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.”
As predicted here by dozens of Freepers, the narrative of the plague that decimated the world in 2020 is heading towards its inevitable collapse under the sheer lack of weight wielded by the insufficient quantity of bodies.
I think President Trump knows more than Greg Piper.
Yes but the two doctors have taken over the presidency of the United States and they with all of their left wing Posse have allowed our economy to be destroyed. In that regard I believe they have won.
think President Trump knows more than Greg Piper.
...
That may be the case but I do believe the left-wing doctors have taken over the presidency.
I predict when this is all over there will be increased numbers of applicants to schools of public health here and across the world.
Unlike every epidemic in history, PCR and antibody tests allow us to inflate the denominator to include people who never had a single symptom, and those who weren't ever sick enough to seek treatment!
I wouldn't be surprised if they still can't get the final number below that of seasonal flu, because Orange Man Bad...
No, they haven’t won, maybe prevailed in a brief skirmish, but that’s all.
Either the numbers will support their theories in the next week or 10 days, or Trump will go back to the Easter date.
COVID-19 - Wuhan is probably the biggest hoax I’ve seen in my lifetime — and I’m old!
This guy has more company at Stanford — and other places.
President Trump didn't get where he is by being easy to dupe or being easy to pressure. He knows the virus is a real danger and is literally stating it, of his own free will, multiple times a day.
they haven’t won, maybe prevailed in a brief skirmish, but that’s all.
Either the numbers will support their theories in the next week or 10 days, or Trump will go back to the Easter date.
...
I hope you are right. Would certainly like President Trump talk more about the different prescriptions that are being used and pouting them. I would also like him to start talking about more of the people who have recovered. I have friends who work in the hotel industry and the restaurant industry and they are absolutely decimated. The reason I am so skeptical about all of this is that the flu is at least as contagious and certainly more people are dying from that but of course there is nothing said about it nor are we shutting down the economy because of it. I do say boldly that it is just as contagious why do I say that because so many people have died from it and it isn’t even tracked as far as how contagious it is. And I challenge anybody to show me the statistics of who has it and who does not and the fatality rate. This was an orchestrated Panic purely and simply.
Agree.
It’s just the flu.
RE: It’s just the flu.
Actually, it is deadlier and more contagious than the flu.
But the mortality rates aren’t dire as we are made to believe.
I wonder, can some wave length possible via 5G do something to the virus to make it suddenly more deadly / virulent??
No, Trump is firmly in control of the Presidency. He's just giving the experts all the rope they want. FWIW those doctors didn't create the hype behind this. To some extent they are caught in the same wave of hysteria that Trump is.
Actually I think we are going to find it is quite deadly. Mortality rates are over 10% in Italy now. And they are saying in Korea there is a reinfection rate of 14%, I would assume mortality goes up hugely in that event.
Ping
They need evidence. At this point it's pure speculation and looks to me like wishful thinking.
Peak Prosperity said in a video I posted a few minutes ago, that if 85% of cases were undocumented as a Chinese study suggested, that would still mean that the US has to get to 35 million documented cases before we reach herd immunity and the spread starts declining.
And if 15% of documented cases require hospitalization, that us still 5.2 million hospitalizations
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.
Where are all the ARDS cases if this was spreading in America since October?
RE:Actually I think we are going to find it is quite deadly. Mortality rates are over 10% in Italy now.
What is the denominator? In other words have they tested every person for infection? Are there asymptomatic Covid-19 positive people who have not and never bothered to be tested?
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