Yeah there’s a huge problem with those numbers.
When they test for coronavirus, are they doing random samples of the population? Not at all.
Are they testing all those who have symptoms of Coronavirus?
No...
Have you seen how few tests have been done in these countries? I think you might be really shocked how few.
The people who are getting tested are often those who are really sick, or have very strong reason for thinking they might be (they just got off a cruise ship full of sick chinese).
So if you’re going to be alarmist and say omg death rate is 4%, consider that there might be huge numbers of undiagnosed cases throwing your numbers wayyy off.
My number of .5% is from south korea, which has the most extensive, drive through testing. But even this is not a random sample. People self select for these tests, and even if you show up they will not test you unless an interview shows you have reason to suspect you might have it (travel history + symptom).
But in reality disease vectors mean many people can get it indirectly through others and have it when they don’t even suspect it.
So even my .5% estimate is probably grossly exaggerated, which i admit in my post when i call my numbers worst case.
i might continue in a second post later.
Fair point for sure - if you increase the denominator (# of people confirmed infected), you’ll lower the CFR.
That said, the WHO is still to the best of my knowledge (as of today) saying the CFR is ~3.4%. And S. Korea seems to be an outlier (although not sure why) - China is 3.8%, for example and IMHO gives us the most accurate #s given it’s most established over there, and there’s a lot more data over a longer period of time to analyze.
Worse, though, the number of infected needing serious hospitalization (up to and including intubation) is reported to be 15-20%. If that’s anywhere near accurate, it’ll collapse our healthcare system.
You may have seen the press that Italy’s healthcare system is already buckling under the strain of only 5,800 cases. They’re out of doctors and are asking retired doctors and nurses to come out of retirement to help. Imagine what will happen when the # needing hospitalization increase beyond what are relatively pretty small %s at this point in time..
I saw a good post here earlier this AM (can’t find at the moment) of an analysis shared on Twitter that essentially proves (again, via reasonable projections and hard data vs hyperbole) that the US health system could quite easily hit max capacity if not collapse outright sometime around July of this year. Guess we will see what happens..hopefully we’ll dodge that and get a handle on this thing long before that time.