Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by AmericanChopper on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @04:03AM (#23625376)

Singapore’s actual death rate is also a much more reliable number than New York’s. The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death. There are some other confounding factors too, like SG infections being primarily among young people, and NY state discharging Covid patients to nursing homes. But none of that explains the monumental difference in death rates between SG and pretty much the entire rest of the world. The virus is certainly far less deadly than most reported statistics would have you believe.

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Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by crooked-v on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @04:10AM (#23625422)

The criteria don't really matter, because we can look at the total number of excess deaths to reliably see that an absurdly excess number of people died in NYC compared to previous years.

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Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by scarmig on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @04:14AM (#23625450)

> The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death.

This is false. Even if it were true, you could look to NYC's excess deaths and see a huge surge in them that would correspond to a similar IFR.

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Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by chimprich on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @06:14AM (#23626199)

> The NY criteria for recording a Covid death has been pretty much anybody who could have potentially been infected at their time of death.

This is a common "fact" asserted in these discussions, and it's never backed up with any evidence.

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Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by AmericanChopper on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @06:18AM (#23626235)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/15/new-york-cit...

> The soaring death toll has been fueled by the adding of 3,778 people who were not tested for Covid-19 but are presumed to have died from it.

Singapore’s organised approach is clearly going to produce much more reliable statistics than NYs presumption based approach.

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Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by chimprich on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @06:42AM (#23626373)

"Presumed to have died from it" is quite a long way from "anybody who could have potentially been infected".

Doctor friends tell me it's usually pretty clear when they have a COVID patient.

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Re:Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater t... by AmericanChopper on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @07:34AM (#23626686)

The criteria is whatever a doctor chooses to put on the death certificate, for what ever reason they choose.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-start-reportin...

> Asked about the numbers Wednesday, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, commissioner of the city Health Department, said the "unfortunate reality is there have been people who have died either directly because of COVID or indirectly because of COVID."

> Barbot said only time would tell what that number really meant. Some deaths, for example, could have been registered as having been caused by heart attacks because people had not yet developed coronavirus symptoms, when they should have been counted as probable COVID-19 victims, she said.

So NY officials state that their recorded death toll should reflect both direct and indirect fatalities, whatever an indirect fatality is supposed to mean, and that a person who dies without Covid symptoms, and who has not tested positive, should be counted as a fatality. So unless they have proof Covid wasn’t a contributing factor in any way, it’s counted, which does actually sound a lot like “ anybody who could have potentially been infected”...

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