Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported • Hacker News Board

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#41

Post by AmericanChopper » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:48 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #18

ManlyBread wrote: post #12

I became numb to news like this because it doesn't seem to have any reflection in the reality around me. The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty and no one I asked knows anyone who was infected. The 80x number looks like science fiction to me.

Well, that obviously depends on where 'around you' is. Compare to New York City, where there have been an estimated 17,000 deaths (and even that's probably undercounted, going by some studies of excess deaths compared to previous years), and at the peak there were hundreds of unclaimed bodies per week being buried in mass graves.

Singapore has had a death rate of 0.06%, with ~42k cases. The main difference between them and the rest of the world has been how much they test. New York has more hospital beds per 1,000 than Singapore does for instance. There’s no other factor that could possibly explain the death rates being off by more than 3 orders of magnitude between those two places.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#42

Post by deathgrips » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:48 AM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #17

qeternity wrote: post #10

History books will not be kind to our past and present handling of covid-19. Incurring incredible economic and social damage without fully understanding the threat. It’s been very clear for some time that covid is not nearly as lethal as once feared AND even more clear that we over quarantined. In the UK we have hospitals built specifically for covid that are completely unused. This isn’t flattening the curve, it’s c…

Maybe. New Zealand took a different path and managed the problem with far fewer deaths.

America needs to secede from North America and close all airports and seaports...

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#43

Post by jakeogh » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

unlikelymordant wrote: post #36

adamhearn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely anecdotal, but my good friend’s brother is an ER doctor. He said the hospital required them to label the cause of death for all patients in the hospital as covid if there was as much as one symptom. I don’t want to downplay the sadness of the deaths, but I think it is a bit foolish for us to base our number of deaths of off untested patients...

You can just look at the all cause excess deaths and see that the number of people that have died so far this year is much higher than previous years in New York. So whether you agree that person A died from covid or not, there were many more deaths due to something.

What is the effect of fear? Cortisol spikes and avoiding going to the doctor for what would normally be a good reason need to be researched.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#44

Post by deathgrips » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #18

ManlyBread wrote: post #12

I became numb to news like this because it doesn't seem to have any reflection in the reality around me. The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty and no one I asked knows anyone who was infected. The 80x number looks like science fiction to me.

Well, that obviously depends on where 'around you' is. Compare to New York City, where there have been an estimated 17,000 deaths (and even that's probably undercounted, going by some studies of excess deaths compared to previous years), and at the peak there were hundreds of unclaimed bodies per week being buried in mass graves.

It's not a given that people keep dying at the same rate year after year.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#45

Post by verylittlemeat » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:50 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #31

adamhearn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely anecdotal, but my good friend’s brother is an ER doctor. He said the hospital required them to label the cause of death for all patients in the hospital as covid if there was as much as one symptom. I don’t want to downplay the sadness of the deaths, but I think it is a bit foolish for us to base our number of deaths of off untested patients...

Except you can see the excess total deaths compared to previous years and how well it correlates and is otherwise unexplained [1]. A lot of the labeling occurred because people couldn’t get tested yet presented symptoms that indicated covid. In that situation, you can’t say 100% without a test, yet it’s the reasonable conclusion in a pandemic. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

Something worth keeping in mind is how many fewer people died of other causes compared to previous years [1]. Yes, the data will show an excess number of people died versus previous years but I believe the parent comment is saying we should pay close attention to what the cause of death really means in terms of age and comorbidity.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/HfaMhcK.jpg

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#46

Post by crooked-v » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:50 AM UTC

jakeogh wrote: post #37

martin_bech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are aware that despite the world very best efforts, almost 500.000 people have already died, and in many parts of the world, its actually not slowing down, but speeding up?

These numbers would be much more useful if they were in pairs; (#people, #avg_years_lost). https://abcnews.go.com/Health/swine-flu-h1n1-pandemic-deaths... "Though the virus was deadly, the swine flu pandemic is still considered to have been a fairly mild one. The CDC calculates that up to 575,000 people may have died from H1N1 in 2009. The WHO estimates that the seasonal flu kills up to 500,000 people each year. Both…

Sure... and then consider that, unlike swine flu or seasonal flu, COVID-19 has already killed hundreds of thousands of people even with near-total lockdowns to the point of dystopic absurdity in many countries†, has done so over the course of only a few months, and due to lackluster government response in some countries is still increasing exponentially in some places.

† See China's brief use of 'only specific designated people per apartment building are allowed to leave the building for specific designated shopping trips, under the threat of military force' policies at the worst of the peak in its cities.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#47

Post by ageitgey » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

ManlyBread wrote: post #12

I became numb to news like this because it doesn't seem to have any reflection in the reality around me. The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty and no one I asked knows anyone who was infected. The 80x number looks like science fiction to me.

People want this thing to be over, so there's a desire to find reasons to believe that we are further along than we thought. Combined with this being a novel disease that no one fully understands, there's a lot of room for those theories to develop. The current best science answer to how many people remain susceptible to infection is "nobody really knows but our best guess is not to assume the best case without better evidence so act like the worst case".

But one thing that is easy to explain is your point about not knowing anyone who was infected:

- At the peak of this epidemic in hard-hit places like the UK, something like only 1 in 400 people are known to have been infected at a time.

- Many younger people (as much as 70%) show absolutely no symptoms when they are infected.

- The disease is astronomically worse for elderly people. One study said that for young person, getting COVID was as risky as going for a ~200 mile car drive but as a 90 year old it was as risky as flying a WWII bomber mission. Nearly everyone who is dying is 70+ and mostly 80+. Obviously some younger people do die, but the numbers are much, much lower. We are talking 10s of people total under 40 in most countries.

So unless you are hanging out with a social circle of 80-90 year olds, you actually aren't very likely know anyone directly affected! But that doesn't mean tons of people weren't dying. They just aren't the people you would know. It's a different social circle.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#48

Post by deathgrips » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

xlii wrote: post #35

ManlyBread wrote: post #12

I became numb to news like this because it doesn't seem to have any reflection in the reality around me. The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty and no one I asked knows anyone who was infected. The 80x number looks like science fiction to me.

Isn't this the exactly case, though? It's not about how infectious it is, but how severe. Early reports said that 90% or more [1] people develop symptoms and that the average death rate is 3.5% (with some outlets even suggesting 10%...). If we divide those estimates by 10 we're getting 9% of symptoms and 0.35% lethality. While I won't argue for 80 as being the number that's almost 2 degrees of magnitude. That would m…

There wasn't a consensus back in February that covid19 was the black plague. Even though we didn't have the data to justify shutdowns, governments everywhere shutdown businesses because politicians won't personally feel the pain of job loss.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#49

Post by m0zg » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:51 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #18

ManlyBread wrote: post #12

I became numb to news like this because it doesn't seem to have any reflection in the reality around me. The numbers are supposed to be huge yet hospitals are nearly empty and no one I asked knows anyone who was infected. The 80x number looks like science fiction to me.

Well, that obviously depends on where 'around you' is. Compare to New York City, where there have been an estimated 17,000 deaths (and even that's probably undercounted, going by some studies of excess deaths compared to previous years), and at the peak there were hundreds of unclaimed bodies per week being buried in mass graves.

Unclaimed bodies have been buried in "mass graves" in NY for many years. It's just it didn't occur to anyone to film this from a drone before to drive clicks and outrage.

The real scandal is that NY, NJ, CT, MA and a few other states allowed C19 to spread in elderly care facilities and nursing homes. NY and NJ inexplicably _sent COVID patients_ there. As of Jun 2nd, nursing homes are responsible for 40% of all US COVID deaths: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/06/nursing-.... If heads don't roll for this, I don't know if we have justice in this country.

Re: Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

#50

Post by arrrg » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

jjjensen90 wrote: post #15

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #3

How does this reconcile with the actual data we have on total infection rate in e.g. Spain where a representative poll was done?

Because it's possible that there are many, many infected who don't seroconvert or ever manifest symptoms, and therefore would not have been tested with a PCR test, and would have a negative antibody test. We can see this in effect in studies of household attack rates and seroconversion. See this recent preprint and interesting thread (/r/covid19 is a strict science sub, not to be confused with /r/coronavirus) https:/…

But does this get us a lot?

In Brooklyn and Queens between 0.2 and 0.25 percent of the total population (!) died.

So this sort of puts a floor on the IFR and 0.2 is not that far off from the IFR determined through serological testing – maybe a half or a third of that.

So yeah, maybe there is an effect – but can it really be a drastic effect? I don’t think there are orders of magnitude of difference in there, maybe a difference of a few percent (e.g. an IFR of 0.45 instead of 0.5 percent)?

My working hypothesis has been an IFR of around 0.5% for a pretty long time, which seems pretty realistic to me.