Coronavirus Statistics: Cases, Mortality, vs. Flu

Leifer

Senior Member.
So if the US "death rate" goes down, it will because of wider and more numerous testing (and reporting).... as more milder cases are found.
(This reply is time sensitive info, I won't update here.)
As of a few days ago.....estimated "total US citizens tested" is reported to be around 1,895 people....according to non-CDC sources.

Friday, March 6, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

It’s one of the most urgent questions in the United States right now: How many people have actually been tested for the coronavirus?
This number would give a sense of how widespread the disease is, and how forceful a response to it the United States is mustering. But for days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refused to publish such a count, despite public anxiety and criticism from Congress.
........
But the number of tests performed across the country has fallen far short of those projections, despite extraordinarily high demand, The Atlantic has found.
.......
Through interviews with dozens of public-health officials and a survey of local data from across the country,
could only verify that 1,895 people have been tested for the coronavirus in the United States, about 10 percent of whom have tested positive.
.......
To arrive at our estimate, we contacted the public-health departments of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We gathered data on websites, and we corresponded with dozens of state officials. All 50 states and D.C. have made some information available, though the quality and timeliness of the data varied widely. Some states have only committed to releasing their numbers once or three times a week. Most are focused on the number of confirmed cases; only a few have publicized the number of people they are capable of testing.

CDC says 1583 total tests, a day earlier, on March 5th.....(if the reported data was correct and timely}
Honestly...this CDC data seems to be buried a bit :

covid_1.jpg
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-in-us.html

But isn't the protocol (in the last few days)...that if local tests reveal an infection, that it has to be also verified (checked twice) by the CDC ?
 
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About the Coronavirus outbreak, Pinsky mentions that the WHO estimates the US fatality rate is about 3% (USA I assume)...."

The WHO said that the global case fatality rate is 3.4%, just dividing the total deaths by the total cases, but that's a simplistic way to calculate it.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate
In his opening remarks at the March 3 media briefing on Covid-19, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated:
Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”
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It may turn out to be lower, but I can't find a good estimate. The Diamond Princess cruise ship is a good case study, since mild cases were more likely to be reported there. 6 out of about 700 patients have died, but only about 200 have recovered, the rest are still sick.
It's not a good sign that the global case fatality rate has increased instead of decreased. If you compare it with the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, the H1N1 case fatality rate dropped from 2.5% when there were 787 cases to about 0.4% by the time there were 52,000 reported cases, and it ended up being just 0.02% in the U.S. and maybe 0.05% worldwide.

Here's the COVID-19 death rate out of closed cases. Looks pretty flat now.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases
1583576303250.png
 
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The global mortality "rate" is abnormality high, because so few people have been tested, and it varies by country. In many countries, only the "obviously sick" or with symptoms, or close associates of positive persons get tested.
How many test kits does Lagos have, or sub-Saharan Africa ?
Mumbai ?
Central America ?
....and so on ?
There will likely be widespread test-kits in the future, but not now.

With such little testing, numbers are conceptual and interpretational.
Most accurate estimates are from countries that have had the most testing....South Korea being one.

Coronavirus: South Korea’s aggressive testing gives clues to true fatality rate
  • With 140,000 people tested, the country’s mortality rate is just over 0.6 per cent compared to the 3.4 per cent global average reported by the WHO
  • Various factors can influence this percentage, but scientists agree that all things being equal, it is more accurate when more people are tested
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/heal...navirus-south-koreas-aggressive-testing-gives

....and even at 140,000.... that's not a lot.....Seoul population is 10,000,000 strong.
 
Here's the 2017-2018 flu season data. It was a bad flu season.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden-averted/2017-2018.htm

Table 1:Estimated Influenza Disease Burden, by Age Group — United States, 2017-2018 Influenza Season
Age GroupEstimate95% UI*Estimate95% UIEstimate95% UIEstimate95% UI
Symptomatic IllnessesMedical VisitsHospitalizationsDeaths
0-4 yrs3,678,342(2,563,438, 7,272,693)2,464,489(1,695,054, 4,904,296)25,644(17,871, 50,702)115(0, 367)
5-17 yrs7,512,601(5,899,989, 10,199,144)3,906,553(3,002,375, 5,356,724)20,599(16,177, 27,965)528(205, 1,392)
18-49 yrs14,428,065(12,258,820, 19,396,710)5,338,384(4,262,260, 7,333,716)80,985(68,809, 108,874)2,803(1,610, 6,936)
50-64 yrs13,237,932(9,400,614, 23,062,957)5,692,311(3,895,925, 10,028,080)140,385(99,691, 244,576)6,751(4,244, 15,863)
65+ yrs5,945,690(3,907,025, 11,786,777)3,329,586(2,139,716, 6,623,717)540,517(355,184, 1,071,525)50,903(35,989, 83,230)
All ages44,802,629(39,322,959, 57,928,172)20,731,323(17,978,392, 27,248,302)808,129(620,768, 1,357,043)61,099(46,404, 94,987)
* Uncertainty interval

About a 13.6% incidence and 0.136% case fatality rate, yielding a 0.019% mortality rate.

For COVID-19, some experts are predicting 40% to 80% incidence and about a 1% case fatality rate.

"University of Hong Kong researchers put Covid-19 [case fatality rate] at 1.4 per cent"
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong...university-hong-kong-researchers-put-covid-19
Researchers from the University of Hong Kong have estimated the [case fatality rate] among symptomatic Covid-19 patients at 1.4 per cent, in contrast with 3.4 per cent put forth by the World Health Organisation earlier this week. But HKU researchers also warned that the epidemic caused by the new coronavirus was “much more severe and deadlier” than the swine flu pandemic in 2009.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...infection-could-reach-60-of-worlds-population
Prof Gabriel Leung, the chair of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, said the overriding question was to figure out the size and shape of the iceberg. Most experts thought that each person infected would go on to transmit the virus to about 2.5 other people. That gave an “attack rate” of 60-80%.
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Edit: I see, Dr. Drew puts the COVID-19 case fatality rate at 1% as well. He just inflated the flu case fatality rate to 0.7%, which is higher than the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

Source: https://youtu.be/e_2aaO2nhTE?t=609

Is corona really 20 times more lethal than the flu? NO. NO. It is NOT. It is 3% and falling. Probably going to be more like 1%. The flu is 0.7%. They're very similar, not 20 times.
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The global mortality "rate" is abnormality high, because so few people have been tested, and it varies by country. In many countries, only the "obviously sick" or with symptoms, or close associates of positive persons get tested.
How many test kits does Lagos have, or sub-Saharan Africa ?
Mumbai ?
Central America ?
....and so on ?
There will likely be widespread test-kits in the future, but not now.

With such little testing, numbers are conceptual and interpretational.
Most accurate estimates are from countries that have had the most testing....South Korea being one.

....and even at 140,000.... that's not a lot.....Seoul population is 10,000,000 strong.

The mortality rate could be erroneously low if they don't test patients for coronavirus but simply list the cause of death as pneumonia or cardiac arrest.
In South Korea, there are fewer than 150 recovered patients, so it's too early to count the case fatality rate.
 
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The 3.4% fatality rate that WHO is reporting is also dramatically increased because of Wuhan/Hubei province specifically, and the fact that healthcare workers there were totally overwhelmed at the start of the crisis.

However, in-depth analysis of these data show clear disparities in mortality rates between Wuhan (>3%), different regions of Hubei (about 2·9% on average), and across the other provinces of China (about 0·7% on average). We postulate that this is likely to be related to the rapid escalation in the number of infections around the epicentre of the outbreak, which has resulted in an insufficiency of health-care resources, thereby negatively affecting patient outcomes in Hubei, while this has not yet been the situation for the other parts of China (figure A, B). If we assume that average levels of health care are similar throughout China, higher numbers of infections in a given population can be considered an indirect indicator of a heavier health-care burden. Plotting mortality against the incidence of COVID-19 (cumulative number of confirmed cases since the start of the outbreak, per 10 000 population) showed a significant positive correlation (figure C), suggesting that mortality is correlated with health-care burden.
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1583695963529.png
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30068-1/fulltext

Meanwhile, in a place like South Korea, where they were able to prepare an organized and transparent government response, (including drive-through testing, text message alerts, and an investing $25 billion to offset economic losses), we're seeing the 0.7% fatality rate.

Authorities have called on Daegu’s 2.5 million residents to stay indoors as much as possible and minimize contact with others but is not enforcing this request by law.

Choi, who has spent much of the past few weeks at home with his wife and two children, does not regard these emergency alerts as harbingers of only bad news. In fact, he explains, they are somehow comforting.

“The reason why we are receiving so many messages about the rising number of infections is because the government is quickly carrying out tests for the virus,” he said. “I’m happy with the way the authorities are handling the outbreak.”

It’s not only text messages that keep South Koreans informed. The KCDC has opened a coronavirus hotline, holds daily televised press conferences and offers personal hygiene advice that plays on a loop on many buses and in subway stations in Seoul.
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https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-03...roach-containing-coronavirus-model-rest-world
 
There are multiple issues hampering the effort to determine the actual, average fatality rate, as a Washington Post article recently stated.

Marc Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
[...]
One source of bias arises because, initially, we tend to see the most severe cases. In Wuhan, China, where the epidemic began, care and testing were prioritized for the sickest patients. In other places, such as Iran, the first covid-19 tests were administered because individuals were unexpectedly dying of pneumonia. Either way, the cases we know about are not a random sample of all cases, but a sample of the sickest — so the risk of dying is higher in the people we know about than in typical cases.

By contrast, the other source of bias can make us underestimate the risk of dying. At any moment in a growing epidemic, most cases are people who were infected recently — that’s what it means for an epidemic to grow: There are more new infections this week than there were last week. Many of the people with these new infections will recover, and some will die. We don’t yet know the fates of those who were infected, say, just yesterday or the day before. To count appropriately, we need to know how many of the current cases will die, not just how many have died.
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Emphasis is mine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/06/why-its-so-hard-pin-down-risk-dying-coronavirus/
 
The 3.4% fatality rate that WHO is reporting is also dramatically increased because of Wuhan/Hubei province specifically, and the fact that healthcare workers there were totally overwhelmed at the start of the crisis.

Meanwhile, in a place like South Korea, where they were able to prepare an organized and transparent government response, (including drive-through testing, text message alerts, and an investing $25 billion to offset economic losses), we're seeing the 0.7% fatality rate.

As of February 20, the WHO reported a case fatality rate of 5.8% in Wuhan vs. 0.7% in other areas in China. The rate had increased compared to February 4, when the fatality rate was 4.9% in Wuhan and just 0.16% in other provinces. Right now, Zhejiang province reports 1215 cases, 1161 recoveries, and just 1 death. Is that credible?
Contrast with the U.S., which reports 537 cases, 15 recoveries, and 21 deaths. The crude case fatality rate is 3.9%, but relatively few people have been tested. I'd like to see statistics on just the people who were quarantined or tested before they got sick.
 
There are multiple issues hampering the effort to determine the actual, average fatality rate, as a Washington Post article recently stated.

Marc Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
[...]
One source of bias arises because, initially, we tend to see the most severe cases. In Wuhan, China, where the epidemic began, care and testing were prioritized for the sickest patients. In other places, such as Iran, the first covid-19 tests were administered because individuals were unexpectedly dying of pneumonia. Either way, the cases we know about are not a random sample of all cases, but a sample of the sickest — so the risk of dying is higher in the people we know about than in typical cases.

By contrast, the other source of bias can make us underestimate the risk of dying. At any moment in a growing epidemic, most cases are people who were infected recently — that’s what it means for an epidemic to grow: There are more new infections this week than there were last week. Many of the people with these new infections will recover, and some will die. We don’t yet know the fates of those who were infected, say, just yesterday or the day before. To count appropriately, we need to know how many of the current cases will die, not just how many have died.
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Emphasis is mine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/06/why-its-so-hard-pin-down-risk-dying-coronavirus/

86% of the active cases are reported to be mild, but that includes mild pneumonia.

Imperial College London‌ tried to account for the biases, and came up with a 1% fatality rate back on February 10.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...ial-College-2019-nCoV-severity-10-02-2020.pdf
For cases detected in Hubei, we estimate the CFR to be 18% (95% credible interval: 11%-81%). For cases detected in travellers outside mainland China, we obtain central estimates of the CFR in the range 1.2-5.6% depending on the statistical methods, with substantial uncertainty around these central values. Using estimates of underlying infection prevalence in Wuhan at the end of January derived from testing of passengers on repatriation flights to Japan and Germany, we adjusted the estimates of CFR from either the early epidemic in Hubei Province, or from cases reported outside mainland China, to obtain estimates of the overall CFR in all infections (asymptomatic or symptomatic) of approximately 1% (95% confidence interval 0.5%-4%). It is important to note that the differences in these estimates does not reflect underlying differences in disease severity between countries. CFRs seen in individual countries will vary depending on the sensitivity of different surveillance systems to detect cases of differing levels of severity and the clinical care offered to severely ill cases. All CFR estimates should be viewed cautiously at the current time as the sensitivity of surveillance of both deaths and cases in mainland China is unclear. Furthermore, all estimates rely on limited data on the typical time intervals from symptom onset to death or recovery which influences the CFR estimates.
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and 21 deaths. The crude case fatality rate is 3.9%, but relatively few people have been tested.
22. now. but when you hit a nursing home, I don't think that counts really. the article say they typically lose 3-7 people a month. so more than half, 13 passed away, of the death total to date was sick and sick-old people.

A total of 13 deaths at a Seattle-area long-term care facility have been connected to coronavirus, and more could be confirmed in the coming days, a spokesman said Saturday.

Life Care Center of Kirkland, ground zero for the West Coast's coronavirus outbreak, has reported 26 deaths since Feb. 19, when a resident first tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19, said spokesman Tim Killian.

Content from External Source
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...-care-facility-connected-coronavirus-n1152306

**add edit: i should note that i feel adding people at very low risk (under 70 and healthy) is also 'unfair'. without a vaccine and no herd immunity (yet), the fatality rate in people at risk is what matters, imo. and it is the duty of the healthy people to not help spread this disease under the assumption that it is "no big deal". It's a big deal to people with cancer etc.
 
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As of February 20, the WHO reported a case fatality rate of 5.8% in Wuhan vs. 0.7% in other areas in China. The rate had increased compared to February 4, when the fatality rate was 4.9% in Wuhan and just 0.16% in other provinces. Right now, Zhejiang province reports 1215 cases, 1161 recoveries, and just 1 death. Is that credible?
Contrast with the U.S., which reports 537 cases, 15 recoveries, and 21 deaths. The crude case fatality rate is 3.9%, but relatively few people have been tested. I'd like to see statistics on just the people who were quarantined or tested before they got sick.

That's a good question. Zhejiang is one of the most developed parts of china and a huge industrial center (home to Alibaba). There's a lot of financial incentive to make things looks like they're better than they actually are, and apparently local companies might even be faking electricity consumption & falsifying work logs.

Beijing has spent much of the outbreak pushing districts to carry on business as usual, with some local governments subsidizing electricity costs and even installing mandatory productivity quotas. Zhejiang, a province east of the epicenter city of Wuhan, claimed as of Feb. 24 it had restored 98.6 percent of its pre-coronavirus work capacity.

But civil servants tell Caixan that businesses are actually faking these numbers. Beijing had started checking Zhejiang businesses' electricity consumption levels, so district officials ordered the companies to start leaving their lights and machinery on all day to drive the numbers up, one civil servant said. Businesses have reportedly falsified staff attendance logs as well — they "would rather waste a small amount of money on power than irritate local officials," Caixan writes.
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Source: https://theweek.com/speedreads/9004...overy-all-fake-whistleblowers-residents-claim

Zhejiang specifically was the first place that received the top level "Grade I Emergency" declaration, which includes a full-scale effort of social tracking using a "grid management" surveillance system that divides the country into tiny sections, where volunteers and community members are put in charge, decentralizing the enforcement. This kind of control might make it more difficult for outsiders or whistleblowers to understand the scale of what is going on.

Housing complexes in some cities have issued the equivalents of paper hall passes to regulate how often residents leave their homes. Apartment buildings have turned away their own tenants if they have come from out of town. Train stations block people from entering cities if they cannot prove they live or work there. In the countryside, villages have been gated off with vehicles, tents and other improvised barriers.

Despite China’s arsenal of high-tech surveillance tools, the controls are mainly enforced by hundreds of thousands of workers and volunteers, who check residents’ temperature, log their movements, oversee quarantines and — most important — keep away outsiders who might carry the virus.

...

Zhejiang Province, on China’s southeastern seaboard, has a population of nearly 60 million and has enlisted 330,000 “grid workers.” Hubei Province, whose capital is Wuhan, has deployed 170,000. The southern province of Guangdong has called upon 177,000, landlocked Sichuan has 308,000 and the megacity of Chongqing has 118,000
Content from External Source
https://web.archive.org/web/2020021...eace/c53723/2020-01/29/content_12319327.shtml

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/business/china-coronavirus-lockdown.html
 
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22. now. but when you hit a nursing home, I don't think that counts really. the article say they typically lose 3-7 people a month. so more than half, 13 passed away, of the death total to date was sick and sick-old people.
**add edit: i should note that i feel adding people at very low risk (under 70 and healthy) is also 'unfair'.

You don't count high-risk people and low-risk people? I don't follow.
 
I think we need many figures that include many determinations. There's a lot of maths.
....not unlike multiplying and dividing these. :
Population Density,
Testing fluidity.
Lifestyle and hygiene in the midst of a threat.
Lifestyle and hygiene before or after the threat.
Exposed, a number.... (health-care workers, and first-contracted illness.)
Exposed, a number currently.

Does the first set (period) of illnesses and deaths count for very much ? (in numbers only, bless those lives). This was a period of confusion and in-awareness.
Virus protection was likely at an average state before recognizing it, likely the same procedures for Influenza......or thinking it was the "common cold" rhinovirus.......... among typical health workers.


I'm reminding myself of basic averaging......

mean_mediun_mode.jpg
 
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IMHO, the scary part is that we still don't know how spread it is in US right now.

There are 22 deaths in US. There are 566 confirmed cases right now, what would mean a death rate of 3.8%. Is the coronavirus deadlier in US? Of course it's not, the problem is the spread.

Assuming a death rate of 2%, that would mean 1100 cases. As we are discussing in this thread, 1% or 0.7% is probably a more accurate value, what would mean 2200 to 3200 cases in US right now.

And the scariest part is, we just don't know. No-one knows. I don't care that I, as an average American, am not in the risk group, or that my parents are safe in Brazil, or that the Flu kills 30k people per year, so 22 covid19 deaths are "not relevant". At this point we don't know how spread it is, or where it is, and how many nursing-homes-that-shouldn't-be-counted are going to be hit. This was preventable or at least mitigable, and we are not doing a good job.

US is going to be the second hardest hit country because people just don't care, and I'm sad for that.
 
You don't count high-risk people
no. if a cluster appears in a hospital or nursing home and has a high fatality rate, that is a false rate if you are trying to determine the fatality rate for the whole of the U.S. you said the rate in the U.S would be 3.9% using known numbers now. I'm saying that there is an additional reason we cant use known numbers now.
 
There's a new independent COVID-19 tracking project started because of the lack of information provided by the US government, particularly when it comes to how many people are getting tested, and how they're reporting the tests. It's a good resource to see what is broadly happening in the US: http://covidtracking.com


Q: Who are you?
A: This project began when two tracking efforts merged. Jeff Hammerbacher, Founder and General Partner at Related Sciences, had built a tracking spreadsheet. Separately, two journalists, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, had built a tracker for a story in The Atlantic. They came together March 7, and made a call for volunteers to help keep the data updated. The data is now maintained by a volunteer team of coders, journalists, data people, visualization specialists, analysts, and other people willing to help maintain this as a public resource.

Q: Why are you providing this information?
A: The COVID Tracking Project tries to provide the most comprehensive data on state-level testing for the novel coronavirus. Testing is a crucial part of any public health response, and sharing testing data is a necessary part of understanding this outbreak. Thus far, the CDC has declined to provide comprehensive testing data. That’s why a group of volunteers has coalesced to provide this essential data to the public.
Content from External Source
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gjLnqETDiIlKh6zyAHzCTTITzxFrq0ezGq_QvL-FB7s/edit

I'm a contributor, if you would also like to volunteer, you can check out this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Lw47PuyIjtOMy3XRnLweff7xBjmlxxtqzVQI5cVdcI/edit
 
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Here is a useful dashboard for tracking CV cases from Johns Hopkins. I looked thru the thread and didn't see it posted yet- apologies if I missed it:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

It was posted on the first page by Arugula. Very easy-to-remember URL, isn't it.
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/covid-19-coronavirus.11085/post-236317
Another good tracking site is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus
The two sites have some differences in the numbers of cases, deaths, and recoveries. I tend to use the larger number.
 
Regarding the fatality rate discrepancies - interestingly the rate in Lombardy (northern Italy) seems to be disproportionate to the rest of Italy. It could be because of a lack of available ICU beds.

In China, about 80% of the reported cases were not serious (e.g. "mild pneumonia"), 15% were serious (e.g. pneumonia and shortness of breath) and probably needed oxygen, and the remaining 5% were critical (ARDS or shock) and would probably die without intensive care. About half of the critical cases died, which is how you get a roughly 2.5% case fatality rate. So a lack of any ICU beds would double the case fatality rate to 5%, hopefully no higher. But a lack of hospital beds might increase the number of serious cases that become critical and die.
 
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not sure how much I trust a site called "worldometers" but they seem to have very specific numbers, and a few NYTimes blurbs (cant access full articles to link) suggested too most cases are mild in SKorea.
1583800426049.png
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/

(of course hospital beds and not having 10% of your medical staff in quarantine, would certainly help those with more severe cases to recover)
 
If you believe the numbers from China, they've managed to contain this epidemic. Reporting just 45 new cases, all in Hubei I think. Or they just stopped reporting most new cases.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly-coronavirus-special-edition
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000170-c16d-da87-af78-e1ed63560000
Patterson Clark, POLITICO Pro DataPoint

I do believe South Korea's numbers.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea
1583917258503.png

So, that's optimistic. On the other hand, the global death rate of closed cases is increasing, possibly because various countries are testing the most seriously ill.

1583917677968.png
 
Across the pond:
"NHS bosses warn hospitals over intensive care demand surge"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...s-intensive-care-england-nurses-a9395716.html
Professor Keith Willett, NHS England’s incident director for the coronavirus outbreak, told a secret briefing of chief nurses from across the NHS that they needed to prepare now for the unprecedented demand which could overwhelm existing critical care services.
Sources who were in the briefing told The Independent Prof Willett warned the demand was likely to be not just double but “several fold” the existing 4,000 intensive care beds in the NHS.
There was confusion about what Prof Willett said, with a number of sources in the room adamant he said “seven times, quite clearly”.
But in a statement to The Independent Prof Willett said: “Categorically, I did not say a seven-fold increase; I said a several-fold increase.”
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Had it not been for this leak, those sources might still have thought that he said "sevenfold," and planned accordingly.
 
Here's a graph of the fatality rate versus the testing rate.
The title says, "Countries that test more for COVID-19 tend to have lower mortality rates for the illness," but the graph shows that Italy tests a lot and still has a high fatality rate.

https://time.com/5798168/coronavirus-mortality-rate
1583802865943.png

I have an answer for this. Italy also has some of the highest percentage of +65 year olds of any european country due to it's aging population. therefore naturally they will have a higher fatality rate. 23% of their population is over the age of 65. from:
https://www.businessinsider.com/italy-coronavirus-old-population-cases-death-rate-2020-3
Annotation 2020-03-12 192122.png



Separate from this, I'm curious if the stats are further skewed for COVID, since we don't know how many cases of COVID have other complications that include pneumonia. For example, death rate for influenza+pneumonia is WAY higher than covid in comparable age groups. I don't understand why doctors on the news aren't being more clear about this. Am I misunderstanding the data?
Below is the COVID death rates
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
1584066250225.png
compared to influenza+pnuemonia:
1584066489266.png
https://www.lung.org/assets/documents/research/pi-trend-report.pdf

You can see the rate is over 100 here for influenza+pneumonia.

and here shows 4-7% : https://www.livestories.com/statistics/us-influenza-flu-pneumonia-deaths-mortality
1584067102380.png
 
The article states that 60% is over the age 40. The graph you posted doesn't seperate and compare ages 40 and over, it lumps 15-64 years together making it impossible to know who many of each age are in that group.
Well, only over 60 is really relevant here, and over 65 even more so. The over 65 group for Italy is not really different from Germany, which has 20 million more people.

You'd need a finer-grained age breakdown to see if there's a difference.
 
yeah, that's true. I found a good site and i'll throw that together. I wonder if the author took some liberty there. It seems to me that with italy it couldve been that plus other factors combined, and not just the age thing.
 
Italy also has some of the highest percentage of +65 year olds
you need Lombardy really. vs say Wuhan. or even the areas hit in South Korea. I actually did find the stats on Lombardy but then didn't want to look up where in South Korea to compare to.

For example, death rate for influenza+pneumonia is WAY higher than covid in comparable age groups.
that death rate is per 100,000. so thats like .0016% <dont quote me on that i likely have my decimal places wrong.

with italy it couldve been that plus other factors combined,
I wonder if its still custom to kiss each other on both cheeks on greetings and partings. But the other day the average age of deaths in Italy/Lombardy was 81.4 yrs. Old people often hang out with old people, so it could just be that it is the higher age groups it is circulating in in Italy so far.

All the numbers, in all countries are really way to small and the disease way too young to get any sense of accurate numbers anyway. thats why medical stats you look up are usually at least from 2 years ago. It needs to be over before you can really start to crunch the numbers.
 
you need Lombardy really. vs say Wuhan. or even the areas hit in South Korea. I actually did find the stats on Lombardy but then didn't want to look up where in South Korea to compare to.


that death rate is per 100,000. so thats like .0016% <dont quote me on that i likely have my decimal places wrong.


I wonder if its still custom to kiss each other on both cheeks on greetings and partings. But the other day the average age of deaths in Italy/Lombardy was 81.4 yrs. Old people often hang out with old people, so it could just be that it is the higher age groups it is circulating in in Italy so far.

All the numbers, in all countries are really way to small and the disease way too young to get any sense of accurate numbers anyway. thats why medical stats you look up are usually at least from 2 years ago. It needs to be over before you can really start to crunch the numbers.
I’m italian, and my mother is in Italy, and I can tell you without a doubt that the custom of kissing each cheek is 100% still in. That will never go away.

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And I’m starting to think it’s unbelievably irresponsible for Dr Anthony Fauci to go on saying extreme statements like “10x more lethal than the flu” without understanding the worldwide impacts it’s creating
But all of the studies, and the simple figures themselves, point to a mortality rate that's at least 10x that of regular flu. So what are you saying?
 
A variety of cities, states, and countries have similar bans now, with various differnt numerbers. Here's a smattering for a search for: "banned gatherings of over"

>100: Ohio
>250: San Diego County, Miami Beach, California [strong advisory], Seattle Area, Indiana, New Jersey
>500: New York
>1000 France, Switzerland, Santa Clara County, Berlin

That's certainly not all, and, of course, there's even more draconian measures in Italy and China.

How do they decide on the number? Just guesswork or is there a method to it?
 
But all of the studies, and the simple figures themselves, point to a mortality rate that's at least 10x that of regular flu. So what are you saying?
What i'm saying is, isn't it too early to be saying this? How can we say this with such small sample pools, and then accurately compare this to the flu which has MASSIVE sample pools? The logic being used is the same logic as saying, "Car company 'x' makes 1 car, someone dies in said car, therefore fatality rate is 100%"
 
What i'm saying is, isn't it too early to be saying this? How can we say this with such small sample pools, and then accurately compare this to the flu which has MASSIVE sample pools? The logic being used is the same logic as saying, "Car company 'x' makes 1 car, someone dies in said car, therefore fatality rate is 100%"
135,000 confirmed cases is a very high sample pool.
 
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