2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 2

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angrysoba said:
Certainly we have no idea how many people are infected. And the possibility that many times the number are asymptomatic certainly means a far lower mortality rate.

There is one rather worrying point that points in the other direction, though. Some mortality rates are being determined according to how many have died compared with the number of all cases, but if we take only the completed ones (i.e recovery or death), the mortality rate has shot up to about 9-10%!
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Sure but that's a shot in the dark because I'd expect recoveries to take more time than fatalities, and a good chunk of people haven't recovered yet.
 
calebprime said:
A ...I mean there will be some violent anarchy in the coming years. Since this is a trivial prediction all around, I have no idea how much anarchy.
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I’m nervously awaiting the first reports of widespread looting.

I was a police officer in S FL and remember riots and looting over jury verdicts against white and Hispanic officers. Hunger is a powerful driving force, and I’d expect groceries and big box stores to be the first targets, with gun shops close behind.

I hope there are contingency plans to deal with it as humanely as possible.
 
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Belz... said:
Well, that's ridiculous. Unless you think 10x more people died and weren't counted in the Covid-19 deaths, it is a mathematical certainty that it is lower, since we don't know how many were infected and were not tested or hospitalised.
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I hope it's ridiculous. It's true. The hospitals are mostly seeing people who can't breathe any more. I think you're probably right that the number is lower. But you really can't reason your way there, yet. Too much uncertainty.

Think about the rates in the many urban slums. Just wait.

Again, I'm ballparking based on the collapse of civ. in every single country. Estimates don't really work. Too much uncertainty.

That's enough, Belz.... I just wanted to log my gut feeling and I know it's not accurate. Except, as a pessimist, I'm right more often than the average cheerful person.
 
calebprime said:
I hope it's ridiculous. It's true. The hospitals are mostly seeing people who can't breathe any more. I think you're probably right that the number is lower. But you really can't reason your way there, yet. Too much uncertainty.
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I absolutely can reason my way there. Uncertainty doesn't mean you can't reasonably extrapolate or even speculate.

Think about the rates in the many urban slums. Just wait.
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It's not secret that the poor always get the short end of the stick in these situations.

That's enough, Belz....
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Gee, mate, cheer up.
 
Belz... said:
Sure but that's a shot in the dark because I'd expect recoveries to take more time than fatalities, and a good chunk of people haven't recovered yet.
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Yeah, and also recoveries that are official apparently take longer than what we might think of as a recovery (something to do with two negative tests after a fairly lengthy period of time).
 
Calebprime's 10% might not be that far off.

The death rate is also totally dependent on the care the patients who need it receive.

It will be high in Africa. There are about 24 million HIV positive people in sub Saharan Africa, never mind TB. It's going to be much worse than in Italy.

It feels so morbid wondering/speculating about these things, but anyway.
 
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Getting back to Covid-19 and those predicting the end of civilization: get a grip guys! The 1918 influenza pandemic killed 50 to 100 million people. Five to ten percent of the world's population! During a world war of unprecedented scope and violence. And much less ability to provide medical intervention. Society didn’t collapse. Anarchy didn’t reign. People’s lives were greatly affected but then the survivors returned to normalcy fairly quickly. In fact after some aspects of society were better for the middle class than before these massive events.

And again: we know from China and South Korea how to stop the spread of the epidemic even once the virus has spread. And the rate of new infections can be reduced to near zero within a matter of months, not years. It takes strong actions but it clearly can be done if we are willing.

Go get a flashlight and tell ghost stories at a camp out if you really enjoy that kind of thing but I think ghoulish fiction about epidemics just encourages people to panic.
 
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Absolutely, if you exclude selfish reasons like worrying about dying or the economy taking a knock, it's hardly a problem at all, it's actually fascinating. Huh?
 
Problem is the world is no longer the world of the early 20th century. You can think of it as everything back then was localised, milk running out wouldn't happen as the dairy man would still be collecting milk from local farms. If he was ill or died anyone else could step up to do that job. So you would not run out of milk, the same for nearly every other basic food stuffs. To get milk to people now is a hugely complex system with many areas of specialist knowledge, we are also JITed to our eyeballs so one processing plant not being manned for several days could easily disrupt millions of people's access to fresh milk.

I agree that it isn't apocalyptic but comparison with over a century ago is not useful in knowing how to cope with this today.
 
In order to find the actual mortality rate you can't look at the ratio of known cases now to known deaths now. It takes 10-14 days for the disease to run its course from showing symptoms to death. So you have to look at the number of cases 14 days ago and compare -that- to the number of deaths now. Of course, we don't have precise numbers for that, either, so it'll have to be a guesstimate of it.
 
3point14 said:
Welcome to exponential growth.
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I am not sure how the death rate is or can be calculated while the pandemic is ongoing. People are saying it must be lower than the reported values because there surely are more cases than reported. On the other hand, it takes a period of time for the disease to kill someone after they are infected and the reported number of cases may have increased many times in that time. So, if the reported figures are based on the number of deaths divided by the number of known cases at the time of the death, the actual death rate may be higher than is being reported.

Is there a standard for these metrics that all states and countries are using?
 
While deadly and economically devastating, I do think it is fascinating in a certain way.

Here, the two most prominent scientists from SAGE are explaining the UK response, while one journalist in the room coughs incessantly.

One of the things they talk a lot about is the serological tests which could mean that those who have had the virus and thus may be immune could then go back to work.

This is presumably the "herd immunity" that some people have angrily reacted to, but it does make sense that if there are way larger numbers of people who have had the disease or are infected by it than we know of, then the serological tests would be more useful than the PCR tests.

 
Ulf Nereng said:
In order to find the actual mortality rate you can't look at the ratio of known cases now to known deaths now.
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Except that in the end we might end up not knowing about 80% or more of people who got the disease and were not counted, giving you a false impression that the disease is more deadly than it really is.
 
Belz... said:
Except that in the end we might end up not knowing about 80% or more of people who got the disease and were not counted, giving you a false impression that the disease is more deadly than it really is.
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After it is over (or better controlled), tests for antibodies and stastical analysis will surely give us a good idea.
 
calebprime said:
A prediction I can check later. If there's any forum to check, that is.

I think 6.5 to 10 million will die in the U.S. from Covid-19 in the next 2 years.

Then in 2 years the vaccine will have worked.

That's based on current population, 50% infection rate, 4% of that dying.

The U.S. will eventually come out of this chaos, but not after things fall apart considerably -- I mean there will be some violent anarchy in the coming years. Since this is a trivial prediction all around, I have no idea how much anarchy.

This is nothing more than my last "intuition" check.
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Everyone on the Diamond Princess was tested. This makes it one of the best references for mortality rates. ~20% of the people aboard tested positive, just over half the people who tested positive showed no symptoms. Mortality for symptomatic cases was ~1.9%, for all cases was ~0.9%.


Applying these same ratios to the US give ~70million cases, 35 million symptomatic cases, 3million serious cases and300K deaths in the US, but age of the passengers on the ship probably skews the numbers on the high side. I have seen one attempt to adjust for age, and they reported an expected mortality rate for China of 0.5%. Countries with older populations would be higher.

So assuming the virus spreads widely and becomes endemic the ballpark for the US is 150K – 300K deaths over the next 1-2 years.


ETA:

My own WAG is that efforts to contain the spread of the virus, improved treatment and an eventual vaccine pull this even lower. 50K – 75K deaths in in the US over the next 2 years, most coming after the current panic has subsided and people have moved on to the next issue.
 
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Ulf Nereng said:
In order to find the actual mortality rate you can't look at the ratio of known cases now to known deaths now. It takes 10-14 days for the disease to run its course from showing symptoms to death. So you have to look at the number of cases 14 days ago and compare -that- to the number of deaths now. Of course, we don't have precise numbers for that, either, so it'll have to be a guesstimate of it.
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Yes.
I think this has been linked to, Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now.
The conclusions reached about death rates make sense.

Countries who are prepared and have enough hospital beds will probably have a rate between 0.5% and 1% and other countries up to 5%.
 
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Cheetah said:
Absolutely, if you exclude selfish reasons like worrying about dying or the economy taking a knock, it's hardly a problem at all, it's actually fascinating. Huh?
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I am not certain if this is in response to my post - using the quote function helps. But I will use it to clarify. I was addressing those literally arguing we are approaching the end of civilization. One can read my many posts upthread saying how serious and very dangerous a disease it is and how crucial to put into place strong containment measures before most people think they are necessary. That otherwise many people will die. In fact I am among the most likely.

In fact I’ve repeatedly argued against those who were dismissive of the seriousness of the disease or who advocated it be allowed to run its course. Do I have to repeat that in every post or do some posters read the thread before commenting?

But advocating that the disease is dangerous and must be stopped now to save millions of lives is not the same as yelling that we are on the brink of the end of civilization; that society is falling apart. I made a comparison the the 1918 flu, a horror that killed many millions to illustrate just that point. Even the worse case scenario doesn't mean we are all toast.

My argument is that we should use our legitimate fear of coronavirus to put into place what we know can help control it; not to panic and convince ourselves it is all hopeless.
 
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The Atheist said:
Testing.

Like South Korea, they're catching a lot of mild and asymptomatic cases by testing the hell out of everyone. That gives a much more accurate position.
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This is good evidence that the actual death rate is much lower than the ones currently being used for various models. The case where we have complete data, The Diamond Princess, showed a 1% death rate but that was older people confined on a ship for an extended period of time, the South Korean rate is more likely to apply to general populations.
 
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