trysail
Catch Me Who Can
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2005
- Posts
- 25,593
....
Why Death Rates From Coronavirus Can Be Deceiving
by Jon Hamilton
NPR
__________________
Which Is Worse, The Virus Or The Response To It? (2)
by Francis Menton ("Manhattan Contrarian")
B.A., Yale College
J.D., Harvard University
Retired Partner, Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP
Why Death Rates From Coronavirus Can Be Deceiving
by Jon Hamilton
NPR
"...In Italy, about 10% of people known to be infected have died. In Iran and Spain, the case fatality rate is higher than 7%. But in South Korea and the U.S. it's less than 1.5%. And in Germany, the figure is close to 0.5%...
...the case fatality rate tends to decrease over time. The reason: When a new disease first shows up, testing usually focuses on severely ill people who are at high risk of dying. Later on, testing is more likely to include people with milder illness who are less likely to die.
That's what happened with West Nile virus, which appeared in the U.S. in 1999. At first, when scientists only knew of about a few dozen cases, it appeared the mortality rate was higher than 10%. But wider testing eventually found hundreds of thousands of people who'd been infected but never got sick enough to notice. Today, more than 3 million Americans have been infected and studies show that fewer than 1% become seriously ill...
...A study published last week estimated that in Wuhan, the chance that someone who developed coronavirus symptoms would die was actually 1.4%...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/821958435/why-death-rates-from-coronavirus-can-be-deceiving
...the case fatality rate tends to decrease over time. The reason: When a new disease first shows up, testing usually focuses on severely ill people who are at high risk of dying. Later on, testing is more likely to include people with milder illness who are less likely to die.
That's what happened with West Nile virus, which appeared in the U.S. in 1999. At first, when scientists only knew of about a few dozen cases, it appeared the mortality rate was higher than 10%. But wider testing eventually found hundreds of thousands of people who'd been infected but never got sick enough to notice. Today, more than 3 million Americans have been infected and studies show that fewer than 1% become seriously ill...
...A study published last week estimated that in Wuhan, the chance that someone who developed coronavirus symptoms would die was actually 1.4%...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/27/821958435/why-death-rates-from-coronavirus-can-be-deceiving
__________________
Which Is Worse, The Virus Or The Response To It? (2)
by Francis Menton ("Manhattan Contrarian")
B.A., Yale College
J.D., Harvard University
Retired Partner, Wilkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP
"...Then there is approach number 2, trying to find some representative hard data from which to make some realistic projections. The best I have been able to find on that score comes from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. That’s the one where several people tested positive for the virus, so the passengers were all kept in quarantine on the ship for several weeks before they were allowed to disembark. Extensive data were collected from these passengers. Here is an analysis of those data by a guy named Willis Eschenbach on March 16; and here is further analysis from a guy named Nic Lewis on March 25.
There were more than 3700 people on the ship (including crew), all of them clearly exposed to the virus. Every single person was tested. Results (from Lewis):
Number of deaths was 8. They don’t seem to know the age for one of the deaths, but of the seven they know, all were over 70 and 4 were over 80. The ages of the people on the ship skewed far older than the general population (details at the links).
I’m not saying that this isn’t something serious. But the fact is that most people exposed did not get the disease, and the deaths are confined entirely or almost entirely to the very old.
I’m going to go out on a limb and make my own projection of deaths from this thing in the U.S. through the current flu season (to the summer): 10,000 to 20,000. Will the lockdown have helped to keep the numbers low? Probably to some degree, but we’ll never know by how much..."
more...
There were more than 3700 people on the ship (including crew), all of them clearly exposed to the virus. Every single person was tested. Results (from Lewis):
'Some 706 (19.0%) ultimately had positive test results, of whom (based on the NIID data for 619 of them) 51% were asymptomatic. The infection rate varied between 10.0% for ages under 30 years to 24.5% for ages 60+ years.'
Number of deaths was 8. They don’t seem to know the age for one of the deaths, but of the seven they know, all were over 70 and 4 were over 80. The ages of the people on the ship skewed far older than the general population (details at the links).
I’m not saying that this isn’t something serious. But the fact is that most people exposed did not get the disease, and the deaths are confined entirely or almost entirely to the very old.
I’m going to go out on a limb and make my own projection of deaths from this thing in the U.S. through the current flu season (to the summer): 10,000 to 20,000. Will the lockdown have helped to keep the numbers low? Probably to some degree, but we’ll never know by how much..."
more...
sigh. Thanks, Tex. 
