Be especially careful in upcoming months

[Jarek]

It won't last forever? Why not? It just starts spinning. Looking at what's going on in Australia for example? People locked in their houses for weeks (what is the difference with being imprisoned without sentence?), police hours (is it some warzone)? Pregnant woman arrested because of posts on the facebook that are "hazardous for the community", protesting woman with child arrested in May for carrying transparent "If you don't know your rights, you don't have any. Magna Carta"? The thing that you would not imagine one year ago, happened in a free country within weeks. What is really going on here? Next year we may have 2nd wave, 3rd wave, COVID-21, FLAVID-22... and let's wait another year until the new vaccine is developed. At some point it gets one way.

[Mickel]

Australia is a penal colony, particularly in the east. Always has been, and always will. So the ruling class returned to form at the hint of trouble. They're losing their crap over a weekly infection rate that would have been an hour in Florida. It's insane. Don't take here as a good example.

Fortunately, due to internal border closures, in 'lil ol' Adelaide, there is basically nothing going on. So it's easy for me to stand on my soap box.

[twsharp12]

It will last as long as it's convenient. It's been a wonderful power trip for politicians from the local level, all the way up to the federal level. Look at how valuable WalMart, Amazon, and other big brands have become over the last 6 months, while the little guy gets completely neutered.

[Stearmandriver]

Ironically as the case numbers have gone up in my county....
Herd immunity is here....

Can you explain how both those statements can be true at the same time? "Herd immunity" refers to a condition in which enough of a population is immune to a disease that its R0 drops below 1.0, meaning the disease can no longer spread through a population.

How can you have herd immunity AND increasing case numbers?

[Mickel]

How can you have herd immunity AND increasing case numbers?

Oh stop with the logic...

[Ron Attwood]

How can you have herd immunity AND increasing case numbers?

It rather depends on what is considered a 'case'. I haven't seen the criteria for what constitutes a 'case'.

EDIT: I just figured out what a case is. At the beginning of this hoo-ha both my wife and I had the dreaded COVID-19. I had a sore throat and felt a bit under the weather. My wife had a high temperature and also a bit unwell. It lasted a couple of days. We have been fine (as fine as old crocks can be) since.
I guarantee that if we had a test now we would be positive and consequently 'cases' Add two more to the total Bert.

[BrettT]

It's literally just a ratio calculation?!?

CFR is a simple ratio but it really doesn't tell the whole story. You could have two different countries or states that test in a different manners that would yield completely different numbers. Country A might only test people that get admitted to the hospital. In that case they would have an exceptionally high CFR. Country B might test 5% of their population over a given period of time. That would yield more cases (many likely asymptomatic) and a much lower CFR. In neither case do you actually know the Infection Fatality Ratio (IFR) which is really the only thing that is important.

So when the media or whoever is stating a 2-3% fatality ratio it does not mean that if you get this disease you only have a 97-98% chance of surviving. Especially with something like COVID where there is a suspected high amount of undiagnosed cases or asymptomatic cases. Some articles have put that anywhere from 80-90% of the cases which then leads to an IFR anywhere between .2-.6% or possibly less.

A lot of noise was made about "Sweden's" failed experiment in seeking out heard immunity citing 6% fatality ratio. Which is a pointless statistic. Are we to assume that Swedes are inherently more vulnerable to COVID....of course not. It is more reasonable to assume that their actual fatality ration is no where near this 6%. Afterall, why would a country that is not placing any restrictions invest in widespread testing? Looking at their daily death rate is much more telling and really not disputable. They had an initial peak in the spring followed by an almost linear decline until mid July and since then has pretty much been near zero. This is with minimal restrictions.

So even simple ratios are not simple and can be used to tell different stories

[Stearmandriver]

How can you have herd immunity AND increasing case numbers?

It rather depends on what is considered a 'case'. I haven't seen the criteria for what constitutes a 'case'.

EDIT: I just figured out what a case is. At the beginning of this hoo-ha both my wife and I had the dreaded COVID-19. I had a sore throat and felt a bit under the weather. My wife had a high temperature and also a bit unwell. It lasted a couple of days. We have been fine (as fine as old crocks can be) since.
I guarantee that if we had a test now we would be positive and consequently 'cases' Add two more to the total Bert.

Basically, laboratory confirmation via a positive PCR (molecular) test. Positive antigen test results are usually not counted without a confirming PCR positive result. Not sure why it would seem a mystery, the CDC published this guidance in April.

And yes, everyone who's had a sniffle in 2020 thinks they had the Covid. Unfortunately, testing in early hard-hit areas shows that this is not the case at all, so unless you had a positive PCR test result, you might be cautious about assuming you've had it. You most likely haven't.

[Stearmandriver]

So when the media or whoever is stating a 2-3% fatality ratio it does not mean that if you get this disease you only have a 97-98% chance of surviving...

I've snipped just this part because it seems to distill what you're saying.

So if I'm understanding, now the claim isn't that CFR is hard to calculate, it's that the results can be difficult to interpret because consideration must be given to the reliability of the data used? Ok, fair point to consider.

But considering it, the same question emerges: it's not "the media or whoever" that's claiming this disease kills roughly 2% of people who contract it - it's literally the CDC, the NIH, and the WHO themselves. This IS their own professionals' interpretation of their data, AFTER they've allowed for unreported cases.

I imagine we agree that there's no better collection of professionals on the planet to interpret data regarding infectious disease than these agencies. They, themselves, put the CFR at roughly 2%. I'm not cherrypicking CDC data to make my own argument here, I'm just repeating THEIR OWN conclusions. The studies used in this determination are cited throughout the CDC literature.

Compared to that, why would anyone put more stock in any media outlet or an opinion piece on a blog or Youtube or something? Basically, what do any of us think we know that the CDC epidemiologists don't??

[BrettT]

But considering it, the same question emerges: it's not "the media or whoever" that's claiming this disease kills roughly 2% of people who contract it - it's literally the CDC, the NIH, and the WHO themselves. This IS their own professionals' interpretation of their data, AFTER they've allowed for unreported cases.

But that isn't what the CDC is saying. Even simple math of the current US fatalities/US cases is right at 3%. These are only diagnosed cases by definition. The definition of CFR is Case to Fatality Ratio where cases is a diagnosed tested case and fatality is self explanatory. The definition of IFR is Infection to Fatality Ratio where is Infection is all infections (diagnosed and undiagnosed cases...think of all those asymptomatic people that never went to the doctor to get tested).

So no....3% of people who get this disease will not die. The IFR is the only number that indicates what percent of people who actually get the disease will become a fatality and the IFR will always be less than the CFR. In fact the most recent CDC estimate of the IFR is 0.6% (and has ranged anywhere from 0.25%-0.6%) with a heavy bias towards older more vulnerable population.

Latest CDC estimates for IFR

0-19 - IFR=0.00003 or 0.003%
20-49 - IFR=0.0002 or 0.02%
50-69 - IFR=0.005 or 0.5%
70+ - IFR=0.054 or 5.4%

With these fatalities being heavily biased to people with comorbities. So obviously if you are in that last group, particularly with underlying conditions by all means be careful. This is a far stretch from 2-3% population wide. Provided link for the CDC page published....yesterday. Scroll to the end of the page for the table

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... arios.html

[Ron Attwood]

At the end of the day there are folks who are sucked in by this crap and those that aren't.

[Mikenor]

Truth finally starting to makes its way out to mainstream, albeit very slowly..

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ ... 1?mode=amp

[Ron Attwood]

Today Ireland, tomorrow, the World. But don't hold your breath! Too embarrassing for too many high-ups.

[Stearmandriver]

Provided link for the CDC page published....yesterday. Scroll to the end of the page for the table

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... arios.html

I wondered if this might pop up. This data has been getting passed around a lot recently, but usually out of context.

These are 5 different model runs for planning scenarios. The numbers you're referencing seem to come from a single pre-print of a study; meaning it hasn't yet been published in a journal or undergone peer review. These numbers do not necessarily reflect the position of the CDC, or the infectious disease community in general. I'm actually looking forward to publication, as it promises to be a lively review process . There's a decent facts-only summary by the AP about this, here:
https://apnews.com/afs:Content:9243914747

However, even IF we took these estimates of IFR as accurate, my original point - that Covid is much deadlier than the flu - still holds. But IFR involves an awful lot of assumptions and guesses given the level of info we have right now, which probably still makes a comparison of case fatality rates a little more useful. Are there undiagnosed cases of Covid out there? Absolutely, without a doubt. Are there uncounted Covid deaths out there? Also, absolutely without a doubt.

But, aren't there also a large number of uncounted flu cases every year? You bet. I know I've never gone to the doctor for the flu, and I've certainly had it a few times, for instance.

So, with the same inherent undercounting prevalent in both diseases, a CFR comparison is still valid.

But look, it's much simpler than that. All you really have to consider is:

The flu kills an average of 37,500 people in a twelve month timespan, and;
Covid has killed almost 200,000 people in around 7 months.

In other words, Covid has killed over 5 times more people than the flu, in just over half the time.

[AKar]

My understanding is that often deaths are declared to be caused by covid in many cases where those caused by 'flu' would not be written to be caused simply by that flu, even if the causality or lack thereof was of similar level. Instead, a common flu can subject one to several serious conditions in people who are already sick, physically weak or simply very old, and the deaths are declared on these conditions, such as pneumonia. But if the "flu" was covid, then the resulting deaths are covid.

For sake of comparison, pneumonia kills approximately 4 million people annually.

-Esa