>> Their mortality numbers looked to be about 0.6% early on, but eventually hit 2% a month after the peak with people spending weeks in critical condition.

I see this repeated often but this is a misrepresentation of the statistics. Case fatality rate (CFR) is not the same as mortality rate. The CFR is the ratio between deaths and confirmed cases, mortality rate is the ratio between deaths and total number of people infected. The former number is 2% in South Korea now, the latter can not be measured directly without testing 100% of the population continually during the entire timespan of the outbreak, but it is (practically speaking) by definition significantly lower than 2%, unless there is a huge number of unaccounted Covid-19 deaths, which is very unlikely.

Agreed, although a nitpick: I think what you call "mortality rate" is called "infection mortality rate". (Totally agree with your important point that IFR < CFR.)

Mortality rate is population and cause specific. So CFR is a mortality rate, though different than the overall diseases mortality rate.

That said, your definition is also in common usage and less ambiguous.

I think it’s fair to assume most people are mostly interested in statistics that give an indication of the likelihood of dying from a Covid-19 infection, which means you would have to look at the infection mortality rate and not the CFR. So in that sense I think it actually would be somewhat comforting if if it turns out many more people have already been infected than previously assumed. But just to be clear, I don’t want to pretend anyone can reliably claim this considering we still don’t have enough data to create models that can be used to approximate infection rates.

When we say long term here, do we mean within the 14 day incubation period that's been going around? Or does this imply incubation period is likely a lot more than 14 days, maybe in the order of months?

Within 14 days, but most people where evacuated to different countries almost immediately after infection. So, it took longer to gather the data on that population.

> The Dimond Princess had over 100 crew of young healthy adults test positive and only 25% where asymptotic long term

Have you got a source for that?

what do you think about iceland?

Iceland’s peak was significantly more recent than China or South Korea which continued to have regular deaths over a month after their peak. So, my expectation is their deaths will likely double in the next three weeks. Which would be consist with ~1/2 their ICU cases dying. That said it’s a small sample size so significant variability is possible.

Just compare new cases vs new deaths here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S... vs new cases here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...

On the positive side, they seem to have contained the virus extremely successfully which was likely aided by a low population density, early reaction, and good testing.

Just a point on the comment "~1/2 their ICU cases dying".

The University Hospital handles most of the cases (and all except two deaths). According to their statistics* a total of 25 have been in ICU ("Á gjörgæslu frá upphafi"), total of 13 on ventilators from the beginning ("Í öndunarvél frá upphafi"), with as-of yesterday 3 still on ventilators ("Í öndunarvél") and 6 deaths ("Andlát samtals vegna Covid-19"). So that's less than a quarter of ICU cases dying and half of those on vents.

* https://www.landspitali.is/default.aspx?pageid=b629a8e0-b262...

Interesting, putting that may people in ICU that don’t need vents likely relates to a less stressed medical system. But the numbers are low enough it could just be statistical noise.

I wish the media would focus more on the outliers of the doomsday narrative, as well as the long term consequences of the lockdown solutions being pushed.

covid-19 is bad, but seems nowhere near comparable to what much of the developing world faces on a daily basis (4000 kids die a day from malaria?!?)

I have almost exclusively used Wikipedia for keeping track of the outbreak. Media has become really bad at communicating complex issues that are rapidly changing over time especially as different groups are trying to shape messages to the public.

Face masks for the general public being the most obvious example.