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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]

#221

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

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…

As with all statistical bullshitters, Taleb has smelled it back it April. Think of the man what you want, but whenever he is putting his reputation on the line and publicly accuses someone else of statistical ignorance, he turns out to be correct.

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

#222

Post by drran »

gridlockd wrote: post #75
segmondy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea how it would affect you or your family members until it does. This person lost 8 family members. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/14/us/phoenix-arizona-aguirre-fa...

"Then, despite all precautions against the virus, a family member got sick. Then another and another and another. Now, seven months after the shutdown, seven people in Ricardo Aguirre's extended family and his father, Jesús, 67, have died of Covid-19 complications." Two observations: First, this happened despite all precautions . Secondly, extended families can be hundreds of people, including many elderly. Lastly, i…

> First, this happened despite all precautions

... in this family.

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

#223

Post by [deleted] »

moralsupply wrote: post #135
bleepblorp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally illegal, outside of narrow circumstances, to fire guns in populated areas largely because stray bullets will kill people. Stray respiratory droplets exhaled by people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will also kill people. Presumably you're OK with rules that prevent people from firing guns in public. Why are you not OK with rules that are intended to reduce the risk of people unnecessarily spreading fatal inf…

The idea of a "causal nexus" is not accepted in any law system (natural or positive). The fact something can happen due to your actions can't be used as an ethical argument to limit your freedom of action. From the perspective of individual freedoms the ban of guns is unacceptable under the pretense they might end up harming others by chance; if that's the case, the police and the military themselves shouldn't have g…

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by tsimionescu »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #154
DangerousPie wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu is about 1/10 as deadly as coronavirus. And there’s a vaccine.

This is a debunked claim that arose from conflating IFR vs CFR. Please source your claim. In terms of overall IFR Influenza and COVID-19 appear to be comparable. Influenza kills at least an order of magnitude more children, and for those in between roughly 35-55 they both kill about the same, and for the very elderly COVID-19 is multiple times more deadly. The overall IFRs are very comprable except COVID-19 preferent…

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 at anywhere close to 100% ICU occupancy for extended periods of time, so if the high inflow persists, mortality is likely to increase much more.

The vast difference between Covid19 and influenza is anyway plain to see if you look at ICU rates, even with all the lockdowns.

So even though your analysis sounds convincing at first read, it is a very bad interpretation of the data. The reality is that Covid19 is a much worse disease than Influenza, and that drastic measures are required to keep it under control (barely).

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

#225

Post by ajb »

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?

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

#226

Post by mkolodny »

butthewho wrote: post #163
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…

This is a peer-reviewed article published by the World Health Organization, not a press release from an individual Stanford lab. Could you please enumerate your specific concerns with this study?

My main concern with this study is that it uses reported Covid-19 deaths to infer the fatality rate.

According to the paper, the fatality rates in the US are far higher than the rates in China and India. While the inferred fatality rate in the US is as high as ~1.3% (Louisiana), in many other places like China outside Wuhan and in India, the inferred death rate is close to 0.0%. I highly doubt that's actually the case. It seems much more likely that Covid-19 deaths have been under-reported in China and India.

Anecdotally, my Pakistani friend called Covid-19 a "rich-person" disease because only rich people in Pakistan can afford a Covid-19 test. That may account for the lower number of reported Covid-19 deaths in poorer places.

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

#227

Post by hcurtiss »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #218
joshuamorton wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its less deadly yet more infectious brother. Nitpicking here, Sars-1 is, as I understand, more infectious but also more obvious. So you don't have asymptomatic spread and other things. This ultimately comes down to exactly what you mean by "infectious" though. > is totally unproven speculation. At this point we have more known Covid-19 long haulers in the US than there are Sars-1 infections globally. Comparisons to…

Thanks joshua. By infectious I meant the basic reproduction number, but I believe SARS-2 is also more infectious (in the sense if likelihood of infection per exposure event) given its incredibly high binding affinities. It seems to be unusually good at infecting humans in a way SARS-1 wasn’t. Not sure if that’s due to furin cleavage or what. I’m a bit rusty on the mechanics there so open to dissenting opinions. Also…

Just a note to thank you for your extraordinary contributions to this thread. You’re dead on the money. If I had more time on a Saturday, I would be writing many of the same things.

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

#228

Post by jointpdf »

dabbledash wrote: post #198
jointpdf wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for myself here, but COVID-19 has increased my awareness of the impact of flu season and I will endeavor to mitigate the risk of infecting others in the future. In the past, I hardly gave it a second thought—it never occurred to me that I could kill or harm someone by being careless (e.g. riding the metro to/from the climbing gym during flu season and indiscriminately spreading germs). Masks, giving…

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 see the same scene and think, “look at all these petrified sheep”. I sort of understand, but I’d challenge those people to shift their perspective.

If kinship isn’t your thing but sober analytical thinking appeals to you, wearing a mask is a no-brainer: positive benefit with effectively zero cost (the only negative thing that can happen to you is that someone might think you’re a terrified dweeb, but they’d be wrong).

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

#229

Post by timr »

bonzini wrote: post #188
timr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No regular influenza could do that." Sure it could. The whole point of the IFR calculation is that it gives you an average perspective on how fatal a disease is, relative to other diseases. It's not an absolute maximum fatality rate, for every circumstance. Put a strain of "normal" flu in a vulnerable population with no pre-existing immunity, and it would do a lot of damage. But if you don't count all the other peop…

450 deaths a day was not the total, those were only those from confirmed COVID patients. Excess mortality was more like 650.

Citation required (I've looked, and all I can find are annual mortality rates per capita, which are higher, certainly, but not double the rate for a year). Even if you're right, a doubling of baseline mortality per day is certainly something plausible for influenza in specific scenarios.

Italy as a whole is now seeing new cases per day roughly twice that observed in the spring, and yet deaths are up a tiny fraction of what you would expect from the Lombardy example. So it's not clear that Lombardy represents a typical outcome, even for Italy:

http://opendatadpc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

Point being, again, it's difficult to draw conclusions from data points that are on the extremes of the distribution. The IFR is a measurement of average behavior.

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

#230

Post by supernovae »

dabbledash wrote: post #198
jointpdf wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak for myself here, but COVID-19 has increased my awareness of the impact of flu season and I will endeavor to mitigate the risk of infecting others in the future. In the past, I hardly gave it a second thought—it never occurred to me that I could kill or harm someone by being careless (e.g. riding the metro to/from the climbing gym during flu season and indiscriminately spreading germs). Masks, giving…

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…

People need to read history. History shows this isn't our first rodeo with a pandemic. History shows that social distancing works. History shows that society thrived after.

In fact, cities that didn't socially distance had things much worse and took longer to recover.

Humans are resilient creatures. We're not going to lose our social capabilities just because we're also evolved enough to be smart to stay safe for survival.

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