At what point did you / will you take the coronavirus epidemic seriously?

[Walter Sobchak]

If you are taking bets for over/under a 5% fatality rate then I'll take under.

Same. 7% is wildly and irresponsibly exaggerated for the reasons you describe; the denominator is impossible to know. But people gonna FUD.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Same. 7% is wildly and irresponsibly exaggerated for the reasons you describe; the denominator is impossible to know. But people gonna FUD.

As someone said earlier, the cruise ship off of Japan provides for an interesting case study. Fairly decent sample size and everyone on the ship was probably checked a dozen times.

[Walter Sobchak]

As someone said earlier, the cruise ship off of Japan provides for an interesting case study. Fairly decent sample size and everyone on the ship was probably checked a dozen times.

I too think it is interesting, but extrapolating the cruise ship numbers to the US population at large is fundamentally flawed.

[SeattleUte]

I too think it is interesting, but extrapolating the cruise ship numbers to the US population at large is fundamentally flawed.

Trying to understand this. Is it because the confined, hot house environment of the cruise ship exaggerates everything? I know the studies reduce the figure to .5 to or .6 whereas the current death rate is currently over 2%.

[Northwestcoug]

'Stealth transmission'; i.e. disease transmission in undiagnosed patients or those with very mild symptoms, are responsible for vast majority of new cases. Great.

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abb3221

[SeattleUte]

'Stealth transmission'; i.e. disease transmission in undiagnosed patients or those with very mild symptoms, are responsible for vast majority of new cases. Great.

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abb3221

This also means that the published mortality rates are inflated.

[Walter Sobchak]

Trying to understand this. Is it because the confined, hot house environment of the cruise ship exaggerates everything? I know the studies reduce the figure to .5 to or .6 whereas the current death rate is currently over 2%.

Yes, that... not everyone lives in what is (essentially) a floating hotel. To say nothing of the distribution of age, race, gender, secondary health considerations, and so forth. My son isn't a doctor though.

[SeattleUte]

Yes, that... not everyone lives in what is (essentially) a floating hotel. To say nothing of the distribution of age, race, gender, secondary health considerations, and so forth. My son isn't a doctor though.

haha. I could have had a lot of fun with that, but I regard sons to be sacrosanct.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I too think it is interesting, but extrapolating the cruise ship numbers to the US population at large is fundamentally flawed.

Yes. As someone mentioned, the cruise ship incident happened in the context of a healthcare system that was not overwhelmed - adequate beds/respirators/etc.. 7% is probably high for Italy for the reasons you describe, but the real numbers sure as hell will be higher than what they got on the cruise ship.

[Uncle Ted]

This also means that the published mortality rates are inflated.

Yep. Given that Italians are very social people my guess of an 30% current infection rate may not be that far off.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Yes. As someone mentioned, the cruise ship incident happened in the context of a healthcare system that was not overwhelmed - adequate beds/respirators/etc.. 7% is probably high for Italy for the reasons you describe, but the real numbers sure as hell will be higher than what they got on the cruise ship.

Isn't Korea's death rate less than 1%?

I doubt a shortage of healthcare is going to more than double the death rate above what they had on the ship if you control for the number of vulnerable people (old, fat and/or smoker) from the sample.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Isn't Korea's death rate less than 1%?

I doubt a shortage of healthcare is going to more than double the death rate above what they had on the ship if you control for the number of vulnerable people (old, fat and/or smoker) from the sample.

Korea did not overwhelm their healthcare system. See MBN's post about how aggressive they have been in terms of tracking and isolation.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Ha. You're older than I am. And you're the one who's screaming. I'm just asking questions.

Nope. IIRC, I am a couple years younger than you.

[Uncle Ted]

Yes. As someone mentioned, the cruise ship incident happened in the context of a healthcare system that was not overwhelmed - adequate beds/respirators/etc.. 7% is probably high for Italy for the reasons you describe, but the real numbers sure as hell will be higher than what they got on the cruise ship.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... we might need to create some temporary hospitals out of hotels and such. And we might need to hook up four people to a single ventilator or jerry-rig some up. There is also the possibility that COVID-19 victims will respond well to cheap anti-malarial and HIV-suppressing drugs.

[Jeff Lebowski]

That might be what we end up with using social distancing. With no social distancing it would be much greater.

You would need 60% of the population to get it before you get herd immunity. 330M*0.6=198M. Fatality rate is 1-2% under the best case scenario - which obviously would not apply here. Italy is hovering around 7% with a maxed out healthcare capacity. Let's say 5%. 198M*0.05= 9.9M. Suppose only 50M get it - that gives you 2.5M deaths.

You get the picture.

Let's redo these numbers with 1% mortality as a lower bound. 198M*0.01= 2.0M. 50M*0.01=500K. That is still a hell of a lot of people. Not to mention the other folks who die because they can't get access to critical health care.