The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavirus strategy

Re:The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavi... by atourgates on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @08:35PM (#22951675)

Absolutely there would be.

On the other hand, the results from the recent antibody testing in California[1] (if they're accurate) would suggest a much lower death rate - around 0.1% - 0.2%.

I fully agree that social distancing is the right move with the current data, but I wonder if that will continue to be the case as we come to understand the virus and its actual infection-fatality-rate more.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0

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Re:The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavi... by dijit on Thursday April 23, 2020 @02:14AM (#22953285)

0.1% is the current mortality of flu, this has killed twice the yearly number of flu victims in a month. Could be explained by the huge infection rate possibly but it’s definitely more deadly by a wide margin.

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Re:The epidemiologist behind Sweden’s controversial coronavi... by atourgates on Thursday April 23, 2020 @12:02PM (#22957394)

I agree totally. I haven't seemed much informed discussion along these lines, but the only two possabilities I see are:

1) The antibody studies are incorrect, and over-counting the infection rate.

2) COVID-19 spreads much more easily than influenza, and so a large percentage of the population has become infected much quicker than typical influenza spread patterns.

Neither option is great, though to me of the two, #2 seems more hopeful, since assumedly we'd get herd immunity relatively quickly.

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