So how deadly is it? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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By Sivad
#15076710
This question is much more relevant, but less straightforward to answer.

Reports of the virus’s lethality vary by an order of magnitude.

On March 3 the World Health Organization stated the death rate was 3.4%. Other widely quoted estimates have put the figure at 3% or 5%. But other sources have estimated it at well under 1%.

One reason for these discrepancies is that they often use two different ways to calculate the death rate.

The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is the number of deaths divided by the number of known infections. This figure can be greatly biased upwards or downwards due to sampling.

Imagine the virus infects 100 people; 70 are asymptomatic and unaware of their infection, while 30 fall sick and are diagnosed, and 1 of these 30 people dies.

In this example the true death rate is 1% (1/100), but the CFR is 3.3% (1/30).

This bias is often strongest during an outbreak’s early stages, when many mild cases are missed and the number of confirmed cases is still low.

For this reason, some epidemiologists now think the initially reported death rates are severe overestimates.

There is a second measure we can use here, which corresponds more closely to most people’s idea of “deadliness”. The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) is the number of deaths divided by the true number of infections (including both confirmed and undiagnosed cases). This statistic is harder to calculate, as it requires estimating the number of undetected infections.

One estimate of the IFR for COVID-19 puts this figure at 1%, and some new data suggests this is credible.

As testing becomes more rigorous, the discrepancy between the two measures (CFR and IFR) gets smaller. This may be happening in South Korea, where exhaustive testing has detected many mild infections and pushed the estimated death rate down to 0.65%.

Similarly, the stricken cruise ship Diamond Princess is illuminating because the rigorous quarantine meant nearly all COVID-19 cases (even asymptomatic ones) were identified. There were 7 deaths among more than 600 infections, giving an IFR of about 1.2%. This is higher than in South Korea, but perhaps expectedly so, given that one-third of the ship’s passengers were aged over 70.


[...]

Because the virus hits old people hardest, countries with ageing populations will be more severely affected. Based purely on demographics, the projected death rate in Italy is seven times the rate in Niger; Australia is worse than the global average. Of course, the eventual death rates will also depend on countries’ health systems and containment responses.

This age-selective mortality of COVID-19 should be explicitly considered in plans to combat it. In Australia, 11% of the population are over 70 and are predicted to account for 63% of deaths. Insulating a relatively small proportion of elderly people will halve deaths and is potentially more practical than total lockdown of entire populations. We need to urgently focus on the best way to achieve this. At the time of writing, the UK is seriously discussing this strategy.


http://theconversation.com/the-coronavi ... flu-133526




Why 3.4% is likely an overestimate

Dr. Toni Ho, a consultant in infectious diseases at the Medical Research Council (MRC)–University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, U.K., echoes similar sentiments.

She goes on to suggest that the figure of 3.4% is likely an exaggeration, mainly due to the challenges of calculating mortality rates outlined above.

“The quoted mortality rate of 3.4% is taken from confirmed deaths over total reported cases. This is likely an overestimate, as a number of countries, such as the United States (112 confirmed, 10 deaths) and Iran (2,336 cases, 77 deaths), have had limited testing. Hence, few of the mild cases have been picked up, and [the total number of cases] we are observing is the tip of the iceberg.”

In fact, the overestimation could be 10 times higher than the reality, notes Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, U.K.

“[I]f a significant number of mild cases have been missed or not reported, then this [3.4%] estimate is too high.”

“Though there is disagreement about this, some studies have suggested that it is approximately 10 times too high. This would bring the death rate in line with some strains of influenza.”

– Prof. Mark Woolhouse



https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articl ... er-factors
User avatar
By Ter
#15076725
@Sivad
Sivad, my wayward younger brother, you are only considering mortality rates.
It is becoming clearer by the hour that the morbidity, also in young people, is significant.
Most will stay alive but many with seriously damaged lungs.
According to first reports, many of those survivors can no longer walk briskly because their lungs are no longer able to absorb enough oxygen in their system.

You seem to think that all the lock downs and isolation measures are mainly implemented to save a few eighty year old great grandfathers and mothers. You are wrong and such claptrap talk makes you look pretty bad.
By Sivad
#15076729
Ter wrote:@Sivad
Most will stay alive but many with seriously damaged lungs.
According to first reports, many of those survivors can no longer walk briskly because their lungs are no longer able to absorb enough oxygen in their system.


We already went through that bullshit. It's based on preliminary studies and very limited evidence. And the evidence doesn't point to "many with seriously damaged lungs", it's only a small percentage of those who have to be placed in intensive care and that's only a fraction of a fraction of cases.

So I look just fine and your trying to fear-monger and hype this thing out of all proportion makes you look pretty bad.
#15076735
Even if it is not that deadly, treating it as if it were will be a good exercise. Like the Cuban missile crisis was like an opportunity to drill for the eventuality of a nuclear war. Bioweapons are the new nukes, we should be prepping for them.
By late
#15076736
You are looking at the beginning of a cascade failure.

I was hoping somebody would connect the dots...

The disease is bad enough, but it's going to degrade our ability to do medical things, and that will kill a lot of people that don't have the disease, as well as helping spread the disease. The knock on failures don't have to stop there.

As I've said before, this is going to get ugly. Looks like we will get it worse than Italy.
Last edited by late on 20 Mar 2020 11:43, edited 1 time in total.
By Sivad
#15076737
Ter wrote:You seem to think that all the lock downs and isolation measures are mainly implemented to save a few eighty year old great grandfathers and mothers.


That's not what I think. I think that the group that this thing poses any real threat to is the group that runs the world(people over the age of 60 aka old people) and I think they're making policies based on their own petty interests and they're throwing all the rest of us under the fucking bus.

They have the money, they occupy most of the senior positions in government, media, academia, and business, they control politics, the olds rule the world.

And we'll all being dealing with the aftermath of their assholism on this one long after most of the ones who survive this thing are all dead.
By Sivad
#15076738
SolarCross wrote:Even if it is not that deadly, treating it as if it were will be a good exercise. Like the Cuban missile crisis was like an opportunity to drill for the eventuality of a nuclear war. Bioweapons are the new nukes, we should be prepping for them.



This ain't a drill, the economy is really crashing, the martial law is really coming down. This doesn't just end when the contagion subsides, this is at least a decade long disaster from this point right now. And they're not even handling it well and nobody is gonna learn anything anyway. It's just a retarded fucking farce as always.
#15076741
Sivad wrote:This ain't a drill, the economy is really crashing, the martial law is really coming down. This doesn't just end when the contagion subsides, this is at least a decade long disaster from this point right now. And they're not even handling it well and nobody is gonna learn anything anyway. It's just a retarded fucking farce as always.

Yes but if a real bioweapon were loosed that is just what would happen. There will be a lot of good that will come out of this. This is not the middle ages anymore only 1% of the pop is needed for food production and distribution. 99% of our economy is luxury production from my point of view. This means the economy could crash to like 1% of what it is normally and nobody need starve. We have so much padding these days it is not funny, it is time we got our knees skinned a bit. What people call a crash is barely a hiccup. I do not call it a crash until there is actual starvation. China's Great Leap Forward was a crash, Holodomor was a crash the Killing Fields of Cambodia was a crash. 2008 was not even a ding. Coronavirus will just be a holiday from work for a few years. Cool we get to stay inside and watch netflix and youtube for a year or so.
User avatar
By Ter
#15076746
Sivad wrote:So I look just fine and your trying to fear-monger and hype this thing out of all proportion makes you look pretty bad.


Neither you nor I have the data to conclude one way or the other.
Is it 5% of the younger people ? 10% ?
We do not know but in these cases one always needs to err on the side of caution.
What price are you prepared to pay for ruining not only the older people's lives but also a proportion, as yet unknown, of your peers ?

And I do not understand why this excites you so.
Are you a small business owner who will see his business collapse ?
Or did you just lose your job because of Corona?
Or are you merely a good-for-nothing who just enjoys arguing ?
User avatar
By ingliz
#15076749
how deadly is it?

In Italy, a country with a higher standard of medical care than the UK, with more critical care beds, ventilators and the staff to operate them, half of those infected and needing hospitalisation die.
#15076809
ingliz wrote:In Italy, a country with a higher standard of medical care than the UK, with more critical care beds, ventilators and the staff to operate them, half of those infected and needing hospitalisation die.


Italy has the highest population of elderly in the world. Somewhere around 30%. The high mortality rate in Italy involves a disproportionate number of older people. Another thing is that the healthcare system got swamped, hence the lockdowns, in order to slow the spread and give the healthcare system breathing room. The lockdowns will not 'kill' the virus, just slow the inevitable spread.
User avatar
By Rancid
#15076833
Ter wrote:Most will stay alive but many with seriously damaged lungs.


DO you have a source for covid-19 causing permanent lung damage? I've not read this anywhere.

Generally speaking, my understanding is covid-19 can cause pneumonia, which generally speaking, does not cause lung damage.
By Patrickov
#15076834
Rancid wrote:DO you have a source for covid-19 causing permanent lung damage? I've not read this anywhere.

Generally speaking, my understanding is covid-19 can cause pneumonia, which generally speaking, does not cause lung damage.


Not sure if the following link is reporting facts, just what I found by searching "covid-19 reduce lung function".

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-recovere ... a-52859671
User avatar
By Rancid
#15076865
Patrickov wrote:
Not sure if the following link is reporting facts, just what I found by searching "covid-19 reduce lung function".

https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-recovere ... a-52859671


Ah ok, but to be fair, that was 12 patients, and only some of them saw reduced lung function. Further, it say's it's far too early to tell if there is long term damage.

As of right now, the claim that it will cause permanent lung damage in young people is unfounded, and needs more study.
User avatar
By Ter
#15076942
Rancid wrote:Ah ok, but to be fair, that was 12 patients, and only some of them saw reduced lung function. Further, it say's it's far too early to tell if there is long term damage.

As of right now, the claim that it will cause permanent lung damage in young people is unfounded, and needs more study.


Agreed.
Shouldn't we err on the side of caution ?
Not even to mention showing solidarity with the generation of your parents and grandparents ?
Why are you and a few others so hangup with the age thing ?
Even primitive societies show respect for their older citizens.
#15076951
Y'all need to watch that Netflix documentary PANDEMIC! :lol: But seriously, Pandemic is a good documentary. It talks about some strains of flu that only exist in animals that if they managed to break out into humans would be lethal to humans. The documentary talked about a flu pandemic in 1918 that killed more people than all of World Wars I and II combined. This after millions were killed in World War I. Talk about some rough times. Somebody who fought and survived World War I and then survived the Pandemic when millions more around the globe died from it must of seen some shit in their time. And to think, technology and travel was not as widespread or easy back then in 1918 as it is today.

Here is a caption from the Center for Disease Control on the 1918 Flu Pandemic:

Centers for Disease Control wrote:The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic. While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.


https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resour ... -h1n1.html

Here is more information on this 1918 Flu Pandemic and research on it decades later:

Douglas Jordan of Centers for Disease Control wrote:Today, fewer than 400 people live in Brevig Mission, but in the fall of 1918, around 80 adults lived there, mostly Inuit Natives. While different narratives exist as to how the 1918 virus came to reach the small village – whether by traders from a nearby city who traveled via dog-pulled sleds or even by a local mail delivery person – its impact on the village’s population is well documented. During the five-day period from November 15-20, 1918, the 1918 pandemic claimed the lives of 72 of the villages’ 80 adult inhabitants.

Later, at the order of the local government, a mass grave site marked only by small white crosses was created on a hill beside the village – a grim monument to a community all but erased from existence. The grave was frozen in permafrost and left untouched until 1951. That year, Johan Hultin, a 25-year-old Swedish microbiologist and Ph.D. student at the University of Iowa, set out on an expedition to Brevig Mission in the hopes of finding the 1918 virus and in the process unearth new insights and answers. Hultin believed that within that preserved burial ground he might still find traces of the 1918 virus itself, frozen in time within the tissues of the villagers whose lives it had claimed.

In 1951, Hultin successfully obtained permission from the village elders to excavate the Brevig Mission burial site. With the help of several of his university colleagues, Hultin set up a dig site over the grave. The excavation took days, as Hultin had to create campfires to thaw the earth enough to allow for digging. Two days in, Hultin came across the body of a little girl — her body was still preserved wearing a blue dress, and her hair was adorned with red ribbons5. Ultimately, Hultin successfully obtained lung tissue from four additional bodies buried at the site, but logistical and technological limitations of the time period would prove formidable.


Fascinating to read:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resour ... virus.html

A video that talks about the 1918 Flu Pandemic:

#15076977
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 was different because: a. they had no antibiotics, b. they had no anti-virals, c. they didn't have ICU's and D. they didn't have pandemic control plans on a national level. It's better compared to the Asian flu of 1957.
By Rich
#15077000
The Sabbaticus wrote:The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 was different

The China flu of 1918. The 1918 flu came from China like 80 % of flu viruses. Although it started in China prior to 1918. It was in significant part spread into Europe through the Allied use of Chinese Labour behind the lines in WWI, The Liberal establishment have sought to conceal this fact, because it doesn't fit well with their narratives of evil Germans or the wonderful benefits of mass immigration.
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