Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by antirez on Sunday March 15, 2020 @03:43PM
(#22586068)
This does not make any sense. North Italy health care is at least as good as the one in Germany and surely better than the one in Switzerland. Probably these countries are sampling a lot the general population finding many people with mild or no symptoms. In Italy because of the size of the problem the ones getting sampled are now almost solely severe cases.
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Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by mcguire on Sunday March 15, 2020 @05:05PM
(#22586755)
Take a look at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries, specifically the total deaths and total recovered.
If I take Td / (Td + Tr), I get:
China: 0.05
Italy: 0.44
Iran: 0.14
South Korea: 0.08
Germany: 0.19 (Germany's numbers for both are so low I don't believe this is useful.)
What's up with that?
Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by antirez on Sunday March 15, 2020 @05:10PM
(#22586798)
1. The population of infected people in Italy for some reason include an incredible amount of old people. If you see the aggregates VS South Corea, they have a lot of young people infected. So you get more fatalities per people infected. (Italy population, together with the one in Japan, is the oldest of the world, but this yet does not explain the difference, it's like if the cluster here originated from people at a certain age and also due to sociality patterns of old people here, or more likely, see "2" below).
2. Italy, because of the size of the epidemic event we are facing, is sampling only people that go to the hospital in serious conditions. Other countries are sampling the more general population, finding a lot of positive cases with mild symptoms or asymptomatic at all. So there is a selection bias.
3. It also depends on the way you count people. In Italy we are counting as a COVID19 victim even people severely ill that once dead are positive for the virus.
TLDR: you can't compare such numbers.
Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by eanzenberg on Sunday March 15, 2020 @03:49PM
(#22586121)
How is it “good” when they’re turning away >80 year olds?
Re:Please poke holes in my Covid-19 math (SF Bay Area)
by masklinn on Sunday March 15, 2020 @04:01PM
(#22586219)
Because "good" doesn't mean "infinite capacity", and the sheer number of COVID cases needing IC beds will overtake the number of IC beds in the country if the growth is not checked fast and early.