> A precise estimate of the case fatality rate is therefore impossible at present.
Taken from https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203
according to WHO's situation report, Singapore has 91 confirmed cases and 0 death so far. in most developed country, mortality rate seems to be on much lower side. Of course these numbers can change at any minute.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
I'd rather be in a developed nation, but you're cherry picking your example.
80+ years old: 14.8%
70-79 years old: 8.0%
60-69 years old: 3.6%
50-59 years old: 1.3%
40-49 years old: 0.4%
30-39 years old: 0.2%
20-29 years old: 0.2%
10-19 years old: 0.2%
0-9 years old: no fatalities
I think most people are blowing it out of proportion. It's just a bad flu, and it seems to be responding well to remdesivir treatments in early trials. I also think that, with the news we're getting now about asymptomatic/minor cases, it's highly likely the real number of infections is much larger, which would mean the CFR numbers are way too high.
But it strikes me as very insensitive. Ignoring the validity of the source of those numbers, even if they hold up. We all know people over 40. We all know people with existing illness that put them in higher risk brackets. And we all know people in other regions of the world with poorer healthcare systems where the fatality rate may go up.
The parent’s fatality rate was broadly correct. You can’t just select out a big portion of the population to give a better survival rate. Then compare your hacked fatality rate to the unhacked seasonal flu rate. “Just a bad flu” that is up to 20x worse than the regular flu is a big big deal. The near wartime like response in China is not “just a bad flu.” This is affecting a lot of people in very serious and real world ways.
This is implying a very strong selection bias in the past testing towards the most severe cases. The mortality rates are certainly much lower than these estimates.
Is that really true though?
The UK has administered some of the most tests at over 7,119 but only 13 confirmed cases. US has done a measly 445 tests, yet 60 cases? Might be things are just starting to ramp up, and yet we're behind on testing...
I think the US tests were much more targeted to those most likely to have contracted it. Like US citizens returning from Wuhan/Hubei.
I do continue to believe that the real cases are much higher than the reported cases, though, and many of these unreported cases are the ones with the mildest symptoms. This will continue to skew statistics for some period of time.
It's a physical fact that older people's bodies aren't as able to fight off diseases, and they are likelier to have mortality rates.
If no one's allowed to actually explain the physical facts of how the physical universe works, because it's "insensitive" to mention that older people are more likely to die when they're sick, how is our society supposed to come to correct [1] answers when it comes to medical science and health policy?
[1] By "correct," I mean minimizing the incidence and severity of illness within relevant resource constraints.
This isn’t science, it’s someone’s opinion on how concerned other people should be based on their interpretation of some very incomplete data.
It isn’t just conveying information, its downplaying the severity of the situation.
Eventually time gets the better of us all. I don't think that's an insensitive statement, just pragmatic/realistic.
And here I am pondering if the generational time bomb's been defused. Parent's downright warm'n'fuzzy.
Also, in Iran it is concerning how much higher the CFR is there; which are leading some to think the virus may be exhibiting different behavior there.
and yes, the severe/critical case rate is somewhere around 14%-18%, which means you need hospitalization.
if you don't trust the chinese data, the data in south korea and italy is very trustworthy, and looks just as bad on those too.
I imagine their health was terrible just from a few weeks living in a Chinese prison.
> 80+ years old: 14.8%, 70-79 years old: 8.0%
That makes it extremely likely that at least one friend or family member while die of this.
> 30-39 years old: 0.2%
To put things in perspective (https://www.statista.com/statistics/241572/death-rate-by-age...), that doubles this risk of death this year for that age bracket.
> 10-19 years old: 0.2%
That roughly quadruples the rate of death for that bracket.
And besides that, it's not the mortality that's the biggest worry but the amount that need critical care (10-20%). In a large outbreak there will simply be more critical cases than there are ventilators to put them on.
Edit - Does anyone know what sort of triage China put in place? Ie, when they don't have enough capacity are they favoring treating young people and giving up on the 80+?
The virus has a ≈15% critical illness rate[1]. There are less than 100k ICU beds in the entire United States. They will very quickly be overwhelmed, exactly as they are in China, SK, Iran, Italy...the list is getting too long to keep up with. At that point the mortality rate approaches 15%. This is not the god damn flu and people who dismiss it as such are being hugely irresponsible.
1. I believe this article is referencing the published paper in Lancet that I was referring to https://coercioncode.com/2020/01/27/breaking-news-coronaviru...
Also bear in mind that the study is out of China, so it is most likely extremely conservative because the government has been publicly cracking down on anyone "spreading rumors" about the virus.
The peoples' collective, deliberate obviousness at this point is unbelievable.
Edit: wait a minute, I don't think I've even seen the paper I linked yet. This one reports 32% ICU admission rate and 15% death with lasting damage in recovered patients. Some 2 dozen Chinese authors to boot. Get your fucking heads out of the sand!
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
It's not just an ICU severely ill people need, but artificial respirators. I haven't seen numbers on how many the US has, but it may not be enough.
In addition, this illness has the potential to take a significant amount of medical personnel out of commission, either directly by making them sick or killing them, through attrition as they overwork themselves and collapse (we've been seen all of the above happen in China).
So even if you get in to an ICU you could still be screwed.
That said, the numbers coming out of China are just not trustworthy right now. We'll have to wait and see how bad it is outside of China (assuming enough people get tested and the tests actually work, neither of which are a certainty yet).
The complacency of ignorance on this really beggars belief.
This is completely implausible.
The idea that 1/6 cases are "critical" just doesn't align with this reality.
Using the reported death rates posted above, the odds of this happening are 1.3% * 1.3% * 8% * 8% = 1/924556. That's nearly 1 in a million. I concede that the medical system in Wuhan was overwhelmed, and these 5 patients did not have access to medical care.
[1] https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-17/four-deaths-in-one-f...
The situation is horrible, but look at the hospital workers rate of infection vs mortality.
Even horrible things can still be made to look more horrible.
The mortality rate for seasonal flu for 18-49 year olds is .02% — so by your own numbers, this is 10 times worse.
If you don't die the first time, what's to say you don't get this 3-4 times in the next year and the 4th time gets you?
The synthesis route from Wikipedia does not look encouraging. Eight steps, some conducted at low temperature - good luck with scale-up! Production scale at dry ice temperature requires a dedicated facility, your garden-variety contract shop doesn't have the equipment.
Great. My grandparents have a more than insignificant chance of dying if they (probably) catch it. This really assuages my fears.
> Mortality rate is much, much lower than 3% if you exclude the elderly and the critically ill.
Why would we do this?
Yeah, fuck them, right?
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
This reaction that it's OK as long as it doesn't kill young healthy people is sociopathic.
By the way, your "blown out of proportion" comment means you are fine, just fine, with an expected death toll of 4 million Americans, if it were to go epidemic and infect 40% of the US.
1. quarantine. 2. vaccine.
Given the fact that people will not self-quarantine mainly due to economic reason, the hope is to rush the vaccine as fast as possible through the FDA, and then to mass-produce it.
Quarantine isn't the only way to slow down the spread of a disease, and it's not unheard of for large changes in behavior to happen in response to large risks. Hand washing or even mask wearing could become more popular. E.g. https://zoomingjapan.com/life-in-japan/why-japanese-wear-sur...
Vaccines take a long time to develop; just throwing more money at it isn't a solution. You need to understand the pathogen, which just takes time. Getting the IGg out of horses or whatever takes time. Making sure you can use horse IGg versus rabbit IGg takes time. Trying it out on volunteers takes time. Mass producing it takes time. The officials aren't joking when they say 2 years.
SARS still really doesn't have a vaccine, and that effort started in 2003. Heck, Malaria took ~50 years for a kinda-okay-ish vaccine.
Fact is, there is a very low chance of a vaccine for this one.
Wash your hands, don't touch your face, stay calm.
Last time I did this it looked like the overall death rate would come out at ~4.5%, reporting methods have changed since then and now it's coming out as more like 4%.
All the estimates we're seeing are almost entirely from unreliable data coming out of China.
So I'd take these estimates with a huge grain of salt for now. We should be in a much better position to have reliable estimates in a month or two.
[1] - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomati...
> US traders were particularly rattled by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention confirming a COVID-19 infection in California in a person who apparently had no relevant travel history or exposure to another known patient. [1]
One asymptomatic carrier may not infect many people but if they infect even one new person in an as-yet-uninfected population center they'll create a new outbreak. The only defense against this is universal testing, otherwise by the time you start seeing symptoms it's too late.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-28/asx-carried-away-in-w...