Hacker News Reader

Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

It's fair to assume that everyone will get this, and 2.5% will die.

(Edit: when I said everyone, I'm thinking of 'everyone' with regards to contagion like the normal flu that goes around. There are always outliers and people who miss it. Didn't think I had to spell that one out. Evidently I did.)

However controlling the rate of infection (coefficient of the exponent) can make the difference between hospitals able to handle the disease, versus hospitals getting completely flooded and having more die due to not enough care.

Tl;dr. You're going to get it, but you don't want everyone getting it at once.

View on HN

I'd amend your post further to say that the mortality rate ∝ rate of infection b/c the more attention healthcare staff can give to each infected person, the greater their likelihood of survival will be. In addition, the illness vastly affects a subset of the population more than others, should we be able to isolate the young and elderly so that we have fewer of those cases to treat, we have a good chance at lowering the mortality rate.

Why are you being downvoted? Is this the equivalent of people sticking their hands over their ears and saying “la la la la! I can’t hear you!”

It seems obvious that you are right that everyone will get it. The real quibble is what will the death rate actually be. 2.5% seems like a middle-of-the-road estimate according to current knowledge.

I don't think it's obvious at all that everyone will get it, especially now that so many people are practicing social distancing and handwashing and avoiding gatherings. Yes, there are still a lot of people going about their lives without worry, but it seems totally plausible to me that if some percentage of people behave more responsibly, it will decrease R0 to some number below 1.

I think using simple exponential numbers to predict future cases is too simplistic if we don't take into account how people's changing behavior will affect the spread.

I guess it depends on where you live. In the city where I live I have seen absolutely 0 changes in behavior. All gatherings are going on as normal, no special social distancing. There are lots of jokes about it (we probably shouldn't shake hands, ha ha! [still shake hands]), but nobody is actually doing anything differently.

I've seen that same thing! But I live about an hour away from Seattle, and I'm generally seeing way fewer people shake hands and several people I know (my family included) are avoiding unnecessary trips into public.

I mostly just wonder where the threshold is between population density and social distancing and R0. Obviously total quarantine does wonders, and completely normal behavior is terrible, but is it enough if half the population takes precautions? Or 2/3 or 1/3?

I've been thinking of it kind of like a graph or a web, and if you cut enough of the connections, the spread stops, and "enough" isn't anything like "all," and the more strategically placed the cuts are, the fewer there can be, but it's not easy to figure out exactly how many cuts you need.

Well-informed sources I've read almost universally put their estimates at 1% or lower. The people saying 2% or 3% seem to be naively averaging together all the mortality rates they've seen in the news, even though almost all of those rates aren't meant to be good estimates of "how likely is the average person who catches the virus to die".

The case fatality rate is not something that can be applied across the world; it's specific to regions, to the corrective measures used, and to time. The CFR in China/Wuhan was initially around 20% since there was a steep learning curve. By Feb 1 it had dropped to around 5%.

Currently, the global CFR is around 3%. In China, almost 4%. The CFR for the rest of the world (excluding China) is almost 2%.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

The CFR is just the number of known COVID deaths divided by the number of known COVID infections. There's no reason that number should be a good estimate of the question people are asking, "how likely is the average person who gets COVID-19 to die", and as I mentioned medical professionals are pretty unanimously agreed it isn't.

So you disagree with the WHO about the current CFR?

Again, the current CFR as calculated by the WHO is a mathematical artifact. I trust that they're accurately reporting the numbers they measured, and agree that dividing their death count by their case count yields 3.4%, but I don't agree (and don't think they said) that this is an accurate estimate of how deadly the virus is likely to be.

I assume because of the "everyone will get it and 2.5% will die" part. Nmbers are not making this very likely, in China this thing is slowing down already. Last estimate I heard was somewhere between 60 and 70% of the population will get. Add to this the fact tht the 2.5% are likely overstated (due to not testing everybody and having this huge Wuhan province outlier in there), and a statement like this is pretty alarmist.

China had a very strong response to this crisis.

They had hard quarantines up to and including jail-like cells to enforce those orders.

They had significant amounts of PPE brought in rapidly.

They built a hospital in a month at ground zero.

They provided thermal camera helmets to police to catch people with a high temperature (most common ailment with coronavirus).

In effect, they knew they had a diaster on their hands, and responded rapidly. And it shows in their numbers.

In the USA, We refused the the WHO's tests in favor of some for profit company. And we had 1/12 the tests promised by last Friday.

Hospitals aren't able to test even highly suspect cases.

Quarantines are considered optional, with dozens of cases of "I'm special and ignore quarantine suggestions".

There's no sick pay, so those who haven't been tested are working sick. Vomiting, a easy way to go home, is only present in 1% of the cases infected.

And perhaps 'everyone will get it' was exaggerating - but I'm seeing this as similar to the flu, with a 5 day asymptomatic period and a 2.5% chance of death, as opposed to .1% .

If "everyone's getting it" is an exageration, why are we ok with "everyone" being used as the basis to apply whatever percentage on?

Wuhan still stands out rearding mortality so, with almost 5%. Total deaths there stand at 3,000, the rest of the world, includig the rest of China, stand at roughly 900. Wuhan is overrepresented. No idea why, but I am certain experts are working on that question. South Korea on the other hand has mrtality rate of under 1%.

Source: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

Totally agree on the testing issue in the US, so. That, combined with the non-existing sick leave insentivising people to not see a doctor and continue to go to work could become a major problem, so. In Europe it's easy, just send people home on sick leave, Germany allows you up to 6 weeks per year per illness. Doctors visits are free for patients as are blood tests. Without all that, the game changes.

Mortality rate is now >6% in Italy

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The interesting question is now why regions like Wuhan and Italy stand out while South Korea is sitting at the opposite side of the scale.

From what I understood the true mortality rate can only reliably be established after the pandemic. During it is moving target. Now, this uncertainty is something normal it seems. I can live with that.

What I would love, so, is a breakdown by age group, gender, preexisting conditions and so on. Also how these groups are overall represented in the population of the individual regions. Then at least we would have a first indication if certain groups are overrepresented or not.

Reducing COVID-19 to just one overall percentage number is insufficient I think. But yes, Italy stands out.

Stories of hospitals being overwhelmed in Italy are all over the internet if you look. AFAIK it's pretty well-established that's what happened in Wuhan too. This is why extraordinary measures to control the spread of infection are being put in place

I think _if nothing is done_ everyone will get this virus.

However, I think the lesson of china and italy is that when hospitals get overwhelmed, people will freak out and start staying home, so the rate of infection in a 'burn out' scenario is probably significantly lower than even 30 or 40%.

I hope your wrong. That the spread is somewhat contained and that a vaccine is developed before 2.5% of us die.

But I hope that someone in government is thinking like this and taking actions accordingly.

Being pessimistic isn't and overshooting your precautions is probably smarter than thinking we are going to have a "cure" in a few weeks, like POTUS said.

Anecdotally, I know 2 MDs in the Layfayette, IN (Purdue) area. Multiple people have come in with 100% of the symptoms, recently came from Seattle, and 1 worked in the Amazon factory with positive coronavirus. They were not tested because the tests are not available.

Because of the way 'We' (royal) have structured our economy and govt assistance systems, the working poor will have the highest contagion rates and serve to spread it rapidly. They have meager insurance, if any at all. They have no sick days, and certainly not paid sick leave. And being threatened to come to work sick is a common thing. Even Starbucks did that to me.

And from what I know about the laws, I don't believe quarantines can legally order you in. Everything so far has been a suggested self-quarantine.

I don't paint a pretty picture. That's because I've worked in food service while sick. I made your food, and infected you. I chose to do that vs be destitute.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com