Posted on 03/24/2020 6:40:01 PM PDT by FreedomNotSafety
If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.
If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases—orders of magnitude larger—then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That’s not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“We are not slowing it. And it is accelerating on its own,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, predicting the state could be as close as two weeks away from a crisis that sees 40,000 people in intensive care. Such a surge would overwhelm hospitals, which now have just 3,000 intensive care unit beds statewide.
https://apnews.com/b08afe589e0d6dae9469c8211157199c
We don’t test everyone to get the generic flu statistics. CDC estimates the number of unreported/untreated cases. Without knowing what goes into the CDC estimates, I don’t know how they arrived at the 38 million estimate, but I am sure it is informed by many years of experience and testing.
We don’t have extensive data on the Wuhan virus, but our testing capability is expanding exponentially by the day. We have tested well over 300,000 to date. As the database expands, so will our knowledge of the virus. Testing for antibodies will give us more information.
A lot of people have symptoms and don’t seek medical help. I believe I had the virus in late December along with my daughter who had the same experience. We both had the flu shots and never had the flu. This time I woke up with a sore throat that lasted a day followed by a low level fever for 3 or 4 days and lung congestion, fatigue, and aches and pains. My daughter went thru the same cycle about a day behind. I decided to go to the doctor the next day, but never made it because the symptoms cleared up the following morning. My illness was not recorded officially. The only way to ascertain I had the virus or the flu is thru an antibody test.
Based on limited US testing, about 90% of those tested are negative for the virus. The vast majority of these people had symptoms. NY is an exception with about 40% testing positive for the virus. The bottom line is that we need more data to draw any significant conclusions. When the dust settles, the US will have the most extensive testing data in the world.
Virus bump
finally someone drawing a defensible conclusion from the data.
And you make an important point.
No you will never know how many people have the flu in a given year. But I think it’s similar to the way they test new drugs. They just need need a large enough sample size and they can extrapolate it out to a degree of confidence over the entire population. They just need to know a certain number of diagnoses, not all the diagnoses, and the outcomes of those diagnoses and then project out the % to the entire population.
No you will never know how many people have the flu in a given year. But I think it’s similar to the way they test new drugs. They just need need a large enough sample size and they can extrapolate it out to a degree of confidence over the entire population. They just need to know a certain number of diagnoses, not all the diagnoses, and the outcomes of those diagnoses and then project out the % to the entire population.
Thank you for that detailed post and the value of zinc.
"More than 2,800 people in the city were hospitalized because of the virus — double the figure from three days earlier — and more than 600 were being treated in intensive care.....the state could be as close as two weeks away from a crisis that sees 40,000 people in intensive care. Such a surge would overwhelm hospitals, which now have just 3,000 intensive care unit beds statewide."
https://apnews.com/b08afe589e0d6dae9469c8211157199c
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...seems manageable at this point"
Doubles every 3 days. Not manageable for long.
“That said, whatever the rate (.06 sounds ridiculously low), thousands of people in Italy have died thus far and the hospitals are overwhelmed.”
That’s because it’s overwhelmingly in one city.
Like in China, like in Korea, like here with New York. Yesterday New York had more than half the deaths.
Thank you for that detailed post and the value of zinc.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Welcome. BTW, I am taking Zinc supplements now: Chelated Zinc.
But, since Flu generally infects 10% of the populace, its death rate is actually 0.1%....still need almost.....36 million more Americans infected to reach what the Flu usually does so can’t really compare fatality rates side by side for various reasons...I think the panic will end up being shown to cause more damage than the virus for us.
Again, these morons focus on the death rates.
At what point do they realize, this is not about who dies...but the 20% who need hospitalization.
But...flubros.
...and it begins. Just another form of flu...in the end we will call this the ultimate fake news. It demonstrates how vulnerable we are to rumor and media hype. Dont wait for the facts, just react and don’t forget to throw a couple of trillion at it too.
“On or around Jan. 31, countries sent planes to evacuate citizens from Wuhan, China. When those planes landed, the passengers were tested for Covid-19 and quarantined. After 14 days, the percentage who tested positive was 0.9%. If this was the prevalence in the greater Wuhan area on Jan. 31, then, with a population of about 20 million, greater Wuhan had 178,000 infections, about 30-fold more than the number of reported cases. The fatality rate, then, would be at least 10-fold lower than estimates based on reported cases.”
The authors of this article, Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, are unfortunately dangerously wrong.
They say the the infection rate in Greater Wuhan is .9%, Wuhan itself has a population of 10mm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan
The population of province which contains Wuhan (Hubei) has a population of 58mm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubei
They assume Greater Wuhan had “178,000 infections”, which would be .9% of 20 million, so it seems there is a “Greater Wuhan” which has 20mm people in it. They then say 178,000 is “about 30-fold more than the reported number of infections”. The number of infections reported in Hubei is 67,800
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/blob/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_19-covid-Confirmed.csv
Assuming all those cases were in Wuhan, then 178,000 cases is about 3 times greater than the number of reported cases, not 30 times greater than the number of reported cases. You could speculate that the number of cases in Great Wuhan (and assume that area had 20mm people) was proportional to the number of cases in the entire province, which would mean that there were only 22,000 cases in Greater Wuhan, but that would make no sense because the outbreak began in Wuhan, not in the rest of the province. The death rate in Hubei was 4.6%, 3157 deaths out of 67,800 cases. If that is 3 times too high the actual death rate is 1.5%. That is still 15 times higher than the death rate for seasonal flu which is less than .1%.
There is also the issue of the transmission rate of Covid19. If it is higher than for the normal flu, then more people will have it in the same year. Only 10% of the population gets the flu in a given year. If you double the infection rate you double the deaths that year, even if the infection fatality rate is the same.
Then there is the case of Vo Italy.
“If the fact that only those presenting with the virus were being tested was accounted for, the mortality percentage would fall to more “normal” levels. This is shown by the mortality in the Veneto region, which is steadily around 2.5-3%, still high but threefold less than the ones in Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna... Andrea Crisanti is professor of microbiology at the University of Padua; Antonio Cassone is a former director of the department of infectious diseases at the Italian institute of health”
So 2 doctors who tested the people of Vo, Italy say the infection fatality rate is actually 2-3% not 8%. That’s still 20 to 30 times as deadly as the flu.
Or about 100 per day....
Like in China, like in Korea, like here with New York. Yesterday New York had more than half the deaths.
The concentration of cases should not affect the percentage of patients who supposedly exhibit no symptoms.
“The concentration of cases should not affect the percentage of patients who supposedly exhibit no symptoms.”
I was referring to this:
“...and the hospitals are overwhelmed.”
The author’s logic leads them to Italy with a fatality rate of 0.06% and the US at 0.01%. This explains clearly the importance of understanding and defining the denominator.
The ancillary information suggests that is laughable, but let’s see evidence.
Without knowing the details behind the paywall, those numbers look like multiple layers of bad math, squared.
Maybe Italy *is* actually doing 20 times better than South Korea, and that is why their medical system is in a state of collapse.
When you look at the virus’ effect on our population and not the government’s reaction, this is just the flu.
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