First US Coronavirus Deaths Took Place Weeks Before Initially Thought (thehill.com) 212
The first American to die of COVID-19 took place in early and mid-February, according autopsies at the Santa Clara Medical Examiner-Coroner. "Until the new revelations, the first COVID-19 death had been identified as a man in his 50s in Washington state who died Feb. 29," reports The Hill. From the report: The two people died at home on Feb. 6 and Feb. 17, making them the earliest-known victims of the coronavirus in the United States, the Santa Clara County public health department confirmed in a statement on Tuesday. The county health department said both individuals "died at home during a time when very limited testing was available only through the CDC." "Testing criteria set by the CDC at the time restricted testing to only individuals with a known travel history and who sought medical care for specific symptoms," it added. "As the Medical Examiner-Coroner continues to carefully investigate deaths throughout the county, we anticipate additional deaths from COVID-19 will be identified."
Santa Clara County officials did not identify either of the two individuals who died, whether they had traveled to Wuhan or elsewhere, or whether they had contact with the few people who had been diagnosed with the disease before they died. But reclassifying their deaths as related to the coronavirus suggests the virus had been spreading through the United States for much longer than was initially thought -- potentially for weeks or even months longer.
Santa Clara County officials did not identify either of the two individuals who died, whether they had traveled to Wuhan or elsewhere, or whether they had contact with the few people who had been diagnosed with the disease before they died. But reclassifying their deaths as related to the coronavirus suggests the virus had been spreading through the United States for much longer than was initially thought -- potentially for weeks or even months longer.
How about reporting the real news (Score:2, Interesting)
Reports are piling up that many more people have been exposed to virus and fatality numbers wildly overstated
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For fuck's sake, this is not the fucking flu. Jesus Christ.
Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:5, Insightful)
For fuck's sake, this is not the fucking flu. Jesus Christ.
I think that was actually the point that the GP was trying to make.
A lot of mostly-right-wing pundits keep pointing out that the deaths are overstated as a percentage of the ill, as though this were a surprise to anyone. Then, they compare those estimates of the actual deaths (the IFR) with the official death percentages for influenza (the CFR) in an attempt to make coronavirus look less serious.
But, as the GP pointed out, the flu statistics are overstated, too — probably by an even larger margin, because people are less afraid that they're going to die from influenza, and thus are less likely to seek help. So if the numbers for coronavirus are high by a factor of 10 and flu numbers are high by a factor of 50 or 100, that makes the difference even more startling.
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Anyone who is defending Trump and Trump's response to Covid-19 at this late date has to be... Well, sick, but now that sounds like a sick joke.
"I was going to do a joke about Covid-19, but I know you're all sick of it so I'll skip that joke."
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For fuck's sake, this is not the fucking flu. Jesus Christ.
I think that was actually the point that the GP was trying to make.
A lot of mostly-right-wing pundits keep pointing out that the deaths are overstated as a percentage of the ill, as though this were a surprise to anyone. Then, they compare those estimates of the actual deaths (the IFR) with the official death percentages for influenza (the CFR) in an attempt to make coronavirus look less serious.
But, as the GP pointed out, the flu statistics are overstated, too — probably by an even larger margin, because people are less afraid that they're going to die from influenza, and thus are less likely to seek help. So if the numbers for coronavirus are high by a factor of 10 and flu numbers are high by a factor of 50 or 100, that makes the difference even more startling.
Your math is way off. According to the latest study from the University of Southern California:
"Based on the results of the first round of testing, the research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the county’s adult population has an antibody to the virus. Adjusting this estimate for the statistical margin of error implies about 2.8% to 5.6% of the county’s adult population has an antibody to the virus — which translates to approximately 221,000 to 442,000 adults in the county who
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Or it is 1/10th as deadly as the flu.
It appears high because no vaccine makes the outbreaks concentrated.
Your first sentence is awfully ambiguous. Here are two possible meanings:
"It is 1/10th as deadly as the flu, meaning that if you get it you're 1/10th as likely to die"
"It is 1/10th as deadly as the flu, meaning you're 1/10th as likely to get it and subsequently die"
The first sentence seems plausible based on the data we've seen. The second sentence is wildly incorrect -- indeed the correct number seems closer to 10x more likely to get-then-die-from covid as you are flu, so the sentence is at least two order
Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:5, Informative)
Blaze Media is news and entertainment for people who love America.
Our programming is pro-America and pro-free speech.
Oh right. Propaganda then.
Re: How about reporting the real news (Score:5, Interesting)
From:
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Chart
https://i.insider.com/5e98cd71... [insider.com]
We are officially done with it's not as deadly as X, more people die because of Y, and so on. Your rhetoric is outdated.
You have total numbers of dead to compare. We are not under or over counting, or misdiagnosing, the dead.
Don't like your county, state, country, province or whatever numbers then pick another one, they are all bad.
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(it appears to be a trend for areas where we have total death counts from all causes).
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries
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We're probably under counting the dead. (it appears to be a trend for areas where we have total death counts from all causes). https://www.economist.com/grap... [economist.com]
I'm not sure we're over counting influenza deaths, though - AFAIK, the fatality rates are based on models and statistics rather than based on diagnosis or autopsies [cdc.gov]. That said, IIRC, a lot of this - far more so than COVID-19 - is "dieing earlier with influenza" rather than "dieing of influenza".
Keeping all that in mind, even with all the precautions that have been taken around the world, the deaths from COVID-10 seem to be far more numerous and concentrated than any influenza since the Spanish Flu [wikipedia.org] - and
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New York state has had as many deaths as if every single resident got the flu, and in 2 months.
At the very least it is as deadly as the flu (0.1% mortality), with worse cases for many of the survivors, and that assumes 100% of the state infected and no more deaths (600+ yesterday).
I was specifically replying to "...We are not under or over counting...", we are actually most likely under counting the dead.
In Italy a at the end of March it was killing 27x faster than the flu normal
Re: How about reporting the real news (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, let's say 50x more people have it. At ~800,000 confirmed cases that would mean there would actually be ~40,000,000 people who have it. Thatâ(TM)s 12.5% of the population. If 80% of the population ends up with it, that would be 6.4x what we have now. So with 6.4x the 46,000 deaths from covid today, we'd end up with ~300,000 people dead nationwide.
That's more than 4x worse than the worst modern flu season, closer to 10x an average one and 5x worse than the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. So, ya know, not good.
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They don't random test for the flu either. Holy crap you are stupid.
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5x the flu during flu season, 3x the flu in a bad week.
Unless you're saying it spread everywhere and is almost done it's far more deadly than the flu.
In New York it's already killed 103 people per 100k, FAR MORE than the flu.
Yesterday, in New York it killed 3 people per 100k, the annual flu toll in the US is typically 15 people per 100k.
IF, and it's a big IF, it's completely finished in New York and everyone has been exposed and nobody else dies, it's 7x
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This has been reported, and suspected, for quite some time. It's just not well proven. Even this "study" of 215 women in the hot zone of New York isn't amazing data.
This is right in line with estimates of 7:1 to 10:1 undetected to detected, at 140k cases you're at somewhere around a million to 1.5 million exposed (in New York).
But even taking the study number of 14% - there is still a very long way to go (let's just say 45% (60-14)) - before this naturally even maybe starts to go down.
And for the record,
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Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:5, Interesting)
No, not really. The huge spike in pneumonia deaths with concomitant COVID-19 positive results isn't just a magical fluke or a statistical accident. The only interesting questions that should be asked are A. whether some of the deaths previously assumed to be influenza or bacterial pneumonia (but untested) were actually coronavirus (i.e. whether the death toll may actually be slightly higher than reported) and B. whether there is a corresponding drop in pneumonia deaths over the months that follow because of people dying just a few months earlier than they otherwise might have. (I do *not* expect B to occur, just to be clear.)
Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:4, Insightful)
undermines their data about death rates,
Funny how people switched from the number of dead compared to the flu to now pushing the mantra of the death rate. I guess when they found out more people are dying more quickly from covid-19 than the flu they had to change to something to bolster their failing position.
Just yesterday, on another site, someone made the leap to, "Auto accidents kill more people each year" because they couldn't justify their previous position of, "It's no worse than the flu."
But yeah, it's the press' fault for pointing out raw numbers which the con artist keeps refuting, just like yesterday, when the CDC director said there will most likely be a second wave in the fall which will probably coincide with the flu, the con artist immediately denied any such thing would occur.
Re: How about reporting the real news (Score:2)
Death rates are clearly confusing the issue for you and other people. At this point it doesn't really matter what the death rate turns out to beâ" to put it in perspective, if other states had the same number of deaths per capita as NY state, the country would hit at least 250,000 people dead. But e
What about the LA study... (Score:3, Insightful)
This has been reported, and suspected, for quite some time. It's just not well proven.
This recent study from LA [go.com] says they estimate 320k people in just LA probably have Covid19.
But even taking the study number of 14% - there is still a very long way to go (let's just say 45% (60-14)) - before this naturally even maybe starts to go down.
The deal with so many people having it already is that, both the spread rate and fatality rate would be way better than widely thought - to the point where herd immunity would
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The real point that the hysteria drive news won't go into is that the epidemiologists, the actual scientists working in their field, pretty much all agree that if it is that widespread, and has been for that long, there is no possibility of containing or suppressing it, and lockdowns are completely useless.
Which, oddly, is consistent with the fact that the United States, with an economy destroying lockdown triggered by blind, stupid panic, and Sweden, with no lockdown and a fully functional economy, have
Re:What about the LA study... (Score:4, Informative)
Sweden also has citizens who respect authority and will work from home, practice social distancing, and wear masks when asked to.
Note that Santa Clara county actually has very good numbers; it instituted the shelter-in-place rules earlier than California or the federal government did, and you can see that the curve really is flattened. This is despite being a region with a very large number of travellers to and from China. That is, the lockdown indeed helped. The point of the lockdown was never to contain the virus or eradicate it, the point was to slow the spread enough so that health facilities were not overwhelmed with too many cases in a short period.
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Sweden's "movement pattern reductions" are shockingly similar to every other countries - no actual lockdown implemented. Amazing what homogeneous societies with trust can accomplish.
Re: What about the LA study... (Score:2)
OK. But it sounds like you haven't heard, we've already run the experiment and cases in NY state started flattening two weeks after the stay-at-home order, and deaths started declining 20-30 days after.
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Or did the cases started flattening 2 weeks after the outbreak started ramping up? Which is when they instituted lock downs...
Something interesting I noticed. Many people think China instituted lock down months ago, when in fact the actual full lock down (schools and all businesses closing) didint happen until February 20th.
If you look at new cases by day, by that date, they where already way beyond the peak and into flattening the curve either naturally or from the restricted mobility orders in effect.
How
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Sweden's outcome of a coronavirus infection right now is a 76% chance of dying. This is the worst value in the EU and one of the worst in the world.
Even in the absolute numbers they are #7 of 27 EU members when it comes to the coronavirus deaths. Germany, with the population 8x Sweden's size and a much greater population density has only 2.5x more deaths in absolute numbers.
The only thing Sweden shows is how not to do it.
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because anyone pre-disposed to catch this would have already been exposed.
Who isn't predisposed to catching it? This thing is really contagious.
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Yeah, I don't really get that either. If 320k have been exposed, 320k have been exposed, no?
Wouldn't that leave ... 13 million to go ? (quick google search for la metro area, feel free to correct with *whatever*)
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I'll even quote the study you linked (annoying the article doesn't cover what the study was):
"“The fatality rate is not the only number we should focus on,” said Neeraj Sood, a USC professor of public policy. “What the findings show is that only 4% of our population has been infected, which means we are very early on in the epidemic and many more people in LA County could potentially be infected. And as those number of infections rise, so will the number of deaths, the number of hospitaliz
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I *think* he is working on a theory that you can be exposed to it and "not catch it" so that you don't generate any antibodies. I don't think this has much scientific basis, but it does seem like preparation for being able to continue their narrative if antibody tests don't show as many caught it as they hope.
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Due to it being a novel coronavirus.
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The Santa Clara study has been criticized, but not the Los Angeles one (which was in fact done much much better with a true random sample).
Though both show approximately the same infection rate, the LA study only showed a rate 10x the rate of reported infections. The Santa Clara one showed a 50-60x larger rate. Thus the percentage of reported infections in Santa Clara is much smaller. As it is pretty likely medical availability is at least as good, if not better, in Santa Clara as in Los Angeles, the percen
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You've made some pretty wild assumptions there. The study you're talking about estimated, from a small sample, that 2.5 - 5% of people in that county had been exposed to COVID-19. That's *way* more than the confirmed cases. That's not surprising, although the magnitude of how many more is a bit surprising, and is being questioned because the study does have some real weaknesses. But 2.5 - 5% is is LOT short of "pretty much most of LA must have been exposed to some degree already."
If you take the optimistic
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But even taking the study number of 14% - there is still a very long way to go (let's just say 45% (60-14)) - before this naturally even maybe starts to go down.
Except the infection rate actually did stop growing exponentially three weeks ago now. Soon the recovery rate will catch the infection rate, and the count of currently infected will stop rising. That's been true where I live for a couple of weeks now.
So that's a heck of a mystery isn't it. Is the infection rate 100x what we think it is? That would explain it, but that only makes sense of there's a second strain, mostly asymptomatic, that the current tests don't catch. Or the virus can't handle the onco
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You think that has nothing to do with shutting society down around that time ?
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You think that has nothing to do with shutting society down around that time ?
Correct. That's just not how pandemics work. Growth continues exponentially until everyone has it, or environmental factors end the virus. The point of lockdown, as stated explicitly, was to "bend the curve", that is, to lower the exponent of growth. There was a real fear of running out of ventilators at the peak, so the peak needed to be lower. It was never intended to change the eventual number of infected, just change the rate at which at which it doubled. Which it did at first, from every 3 days t
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Well we shutdown almost exactly a month ago. And we had a "softer" recommendation before that (Denver).
So ... what's your point ?
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Um, 3 + 3 is 6 which is how many weeks the shutdown has been on (in California at least).
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Except the infection rate actually did stop growing exponentially three weeks ago now. Soon the recovery rate will catch the infection rate, and the count of currently infected will stop rising. That's been true where I live for a couple of weeks now.
And all of that happened because of the lockdowns.
You open back up again and the R0 goes back up and your growing exponentially again.
It's not rocket science...
So that's a heck of a mystery isn't it.
No. It's really not.
It's very strange.
No, it isn't.
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Viruses only grow exponentially. You cannot convert them to linearly. Viruses don't do that. The lockdown was expected to change the exponent, to "bend the curve". And it did, at first.
You're right it's not rocket science. But it is, always, exponential, until herd immunity is reached, and even then it's exponential, just the other way. So, yes, it's a mystery, because no one expected this, and it's just not how things work.
BTW, it also seems to have arced over in Sweden, which never did lockdown, in
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One of the antibody tests concluded 50-85 times as many people as expected.
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...and it was the random sample test, not the ones with obvious sampling biases that need to be corrected for.
No it wasn't. It was the advertised on facebook test.
Not a random sample at all.
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People volunteering to go get tested from a FB ad doesn't have bias ?
Straight curiosity - I thought the current antibody tests had a bunch of false positives with other coronavirus, do we have an accurate one now and were they using it here?
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It just shows us what we already knew. California has one of the worst testing records. [worldometers.info] Currently the third worst state in the US for people tested per million.
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That Santa Clara study has been questioned a lot, primarily due to it not being a random sample.
A much better study in Los Angeles is showing about 10x as many people infected as reported. Still worth thinking about.
Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:4, Insightful)
Your article states that 4/33 or roughly 12% shows signs of the disease.
Counter point: people dying today got infected weeks ago. This matters much more because of how fast this virus grows.
Deaths double due to corona virus in the US every 4 days or so. I am going to make the simplifying assumption that infections doubles at the same freuency. This could be criticised but I have no better number for it. Thus, if you want to complain about this choice, come up with a better number.
See: https://ourworldindata.org/cor... [ourworldindata.org]
Normally, you take between 19-61 days to die (infection is on day -5 death 14-56). Lets pick the lower number.
https://patient.info/news-and-... [patient.info]
Thus, people dying today were infected when 1/2^(19/4) or roughly 3% as many people were infected...
So in conclusion, your point that most shows no signs of the virus means that roughly 8 times more people than known has the disease, while mine means that the deaths are out of a 30 times smaller population than if you look at the current known infected.
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How is this modded +4 Interesting? It is factually incorrect and nonsensical.
"Deaths double due to corona virus in the US every 4 days or so."
Um, no it doesn't. 9-10 days. The rest of your analysis is also complete shit. Seriously, you fuckers need to get a life.
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In NYC alone, the death rate has been holding steady or going down for about the past week or so...
Yes, the lockdowns reduced the speed of spread. Exactly the point.
Open up again and the rate of spread will go back up again also. A bit of lag and then the deaths will go up again too.
Unless you have some other magical reason to explain what we can all see in the numbers.
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Doubling every 8-12 days, is not the same as "holding steady".
I was only talking about daily deaths, not total deaths. You even point out at the start of the post you are talking about totals. So why are you claiming that I am saying total deaths are holding steady, which is not at all what I said.
You can see from the data the number of deaths, which oscillating somewhat, are in fact holding steady.
Also thank you for verifying my original assertion that we are no-where close to doubling every FOUR days, w
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This was obvious even before antibody study (Score:2)
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16054494&cid=59879350 [slashdot.org]
Re:This was obvious even before antibody study (Score:5, Interesting)
The chance that the first cases died of it, are pretty small.
Some of my coworkers (at a resort casino with visitors from all over the country and world) had flu-like symptoms in late december/early january and went to their doctors, who tested for the flu and in came back negative, and were told it is probably bronchitis.
We closed March 15th, so surely we were exposed, yet nobody has come down with it... leading to the obvious conclusion, we already got it, we survived, and nobody even knew what it was when it happened.
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So far, all the research is consistent that SARS-CoV-2, the virus ca
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Unless I read that incorrectly (quite possible), the A type common in the US came from Americans with residences in China. It's just saying the A and C strains are more prevalent in US / Europe (and now Brazil), and B also came from A but is dominant in Asia.
Not sure I got your point AC, again assuming I read that paper I skimmed correctly.
Re:This was obvious even before antibody study (Score:5, Informative)
Any post that mentions that covid19 was in America and spreading by late december or early january gets modded down here.
Justly so. The genetic map of coronavirus is inconsistent with it having become widespread in the US before February.
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gl... [nextstrain.org]
It's straightforward. You look at the mutation rate of the virus. You look at the genetic sequence of cases. From that you can deduce their common ancestors. If there had been cases in the US in December, or if it had been widespread in early January, then that would be reflected in data - the ancestry and mutation rate.
It's not reflected in the data. Theories of late December or early January are incompatible with the science.
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In that comment, where you try hard to pay yourself on the back, you admit your friends were right and you were wrong, but you want to take credit away from them and credit yourself as being right, because you presume they were only accidentally right.
Because the ideas of the self are more virtuous than the ideas of the other.
It is both transparent, and pathetic. Don't link to your past comments. Let them go.
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So why the massive spike in deaths now then ?
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and yet a month later your conclusion is still wrong, the lockdown didn't avoid 'marginal deaths'. without it the spread would been much worse, critical cases would still be mounting and the failure at "handling the influx of patients" much bigger. the lockdown in all likelihood has avoided a catastrophe.
harsh, indiscriminate and with side effects, but the only real option when it's already too late. as in "needing bulldozers to dig a trench in downtown new york to throw dead bodies in" orders of too late.
a
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Countries and states that did no lockdown were not "much worse" than countries and states that did.
in what situation? you can't compare new york and montana and south corea purely on the effects of lockdown, that's apples and oranges besides nonsense. i explained some of this in the post you just responded to.
So where is evidence for what you are saying?
in the declining curves of several countries:
https://outbreak.info/epidemio... [outbreak.info]
these are relatively similar cases, and for reference lockdown starting dates: italy 9/3, spain 14/3, germany 20/3, ny 20/3, uk 23/3
the drop is fairly consistent with the incubation period. also note these are just confirm
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https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu... [columbia.edu]
Reports are piling up that many more people have been exposed to virus and fatality numbers wildly overstated
? The report you linked didn't say or imply anything about fatality *numbers*. It only spoke of fatality *ratios*, i.e. what percentage of exposed people go on to die.
The number of deaths appears correct for New York, and understated for most other countries: https://www.economist.com/grap... [economist.com]
Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:5, Informative)
and fatality numbers wildly overstated
You mean understated. New York alone has an additional 3,400 it believes died from covid-19, but due to lack of testing cannot definitively confirm. The same situation is occurring across the country. Coroners in particular are begging for test kits to confirm covid-19 deaths but due to the ineptitude of the con artist, they can't get the tests. There could potentially be thousands more who died but because we can't get test kits, we may never know. This doesn't include people who die at home but who never showed signs of being infected, or the homeless who have died, or all the others who have and will die but not be included in the fatality numbers.
We're at 47,000+ deaths in two months. That is 2/3 as many deaths from flu we see in an entire season. We'll be at 60,000 dead by the end of the month and the bodies will keep piling up, not to mention there is an expected second wave in the fall [cbsnews.com] which might (probably) coincide with the flu season.
So yes, the fatalities are wildly understated.
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We're at 47,000+ deaths in two months.
And almost all of them were within the last month.
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Typical seasonal flu deaths in the US are in the high 30 thousands. The 2018/19 season had 61k deaths, but that was a *very* bad year. COVID-19 has already surpassed the third worst flu season in a decade, and, if it hasn't already, will pass the second worst in a day or two.
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2017-2018 flu season in the US had 80000 deaths and 900 000 hospitalizations.
Re:How about reporting the real news (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently, they have revised the estimates in late 2019.
Whats curious in my research last week, I found no mention of this, even on the CDC, maybe I just didint end up on the right page...
As you can see, and if you do any google search, 80000 was the number bandied around until recently. https://www.webmd.com/cold-and... [webmd.com] (This is just one example)
This is the CDC archived page.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/... [cdc.gov]
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Yep, so according to the Web Archive, this was changed after Nov. 14 2019 (as indicated at the bottom of the current page. Nov. 22).
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
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As to fatality numbers being overstated, no, fatalities in general have been understated. Often people who died at home, from the virus, are not counted. Due to the lack of test kits, tests were not done t
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This story is in dire need of more details. The press release is near useless.
But I do note that it is very careful to use phrases like "were positive for", "died with COVID-19", "death associated with COVID-19" early on, but then later switches to "died in the county on March 6 died of COVID-19." (my emphasis in both places).
If we assume that the phrasing of the release is intentional, then the timeline changes quite a bit - you don't need the 2 weeks lead time if what really happened is that the person w
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There have been a variety of separate studies that indicate a substantially (sometimes 50X) higher infection rate than is reported. This of course has huge policy implication because it implies a disease that is much less lethal, but much more infectious than is assumed. BTW: this doesn't mean things are "OK", the lower mortality numbers are still 0.1-0.2% and with its much wider spread, that implies hundreds of thousands of deaths in the use (but not millions).
The studies I've looked at have had weak stat
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Anybody who knows anything about epidemiology mentally takes the confirmed case number for this type of disease and multiplies by 10. x50 is surprisingly high but not inconceivable, and potentially an artifact from all sorts of things (advertising on free COVID-19 tests on Facebook, for example, might get you a wee bit biased sample).
That there are more exposures than "officially reported" is only a surprise to Internet pundits who, a month ago, were dividing confimed cases by deaths and predicting the end
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Flu has also assymptomatic people (Score:2)
Trump assured us everything was under control (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Trump assured us everything was under control (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Trump assured us everything was under control (Score:5, Funny)
The Whitehouse press person
You mean her [9cache.com]?
Re: Trump assured us everything was under control (Score:2)
Wrong again.
This implies the apocalypse will have to wait (Score:2)
Re:This implies the apocalypse will have to wait (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was over here a month or so before lockdowns were enacted; chances are the number of people who were infected are going to be much much higher and the number of asymptomatic cases larger than hospitalizations or death.
Re:This implies the apocalypse will have to wait (Score:5, Interesting)
Although the fatality rate in NYC implies that this illness can't be less bad than the flu, this story and similar information from LA and Boston (https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/22/metro/why-number-asymptomatic-coronavirus-cases-matters/) and the French and American aircraft carriers imply that it is not much worse and had already spread far and wide.
I would not jump from military numbers to saying that it is "not much worse". French and American aircraft carriers consist of people who were actually accepted into the military. Autoimmune disorders, at least in the U.S., are disqualifying conditions, and anyone with cancer or heart disease or taking any sort of immunosuppressive drug is also probably not on active duty, so anyone on board an aircraft carrier can automatically be assumed to have a much lower risk of dying than a person chosen at random from the population.
The number of asymptomatic cases does matter, but only if you're trying to determine how close you are to achieving herd immunity. Even in the best-case scenario, we're nowhere close. Otherwise, they're just an added liability that makes it even more critical to shelter people who have any sort of condition that would make the more susceptible. Unfortunately, when you include diabetes and pre-diabetes, that's something like half of all Americans, which makes such sheltering almost identical to what we're doing right now.
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Re:Disqualifying conditions for military service
It doesn't take much. Mickey Mantle during the Vietnam era was provisionally disqualified (1-D) for "knee problems". Good thing he swung that bat so well - he wouldn't have lasted long having to seriously run the basepaths.
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The two most important factors in whether or not you'll die from coronavirus are being over 65 or being obese. Neither is allowed in the military. Deaths will thus be low.
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The obesity thing is probably something of a red herring. People who are obese are much more likely to have other conditions, such as high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, other heart issues, etc., and coronavirus can be seriously hard on the heart. In other words, it probably isn't the obesity per se, but rather the other conditions that are strongly correlated with obesity. I guess that's being pedantic, but the point is that those other conditions are strongly correlated, too.
Of course, I dou
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I don't know the make-up exactly of air craft carriers by rank, but from this: https://download.militaryoneso... [militaryonesource.mil]
Navy ratio of enlisted / officers: 4.9
4.8% of enlisted are over 40
27% of officers are over 40
And of course generally military personnel are at least in *better* shape than the average American. So transmission might be high but you would expect serious consequences to be very low.
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An interesting point that is often missed, is that the great majority of flu cases are not reported either. (Most people just get sick for a week or two, but never contact a doctor). That means that the traditional 0.1% fatality rate for the flu is overestimated as well.
There is a lot of evidence that COVID is substantially more deadly than the flu, but its not yet clear how much more deadly.
No. All the estimates take that into account. If you can think of it, what makes you think all the scientists who know about this stuff didn't think of it too?
This is what we know. (Score:5, Informative)
The mortality in intensive care is 50%.
The mortality in hospitals in general is 10%.
The increase in deaths in retirement homes over expected for this time of year is 30%.
The mortality in tested adults over 40 is 3.5%.
The mortality in young children is 0.1%.
The mortality in BAME groups is 1.5x that of white groups.
These are all the values we have for how deadly the virus is. But they tell us a lot. They tell us that the mortality rate is a function of age and that it increases exponentially. I'll let others figure out the exponent. It suggests that comorbidity is a major confusing factor, as the death certificate may give the wrong cause, skewing some statistics one way and other statistics in the other direction.
We know that the disease attacks the brain, lungs, heart and liver, at different points in time. So a patient who is "cleared" because their lungs have returned to normal may drop dead the next day of heart failure. It may or may not be listed as covid, because they're officially cured, although covid is the cause.
Testing of those who die outside of hospital is practically non-existent in the US and UK. The ONS places actual death tolls from the virus at around twice the official figures. The US suffered virus deaths weeks before any real testing was taking place, so not only do you need to double the figures, you need to estimate what happened in the missing two weeks.
This is far, far deadlier than flu. It's about midway between flu and the Black Death, for most age groups. I doubt anyone here would argue the Black Death was no worse than flu.
Sorry to those who honestly believe it's all hype. It isn't.
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Unlikely to be significant. NYC emergency department data shows no significant increase in influenza-like-illness visits until the second week of March. COVID-19 was circulating before then, but it hadn't gotten serious yet.
Testing puzzles me. (Score:2)
Why aren't bio chip makers running off microarrays for the virus? Once SARS broke out, it would have been obvious that you needed the ability to rapidly test and microarrays are infinitely superior to the usual undergrad chem experiments - in terms of accuracy (the tests being used out there have an astronomical failure rate, some as high as 54%). Once MERS broke, it should have been obvious you had a family of related viruses that would make an ideal test subject for the theory that microarrays could be us
Re: Testing puzzles me. (Score:2)
No one reads your trolling
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Exactly. You will never convince the narcissistic shitheads here though. They are all "smart" and they have "graphs" that show that everyone is going to die in 10 months, because EXPONENTIAL PROGRESSION!1!!1! Meanwhile, the morons have probably already been exposed to it, and didn't even notice. There is nothing magic about COVID-19. It is just another virus that will run its course. Welcome to life here on Earth.
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