News:

Welcome to the new (and now only) Fora!

Main Menu

Coronavirus

Started by bacardiandlime, January 30, 2020, 03:20:28 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

clean

40K?  Perhaps we are a bit behind. A google search moments ago indicated that the deaths in the US are now at least 77727. 
nearly double 40K!!  And this is not over a whole year, but primarily in six weeks!  That sounds pretty significant to me! 

IS 77727 a Lot compared to .... pick a big number.  Maybe not, but a quick calculation of the death rate is pretty jarring.

77727 died = (178000+77727) of resolved - dead or recovered- illness gives a rate of 30%!

That sounds pretty ominous, and something that one may want to avoid!

Certainly, the 'recovered' number may be under reported, but it IS what we have now. 

So, compare 77727 deaths IN Six Weeks to those other "X people die of bee stings" comparisons and we can really see the significance of this for those of us that watch it, and  may have 'contributing factors'.

my source:
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+th+CV19+death+rate%3F&rlz=1C1GCEV_en&oq=what+is+th+CV19+death+rate%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.11433j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

"The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am"  Darth Vader

bacardiandlime

Quote from: clean on May 08, 2020, 02:47:48 PM
40K?  Perhaps we are a bit behind. A google search moments ago indicated that the deaths in the US are now at least 77727. 
nearly double 40K!!  And this is not over a whole year, but primarily in six weeks!  That sounds pretty significant to me! 

Please show where I (or anyone else) said it wasn't significant. I'm not sure who you think you are arguing with.

secundem_artem

I'm not sure what numbers clean is looking at

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

As of 1720hrs EDT - 77,000 deaths and 1.3million cases in the US = 5.9% case fatality rate
Funeral by funeral, the academy advances

clean

1.3 million is the number of cases.  Many are not yet resolved, so they are not yet included in the death rate calculation.

As I indicated, the death rate is calculated on the resolved cases.  77727 have died (resolved) and 178K have recovered (resolved) The rest May Recover or May Resolve.

Dividing by the total infected is not the way to calculate the rate (correctly).


Also, I must have misread about the comparison to the Auto Deaths, but as we have nearly doubled the annual rate of auto deaths, in only six weeks, it would seem that more should be done than whatever it is we do about auto deaths.  (I remember Arrive Alive 55!  ... but Im getting old (and adding to my 'additional complications' category))
"The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am"  Darth Vader

marshwiggle

Quote from: bacardiandlime on May 08, 2020, 02:30:11 PM
Quote from: marshwiggle on May 08, 2020, 02:01:23 PM
The reality is that EVERY potential solution involves a trade-off of some sort, and will have some unpleasant but unavoidable consequences. And there is no objective way to pick the "best" solution; which solution is "best" depends on a subjective weighting of various factors.

This is what gets me, it seems some people hold the platonic ideal of NO corona deaths, and judge anything against that. I'm not of the "let 'er rip, herd immunity, devil take the hindmost" school by any means. But it seems like people are not seeing this disease clearly. We're getting told numbers of deaths, which sound huge on their own - without recognising that thousands of people die every day anyway. Often from things that better laws or treatment might have prevented.
At the same time, 40,000 people die in the US each year from road accidents. If we banned cars, that number could be brought down to zero. But nobody wants to do that.

But the deaths are much more concentrated. There have been over 40 deaths here in one nursing home in 6 weeks. That is a LOT higher death rate than under normal circumstances.  Other nursing homes haven't had a single case (let alone death) because of extreme caution. That makes it very different from auto accidents and things like that.
It takes so little to be above average.

bacardiandlime

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 08, 2020, 03:34:10 PM
But the deaths are much more concentrated. There have been over 40 deaths here in one nursing home in 6 weeks. That is a LOT higher death rate than under normal circumstances.  Other nursing homes haven't had a single case (let alone death) because of extreme caution. That makes it very different from auto accidents and things like that.

Yes, concentrated deaths - that's how contagious diseases work. For road accidents, we assume a risk every time we get in a car our whole lives. Our covid risk is only while the disease is actively circulating and we are either not immune or (in the future) not vaccinated.

But again, in a typical six week (non-covid) period, 380,000 people will die in the US (from all causes). We don't know whether 2020 will actually have a much higher death rate than 2019 overall. (To be brutal, some of the covid victims would have died of something else, meanwhile other people who would have died did not - the shutdown does mean fewer industrial accidents etc). We won't actually know the true impact of this illness for another year at least.


dismalist

Ah, yeah, there are many death rates and different people die.

We have

-the Case Fatality Rate is the proportion of people who die who have tested positive for the disease; and the

-the Infection Fatality Rate is the proportion of people who die after having the infection overall.

Thus, for Corona in the US, the CFR is a big  number and the IFR is 6.9%.

In fact, the IFR is far lower than 6.9% on account we have no clue how many have been infected. A not completely random, but nevertheless informative sample in New York State found that 15% in that state as a whole had been infected, and that 21% in NYC had been infected. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/new-york-antibody-study-estimates-13point9percent-of-residents-have-had-the-coronavirus-cuomo-says.html

The concentration of deaths in nursing homes, really among people living in close quarters, actually makes it cheaper to combat the outbreak. Those who need to be isolated from the population at large and from each other are the old and otherwise vulnerable, not everybody else.

No reason to panic on the Titanic, at least not yet! :-)
That's not even wrong!
--Wolfgang Pauli

Caracal

Quote from: clean on May 08, 2020, 02:47:48 PM
40K?  Perhaps we are a bit behind. A google search moments ago indicated that the deaths in the US are now at least 77727. 
nearly double 40K!!  And this is not over a whole year, but primarily in six weeks!  That sounds pretty significant to me! 

IS 77727 a Lot compared to .... pick a big number.  Maybe not, but a quick calculation of the death rate is pretty jarring.

77727 died = (178000+77727) of resolved - dead or recovered- illness gives a rate of 30%!

That sounds pretty ominous, and something that one may want to avoid!


I'm with you on the broader point, but this is a pointless and meaningless statistic. First of all, there's no need to try to do this kind of  calculation in the first place. We actually do now have a pretty decent fix on the fatality rate of symptomatic patients. Its probably around 1-2 percent. IFR is more complicated. But, actually we don't have even have to get into this for these numbers. Just go to worldometer and look at how much the resolved cases statistic varies. Do you think that people in Germany who get Covid are 6 times less likely to die than in France?

Those numbers are mostly just about how countries report recoveries, which I believe is mostly about whether they test people to see if they are negative and when. The US has had trouble testing people in the first place so doesn't seem to be doing much of this (I don't think it really matters, there's data showing people are generally not infectious once they recover, whether or not you can find some virus)

spork

It's terrible writing, used to obfuscate the fact that the authors actually have nothing to say.

Caracal

Quote from: dismalist on May 08, 2020, 03:52:05 PM

The concentration of deaths in nursing homes, really among people living in close quarters, actually makes it cheaper to combat the outbreak. Those who need to be isolated from the population at large and from each other are the old and otherwise vulnerable, not everybody else.

No reason to panic on the Titanic, at least not yet! :-)

This doesn't really make any sense. Or, maybe to put it better, it only makes sense in some imaginary world where "the old and otherwise vulnerable" can somehow be separated out from the rest of the population. Sure, we need to pay particular attention to settings like prisons and nursing homes. That's a very important part of managing this. But, there are lots of vulnerable people who can't simply be isolated. Lots of older people live with family members who have jobs that require them to leave the house. There are also lots of people with health conditions that make them vulnerable who can't just stay home.

It is also true that while deaths are really concentrated among people with pre-existing conditions and older people, this actually is orders of magnitude worse in terms of both death rate and significant illness than flu for everybody except kids. (Still true, rare syndrome aside) It isn't practical to "isolate" everyone for ever, but we certainly should be doing long term things that will keep the infection rate down, including testing and tracing.

ciao_yall

Quote from: Caracal on May 08, 2020, 06:38:29 PM
Quote from: clean on May 08, 2020, 02:47:48 PM
40K?  Perhaps we are a bit behind. A google search moments ago indicated that the deaths in the US are now at least 77727. 
nearly double 40K!!  And this is not over a whole year, but primarily in six weeks!  That sounds pretty significant to me! 

IS 77727 a Lot compared to .... pick a big number.  Maybe not, but a quick calculation of the death rate is pretty jarring.

77727 died = (178000+77727) of resolved - dead or recovered- illness gives a rate of 30%!

That sounds pretty ominous, and something that one may want to avoid!


I'm with you on the broader point, but this is a pointless and meaningless statistic. First of all, there's no need to try to do this kind of  calculation in the first place. We actually do now have a pretty decent fix on the fatality rate of symptomatic patients. Its probably around 1-2 percent. IFR is more complicated. But, actually we don't have even have to get into this for these numbers. Just go to worldometer and look at how much the resolved cases statistic varies. Do you think that people in Germany who get Covid are 6 times less likely to die than in France?

Those numbers are mostly just about how countries report recoveries, which I believe is mostly about whether they test people to see if they are negative and when. The US has had trouble testing people in the first place so doesn't seem to be doing much of this (I don't think it really matters, there's data showing people are generally not infectious once they recover, whether or not you can find some virus)

This.

I have been tracking our local numbers. We had very limited testing for a while so our numbers looked good. That said, we quickly went into shelter-in-place. People have been cooperative. Our hospitals have been very quiet. Stabilized around 2% new cases per day, very few deaths.

In the news, there have been occasional reports of a cluster of cases in a vulnerable area - a nursing home or homeless shelter. The numbers pop a little that day but then go back to low.

Now that there are more tests, they are testing much more broadly. There was a spike the other day that I assume was related to a community study.

So we'll see.

bacardiandlime

I'm still not sure what the place I teach will be doing after the summer.

The CHE chart here is interesting
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-Colleges-/248626

Suggests 70% of schools are planning to be in-person in the fall. I'm wondering though how many say that now, to sound positive (and get enrolments) while secretly anticipating having to stay online? Much easier to tell people who have planned to in-person to go online, than tell people who have planned for online to get themselves into the classroom on Monday....

Cheerful

Quote from: bacardiandlime on May 13, 2020, 06:55:44 AM
Suggests 70% of schools are planning to be in-person in the fall.

That many campuses fully in-person seems unlikely.  More likely to have at least 70% mostly online for fall.  "Mostly online" meaning a few exceptions for particular programs with restricted time and conditions on campus.

I applaud Cal State for making the decision public now so that 500,000 students, faculty, and staff can plan accordingly.

Many universities start up in late August.  Make the decision and let people know by June 15.

marshwiggle

Quote from: Cheerful on May 13, 2020, 07:16:55 AM
Quote from: bacardiandlime on May 13, 2020, 06:55:44 AM
Suggests 70% of schools are planning to be in-person in the fall.

That many campuses fully in-person seems unlikely.  More likely to have at least 70% mostly online for fall.  "Mostly online" meaning a few exceptions for particular programs with restricted time and conditions on campus.


"Mostly online" is pretty much like "a little bit pregnant".
It takes so little to be above average.

Cheerful

Quote from: marshwiggle on May 13, 2020, 07:21:02 AM
"Mostly online" is pretty much like "a little bit pregnant".

How so?  Some campus labs are still being visited during the shutdown.