Posted on 04/22/2020 7:02:10 AM PDT by taxcontrol
Where was that said? I haven’t seen any article mention that.
Exactly...
Why does that matter? I understand that there is likely a very large number of unreported coronavirus cases out there, but we should only be concerned with the mortality rate of those who present themselves with the disease. In other words if I show symptoms, I have an X% chance of dying from it. In my state of Virginia, there have been 9,630 reported cases in the last six weeks with 324 deaths. That's a mortality rate of a little under 3.5%. That's significant number of deaths in a state which is not expected to reach it's peak until June, or some say August. What number of lucky people who have been infected and show no symptoms is really only of academic interest.
It was in an article critiquing the original report yesterday. They also pointed out the bias in recruiting volunteers on Facebook. Hardly “random”.
It is impossible to know what the death rate is without knowing the full extent of the pandemic. And without a lot better testing than we have we’ll never know that.
Thoughts?
You sound ecstatic.
We need to know that each specific individual listed in the numerator also exist in the denominator or it is a meaningless tool of measure.
A serious discussion? Are you kidding me?
There are no reliable stats on this anywhere. Period.
Until every single person is tested, you can’t begin to state facts, and even at that point greed will make the “numbers” unreliable. All we’re dealing with here are statistics, and wildly unreliable statistics with incomplete and/or faulty data.
This whole circle jerk of statistics over this virus is a joke.
You need to divide the death rate by the death+recovered cases, known as total resolved cases. The problem with that however is the reporting of the total of resolved cases(one way or the other) is a lagging number so the death rate always looks high early and drops at the end of the plague cycle.
Places like NYC are attributing deaths to covid19 when such deaths haven’t been tested for presence of the virus; it is skewing the numbers no matter what method one uses for tracking.
CDC has instructed all deaths to be determined to be caused by COVID19. There is on average about 7,400 deaths in the US everyday.
https://www.indexmundi.com/blog/index.php/2018/03/05/how-many-people-die-a-day-in-the-us/
We won’t know how many of the 776093 are yet to die or recover. The only way we know if prevalence is on the increase are the deaths that are confirmed as positive with covid 19 that occur in numbers that rise above the normal noise floor of numbers of deaths from other causes.
That is why labeling deaths as covid19 that haven’t been confirmed as such but only presumed to be is such political dirty pool. It muddies the water and does not give any well meaning politician any real data in deciding how and when to open up their states.
There is no such thing as a mortality rate until there is a denominator.
However, there is significant pressure on medical staff to report virtually any death as covid-19 related. As I understand it:
If a patient dies and has tested positive for covid-19, maybe dies of acute respiratory failure ok, probably a valid covid-19 fatality.
However, if a patient happens to test positive for covid-19 but subsequently dies of a heart attack or stroke - still a covid-19 death. Hmm, perhaps tougher to justify. Was covid-19 the cause of his or her death? Or maybe it was 40 years of pizza, whiskey, and cigarettes? Hard to say, and probably no black and white answer. How bad were the symptoms?
But it gets even worse. If a patient dies and it looks like they may have had covid-19 - eg. they had some kind of flu, respiratory illness etc. they are counted. No test needed, no confirmation needed. Now this one is hard to justify to me. Sure, there is a "pandemic" and covid-19 is going around. But so are other respiratory illnesses. Could be flu, could be pneumonia, an allergic reaction, etc. etc. They may justify it as playing the odds but do the odds really justify such an assumption? Well, these kind of assumptions are feeding back into the odds... Kind of a self fulfilling prophecy - we'll assume he/she died of covid-19 because so many people are apparently dying from it...
But that's not even as bad as it gets. Medical staff is allowed, even encouraged (by facility reimbursement rates) to flag deaths as covid-19 related if they have any reason to suspect it could be. Basically, unless you have a negative test saying this deceased patient absolutely did not have covid-19 they are allowed, even encouraged to report it at a covid-19 death. SMH...
There is no way to know just how badly skewed and polluted the actual covid-19 numbers are by all these deaths that shouldn't be considered covid-19 deaths. It is instructive that people in the field are noting that we're apparently not dying from other typical causes nearly as much as usual. Deaths attributed to cardiac issues (heart disease, heart attack, stroke, etc.) are noticeably down. Ditto pneumonia. Ditto flu. We didn't suddenly all get healthier in the last several months. People are still dying at probably about the same rates due to these other conditions. We're just no-longer counting them - they are all going into the covid-19 bucket.
Maybe an after the fact analysis of how many other "expected" deaths didn't actually occur during this "pandemic" will allow researchers with integrity to estimate real numbers of covid-19 deaths and determine a realistic mortality rate.
This is BULLSHIRT!
NOBODY KNOWS the denominator, nobody knows the numerator. What kind of value does such a percentage derived from that have?
I know the answer to that question is ZERO, I am 100% sure about that!
Not exactly. You could have symptoms but still not get tested because your symptoms are not severe enough. The people being tested are disproportionately those with severe symptoms.
Stupid statement much? The poster raises a legitimate question.
I think we should make a distinction between those who have the virus but suffer few if any symptoms, and those whose symptoms are severe enough to be reported or require treatment. The first group I would say did not have the coronavoris in anything but name and can be ignored, while the second group actually has the disease we need to count and be worried about.
Severity runs from sniffles.... to flu-ish, cough, aches, fever, sore throat, headache, exhaustion, feeling awful .... to difficulty breathing, pneumonia, hypoxia, severe inflammatory response, dehydration, cardiac and cerebral vascular events.
The first category not tested, the second, probably not, the third yes, but anyone there is in bad trouble. There are still many more people in the second category than the third.
Divide deaths today by confirmed cases two weeks ago.
So according to this article from April 6 (roughly 2 weeks ago), https://gazette.com/news/by-the-numbers-coronavirus-in-colorado/article_432487ae-661f-11ea-b421-ffbd6dcb3c02.html
5,249 cases
179 deaths
Mortality rate of 3.4%
Current numbers (from https://covid19.colorado.gov/data/case-data)
10,447 cases
486 deaths
Mortality rate of 4.6%
Which is the trend that I am seeing. Mortality appears to be increasing ... at least for Colorado.
Thus my original post / question.
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