Re:Severe Outcomes Among U.S. Patients with Covid-19, Feb 12...
by mcbits on Thursday March 19, 2020 @10:35AM
(#22627846)
I see, you're right. What I wrongly assumed was that they were receiving spotty data about overall cases but more thorough data about cases leading to hospitalization.
I also just noticed the age brackets for the 508 known hospitalizations only add up to about 91%, so apparently 9% of those are also unknown age.
It's too bad they didn't publish this in a live form so we could see how it changes as more data comes in. Maybe they will do a follow-up using the same methods at some point.
It's a very fair point that any of these assumptions could be inflating the rates. There are a whole bunch of other factors around asymptomatic, what the eventual outcome will be in the cases that are early-stage and who gets the limited number of tests in the USA that makes it currently impossible to know the true infection fatality rate or infection hospitalization rate.