Re:Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths
by marcosdumay on Thursday February 27, 2020 @12:36PM
(#22435547)
With the measurement people are using, yes, you can only know an upper bound.
It's possible to discover an actual estimate, but it takes time and resources. Researchers may care about doing that after the crisis passes, but it's very unlikely anybody will care about this right now.
Re:Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths
by admax88q on Thursday February 27, 2020 @05:22PM
(#22438601)
Which is fine, people keep pointing to all these unknown as "we can't possibly compute the morality rate!" Which leaves the door open for assuming its way higher than estimated, when in reality current estimates are likely an upper bound.
Re:Age, Sex, Existing Conditions of Covid-19 Cases and Deaths
by marcosdumay on Thursday February 27, 2020 @05:56PM
(#22438878)
Although I think the official estimates are severely overestimating the lethality (by an order of magnitude), I also think there isn't enough information for establishing an upper bound yet.
Current estimates are bad.
We will never know for certain how many cases there are, but _of the cases we know about_ we can compute a reasonable upper bound on mortality. Were more likely not to learn of cases than were not fatal than we are of cases which are fatal as severe cases are more likely to seek treatment.