "There are too many rapid mutations to neatly trace a COVID-19 family tree. We used a mathematical network algorithm to visualise all the plausible trees simultaneously," said geneticist Dr Peter Forster, lead author from the University of Cambridge. Also here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200505190550.h... "They identified 198 muta…

This report takes the exact opposite viewpoint: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6 "A typical SARS-CoV-2 virus accumulates only two single-letter mutations per month in its genome."

Interesting article! But, from that very article: "Despite the virus’s sluggish mutation rate, researchers have catalogued more than 12,000 mutations in SARS-CoV-2 genomes."

Now, that doesn't tell us that these mutations matter, but that's because we don't know which ones matter. But even a rate of two single-letter mutations per month could theoretically result in 2^10 different variants in less than a year. It almost certainly won't, because many of the mutations will be the same (some parts of the genome almost certainly are more likely to mutate than others). But a rate of 2 single-letter mutations per month, is not much of a limit.

The nature article you reference (for which thanks, btw) says its mutation rate is about half of influenza's. Which is, yes, less, but that's still really fast compared to almost anything that isn't influenza. Even a slow-mutating virus is still mutating fast.

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