Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by eanzenberg on Sunday March 15, 2020 @03:48PM
(#22586117)
You proved my point. Aggressive testing will plump up the denominator. Deaths cannot escape so the numerator is accurate.
In Germany and Switzerland if all the serious cases are deaths then the death rate is 0.1-0.5%.
Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by rrss on Sunday March 15, 2020 @04:53PM
(#22586670)
People do not die instantaneously when they are infected. There is potentially a multi-week lag between people showing up in the confirmed cases number and people showing up in the deaths number.
Two weeks ago, Germany had ~100 cases. Today, Germany has 11 deaths.
Germany has a total of 57 cases with outcomes (46 of 57 recovered).
South Korea has ~900 cases with outcomes (~75 dead). China has ~70k cases with outcomes (~3k dead).
Let's wait a few weeks before reaching conclusions about the mortality rate in Germany and using that as evidence to prove covid-19 is just a mild flu.
Deaths / cases with outcomes is an overestimate (19% for Germany). Deaths / total cases is an underestimate (0.2% for Germany). Somewhere in between is the true mortality rate.
The numbers are only so low in Germany/Switzerland because its a) growing fast and b) they are testing aggressively. More precisely (and morbidly), the death rate is low because not enough time has passed yet.