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A comment on In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms. Parent comment

Re:In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% w... by matwood on Sunday April 26, 2020 @08:07AM (#22986542)
> If the actual infection rate is 20% then that represents a 10 fold overestimation of morbidity and mortality.

10 fold over what? A problem since the beginning is that many people are confusing CFR and IFR. Worse is when people compare the IFR of COVID-19 to the CFR of the flu. Regardless, the IFR for COVID-19 has been thought to be .5-1% since the beginning. If we assume the NY antibody study is mostly correct (even with the sampling errors), I believe it puts the IFR in the .5-1% range [1]. If that IFR holds it still means 1.6-3.3M deaths in the US assuming the healthcare does not get overwhelmed.

[1]

deaths/(cases x 10 fold) x 100 == IFR

21908/(288313 x 10) x 100 == ~.75%

Data pulled from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ on 4/26/2020 @ 8am EST.

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Re:In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% w... by zaroth on Sunday April 26, 2020 @10:12AM (#22987270)
> If that IFR holds it still means 1.6-3.3M deaths in the US assuming the healthcare does not get overwhelmed.

You cannot assume that 100% of people will be infected. Looking at case studies like USS Roosevelt (840 of 5000) and Diamond Princess (712 of 3,711) as the worst case prevalence because they are much higher-R environments.

So basically your IFR based fatality numbers could be divided by roughly 5.

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Re:In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% w... by matwood on Sunday April 26, 2020 @10:27AM (#22987370)
In both case quarantines were put in place and/or people were eventually evacuated. Yes, there is a limit where not 100% of the population will be infected. Given the R0 of COVID-19, currently herd immunity is thought to be reached between 60%-80% of the population getting infected. So even if we are generous and take the low end of the IFR we get 960k - 1.28M deaths to reach herd immunity.

There is some news out that is putting the IFR closer to .3% on the low end. That is great news if it holds up. The problem is that the numbers out of NY, if flawed would bring the IFR lower than reality, and they are ~.75% IFR.

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