Posted on 03/29/2020 5:44:07 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
You can run around preaching that the sky is falling, or you can look at the numbers we already have and make intelligent forecasts.
Joining their colleague John Ioannidis in throwing cold water on coronavirus conventional wisdom, professors at the Stanford University School of Medicine warn that the apocalyptic figures thrown around for COVID-19 in America “could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.”
Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya write in The Wall Street Journal that we are focused on the wrong statistic: deaths from identified cases. Because of “selection bias in testing” and limited data on the extent of that bias, the possible fatality range is too great to be meaningful.
They find it “plausible but likely” from available figures that the more useful statistic – the infection rate – is “orders of magnitude larger” than thought, meaning deaths following infection are quite low, relatively speaking.
If testing of evacuees from Wuhan matches the infection rate of “greater Wuhan,” a population of 20 million, then the infection rate was “about 30-fold more” than reported cases, meaning a fatality rate “at least 10-fold lower” than estimates.
An Italian town of 3,300 that got fully tested showed a “prevalence rate” of 2.7 percent, which extrapolated to its province would mean 26,000 infections compared to 198 identified cases. Italy’s fatality rate could actually be closed to 0.06 percent, Bendavid and Bhattacharya say.
Based on the admittedly unrepresentative test sample of NBA players, where player contact could have made the infection rate higher, the “lower-bound assumptions” extended to cities with NBA teams would mean an infection rate 72-fold higher than identified cases across the U.S.
MORE: Stanford epidemiologist warns crackdown is based on bad data
Our panic stems from two misleading factors. Tests don’t catch people who recovered from infections, and they were “typically reserved for the severely ill” until recently:
Together, these facts imply that the confirmed cases are likely orders of magnitude less than the true number of infections. Epidemiological modelers haven’t adequately adapted their estimates to account for these factors. …
An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 [based on tens of thousands of travelers from Wuhan in December] implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism.
One-tenth the flu mortality rate.
We’ve been making extreme decisions based on incomplete and misleading data, as Ioannidis says, and his colleagues Bendavid and Bhattacharya emphasize the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000-40,000 and two million.
Antibody testing needs to be ramped up to provide more useful data than the highly misleading rate based on identified (known sick) cases:
If we’re right about the limited scale of the epidemic, then measures focused on older populations and hospitals are sensible. Elective procedures will need to be rescheduled. Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions.
We need to “evaluate the empirical basis” of the lockdown strategy embraced by the nation’s mayors and governors, because it could be imposing entirely avoidable costs on “the economy, community and individual mental and physical health.”
Could be...but President Trump is doing a masterful job of keeping hope alive as well as well as tamping down the panic.
President Trump has turned the left's own playbook on them so many times their heads are spinning. Regardless of the real dangers of this bug, there is a crisis I hope POTUS does not allow to go to waste. Since he first rode down the escalator in 2015, he has been talking about re-looking our trade with China and bringing manufacturing back home. If anything good comes of this entire fiasco, I hope and pray POTUS is able to use it to illustrate the dangers of having so much of our trade rely on the PRC.
This paper is about 10 days old. I thought it would be built expanded by now....meaning either further verified or disproved. The fact that we’ve heard nothing since it’s publication is worth mentioning.
There is also question about just what is really a COVID death in Italy in recent days. Seems they may be assigning too many to COVID.
But I don’t doubt they have a high rate. Just not sure it’s as crazy as 10%.
I agree with you. I think the virus is real and real danger but President Trump has turned it to his advantage. It will be over at LEAST a couple of months before the election and Trump can run on those things you mentioned plus the fact that he literally saved the country from a very dangerous virus.
“...And they are saying in Korea there is a reinfection rate of 14%, I would assume mortality goes up hugely in that event....”
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That could be nothing more than FALSE NEGATIVES in their tests used to declare them “virus-free” previously.
Could just be noise in the recording process but the USA had less new cases today than yesterday. And NY had less new cases today. Daily new cases in Italy peaked 8 days ago.
Watching with interest.
“...I’ve read people on Free Republic today saying they got it in October. And that all the flu cases in December and January were actually CV. Defies common sense....”
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That’s simply Free Republic hypochondria which has run rampant on these boards.
One way that Trump is not wasting an opportunity is re-vamping our entire emergency response to a serious pandemic disease.
If this virus turns out to be less dangerous than it has been thought to be we will certainly be ready if one as bad as it’s thought to be, or a worse one, comes along.
“RE:Actually I think we are going to find it is quite deadly. Mortality rates are over 10% in Italy now.”
There are no known mortality rates because there is no reliable data for cases.
I think it's less hypochondria than wishful thinking. They want everybody to have already secretly had it, which would make all the projections severely overstated. And if the projections are severely overstated then we can restart the economy.
Worldometer for Italy today:
Coronavirus Cases:
97,689
Deaths:
10,779
Recovered:
13,030
“...I’ve read people on Free Republic today saying they got it in October.
They THINK they got it. This is why a heavy majority of tests are negative.
SaxxonWoods wrote:
“Could just be noise in the recording process but the USA had less new cases today than yesterday. And NY had less new cases today. Daily new cases in Italy peaked 8 days ago.
Watching with interest.”
Looking for the link for that “fewer new cases” data....
Trump is playing 3D chess again. If the virus turns out to be not as deadly as predicted, then Trump can have the country return to normal earlier than the end of April. If it is as bad as some say, then Trump has shown true leadership and demonstrated how much he cares about the welfare of all Americans. He also gets to do more daily briefings that drive the left nuts and keeps the Democrats from campaigning.
Here is another way Trump is capitalizing on an otherwise bad situation.
I am watching today’s briefing as I type this and PDJT is absolutely excoriating the press. He is re-writing the way politicians deal with liars and propagandists. It’s a wonderful thing to behold!
No kidding.
The computer models used by ‘science experts’ are just so inept and inadequate. Globull warming ii.
Never base policy off anyone’s wild extreme computer models.
If the virus was more contagious and deadlier than the flu, then wouldn’t there be more deaths from covid than the flu? Duh...
warn that the apocalyptic figures thrown around for COVID-19 in America “could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.”
As for this study:
“meaning deaths following infection are quite low, relatively speaking.”
They find it “plausible but likely” from available figures that the more useful statistic – the infection rate – is “orders of magnitude larger” than thought,
Why were there not so many more “community spread” cases discovered when serious testing of those presenting with suitable symptoms began?
How haphazard were the South Koreans everyone lauded, with their massive testing programs?
South Korea has been lauded for weeks for its comprehensive testing. In the early stages their death/cases rate was very low as well. Then it stabilized at around 0.4% as it turned the corner at the beginning of March.
With relatively few new cases - and are you arguing the South Korea in fact did not detect most of their cases - that death rate has continued to creep up.
Date cases dead rec death/cases
3/22 8897 104 2909 1.12%
3/23 8961 111 3166 1.24%
3/24 9037 120 3507 1.33%
3/25 9137 126 3730 1.38%
3/26 9241 131 4144 1.42%
3/27 9332 139 4528 1.49%
3/28 9478 144 4811 1.52%
if 85% of cases were undocumented as a Chinese study suggested,
In short, unknown to known went from 7:1 to 1:2 in two weeks.
But yes, doing the math backwards makes these arguments, of the “huge unknown” causing the actual fatality rate to fall below that of the flu, plainly ridiculous.
If South Korea, for example, had missed all those cases, the outbreak would still be growing unimpeded.
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