24 hour quick poll on kdub's death total

[catastrophe]

Checking back into another thread that bears my name.

Couple obervos... First, I think I heard NY recently increased it's death count by over 3,000 based on no confirmed testing but only presumptions? Kinda makes this whole exercise a bit dubious, no?

Second, please quote your predictions from a few weeks ago.

But they’re not adding the suspicious sudden increased deaths vs before coronavirus reached pandemic status. So bones to pick on either side for sure.

[DQ12]

It's definitely not the flu for most people.  But for a significant portion of the population (those 34 and younger), the chances of it killing you are about on par (or less than) the flu, at least per the CDC website.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm

We don't shelter in place for the flu, so comparing total deaths doesn't make sense. I would be more interested in seeing the death rate of the infected.

One has a widely available vaccine. The other doesn’t. So that is likely an important factor to consider here. Now that it’s widespread, it’s a lot easier to get COVID-19 than the flu at this point.

This is true too (though the efficacy of the flu vaccine is variable).

In any event, the best path (imo) is to figure out the best treatment, make it standard, and make the virus a lot less scary.  If treatments can turn this thing into the common cold, then what are we sheltering in place for?  I recognize we're not there yet, but if we want to reopen before a vaccine comes to market, I think that's the path.

[catastrophe]

I’m not an expert, but my expectation from the beginning is that we’re going to just be comfortable accepting the risk of infection before a vaccine is available. The only unacceptable result is overloading our hospitals and not allowing people to get potentially life saving care that would otherwise be available.

That means flattening the curve, which can be done in many ways, but when we get completely caught off guard like we did in February/March, the only way to do it is drastic measures like shelter in place. Once we ensure our hospitals have breathing room we can take less drastic measures like limiting large gatherings or other activities known to facilitate wide scale spread of viruses. Once a vaccine is available, we can lean much heavier on that to do the bulk of the work in slowing the spread.

Treatments can also help in this regard, but I think at best they’ll be in conjunction with other limiting measures instead of as an alternative.

[michigancat]

I’m not an expert, but my expectation from the beginning is that we’re going to just be comfortable accepting the risk of infection before a vaccine is available. The only unacceptable result is overloading our hospitals and not allowing people to get potentially life saving care that would otherwise be available.

That means flattening the curve, which can be done in many ways, but when we get completely caught off guard like we did in February/March, the only way to do it is drastic measures like shelter in place. Once we ensure our hospitals have breathing room we can take less drastic measures like limiting large gatherings or other activities known to facilitate wide scale spread of viruses. Once a vaccine is available, we can lean much heavier on that to do the bulk of the work in slowing the spread.

Treatments can also help in this regard, but I think at best they’ll be in conjunction with other limiting measures instead of as an alternative.

honestly Newsom's press conference yesterday laid this all out pretty well. there's a ton of factors at play and they all impact what, when, where, and how things are opened back up.

[Cire]

Checking back into another thread that bears my name.

Couple obervos... First, I think I heard NY recently increased it's death count by over 3,000 based on no confirmed testing but only presumptions? Kinda makes this whole exercise a bit dubious, no?

Second, please quote your predictions from a few weeks ago.

I've just kind of gone with whatever the WHO/CDC has said.

I think the new york numbers is counting people dying at home with covid symptoms.

[SkinnyBenny]

So amazing seeing MAGAs scramble to downplay the COVID-19 death toll numbers as being due to anything else in a pathetic attempt to insist that they aren't owned for voting for one of history's biggest dipshits.

[Brock Landers]

Trump's swift and decisive actions saved millions of lives SkinnyDummy, what more do you want?

[SkinnyBenny]

great point, hadn't considered it that way until now.

[cfbandyman]

So amazing seeing MAGAs scramble to downplay the COVID-19 death toll numbers as being due to anything else in a pathetic attempt to insist that they aren't owned for voting for one of history's biggest dipshits.

Or that he has been, or is handling this well, when the dude is legit going apeshit on this everyday and clearly downplayed this at the beginning. He's also proven himself to be the worst boss in the world. Can you ever imagine working for a boss that handles himself like this? Just the worst. Let alone all the other crap he does.

[cfbandyman]

Checking back into another thread that bears my name.

Couple obervos... First, I think I heard NY recently increased it's death count by over 3,000 based on no confirmed testing but only presumptions? Kinda makes this whole exercise a bit dubious, no?

Second, please quote your predictions from a few weeks ago.

But they’re not adding the suspicious sudden increased deaths vs before coronavirus reached pandemic status. So bones to pick on either side for sure.

Right, like I can't remember the exact numbers but Cuomo was saying that like 10-20 NYC residents die in their houses a day normally, and at one point it was up to like 100/day. You can't count em all but you can't say they all don't count.

[sys]

I’m not an expert, but my expectation from the beginning is that we’re going to just be comfortable accepting the risk of infection before a vaccine is available. The only unacceptable result is overloading our hospitals and not allowing people to get potentially life saving care that would otherwise be available.

i don't think that's accurate.  people may have been thinking that at one time (certainly messaging was to that effect), but i don't think it is still the plan if it ever was.  a slow burn to herd immunity would imply millions of dead americans (low 7 figures instead of low 8 figures with an out of control outbreak), and i don't think society considers that an acceptable cost.

i think the strategy now is to adopt measures that will keep transmission at or below 1.0 until highly effective treatments or a vaccine alters either the lethality or the transmission of the virus.

[sys]

Checking back into another thread that bears my name.

Couple obervos... First, I think I heard NY recently increased it's death count by over 3,000 based on no confirmed testing but only presumptions? Kinda makes this whole exercise a bit dubious, no?

Second, please quote your predictions from a few weeks ago.

1.  new york is now reporting two categories of deaths, confirmed cases that have a positive test result and presumed cases that do not.  the counts of confirmed cases do not include the second category to date and afaik, they probably won't.

2.  https://goEMAW.com/forum/index.php?topic=42012.0

[catastrophe]

I’m not an expert, but my expectation from the beginning is that we’re going to just be comfortable accepting the risk of infection before a vaccine is available. The only unacceptable result is overloading our hospitals and not allowing people to get potentially life saving care that would otherwise be available.

i don't think that's accurate.  people may have been thinking that at one time (certainly messaging was to that effect), but i don't think it is still the plan if it ever was.  a slow burn to herd immunity would imply millions of dead americans (low 7 figures instead of low 8 figures with an out of control outbreak), and i don't think society considers that an acceptable cost.

i think the strategy now is to adopt measures that will keep transmission at or below 1.0 until highly effective treatments or a vaccine alters either the lethality or the transmission of the virus.

I think keeping the curve flattened and taking extra precautions for elderly would accomplish this. Assuming hospitals aren’t overloaded, there’s no reason to think we couldn’t achieve a death rate as low as the lowest reported so far. No widescale testing has left us blind to true death rates, but given the figures coming out of Germany & Iceland plus the surprisingly high asymptomatic cases, I think we can assume it’s under 1%.

[sys]

it's pretty unlikely that it is under 1, imo.

there are, afaik (and excluding countries with like 40 cases), three places where we have a pretty decent idea of the number of people infected.  not perfect, but pretty good.

1.  diamond princess.  they tested everyone on board.  death rate 1.7%  there are still patients in critical condition, so it may go up.  caveat - not a natural age distribution population.
2.  south korea.  they still have new cases, so they didn't get everyone, but pretty close.  death rate 2.2% (still going up).
3.  iceland.  same as s korea.  death rate 0.5%.  however, the majority of their infections were identified in the last three weeks, their death rate will go up more than will the dp and sk rates, who have older cases.

germany is a bit different, although they've done a great job of testing, they still get thousands of new cases every day, so they haven't come all that close to identifying everyone.  at any rate their CFR is currently 2.8%, hard to say what it will end up as or what their IFR is.


coming at it from a different angle, gates has said he thought the IFR is around 1.2%.  no attribution, but presumably that's an estimate from the research group he funds.  and an academic paper i saw somewhere gave an estimated IFR of 1.4% from chinese data.

[mocat]

that's a good summary, thanks sys