Holy shit - can someone check me on this? NY state and city death rates...

[jmg257]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#states

New York State 247,543 cases 14,347 deaths
New York City 136,816 cases 10,009 deaths


Death rates are 5.7 and 7.3 percent?!?

[JI7]

1. There are probably a lot of people who are infected by have not been tested

and don't display symptoms so not likely to get tested.

[Renew Deal]

12. Not probably. Definitely

I know a lot of people that had it and weren’t tested. In some cases, they were in houses that already had someone test positive, so they already knew. The actual number of cases are 10 times what is listed.

[Jersey Devil]

2. The total infected includes only confirmed cases

The total infected may be way higher than the total of those tested. The reported totals include only those so sick they went to hospitals with severe symptoms.

I live in NC and our government reported yesterday that due to lack of adequate testing the numbers reported after testing may be as low as 5-10% of the total who were infected. We will never know until there is massive testing.

[beachbumbob]

3. bogus data relationship as we have ZERO idea on total infected at any time and anywhere

[Voltaire2]

9. not bogus.

The rate fairly accurately reflects the death rate of identified cases. It indeed does not reflect the death rate for all infected individuals, as we aren't doing anywhere near the amount of testing to arrive at that figure for the united states. However other countries are, for example South Korea, so we do have more accurate data from those places and it is not bogus to assume that that data can be applied to people here too. South Korea has a rate of about 2%. That lines up with other interesting data, such as the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where an isolated population was essentially completely infected and had a mortality rate of 2.6%.

In the relative near future we will be able to compare pre-covid mortality rates with covid-era mortality rates, and that data should reveal what the pandemic is really doing.

[beachbumbob]

17. its bogus until every person is tested as NO ONE knows at any given moment the numbers of infected

its just a number that has no rational relationship to mortality rate as it is an unknown

[Voltaire2]

18. its not bogus, it just has a error factor that is large.

[elias7]

4. The numbers are uninterpretable

The number of cases only reflect those people who have tested positive and who among them have died.

So many more people infected with the virus have not been tested. This would drive the death rate down manyfold except...

so many have died without being tested - nursing home folks, folks who stayed at home and never came to the hospital, those who died in hospital without getting tested (when there was a shortage of tests, and clinically, they had covid so no need for test) which hospitals are NOT COUNTING, but rather listing cause of death as pneumonia, heart failure, multisystem organ failure, etc. Counting them would drive the death rate up.

So we have an undercount of those infected, but also an undercount of those who have died.

The numbers are meaningless. You can’t even argue that they should be the same when you take into account the possibility 1) percent that those with a higher viral load (city folk?) are at higher risk of poor outcome and 2) there could be multiple strains out there due to mutation, and the one affecting NYC might be different than the one that hit Westchester county.

Without massive testing, the stats are ballpark guesses at best

[jmg257]

5. Thanks, All - good info! Nt

[obamanut2012]

6. That is the case mortality rate, which isn't the same thing

Many get this and no one knows they did, many people absolutely have had this way before March and didn't know I did. My doctor thinks I probably did, and am on a list of their patients they want to do antibody tests on as soon as they can.

The actual mortality rate is definitely higher than the seasonal flu, but no, it is not 5% or 7% or even 2%. I am betting it is closer to .65-85%, which is still quite high, depressingly high.

[SlogginThroughIt]

8. Annoyed at the "but not everyone has been tested"

Annoyed at the “but everyone hasn’t been tested” response. It is meaningless to me. The important part to me is, of the people who have had to go to the hospital the death rate is this high.

I think we all know that it is likely that the general population might contract the virus but if you get a bad reaction and have to be hospitalized then your chances are NOT great. The idea that it isn’t as serious as it looks because lots more people have it who haven’t been tested is what these nutso’s at the capitals with guns are parroting.

[Mariana]

11. The OP didn't mention hospitalization at all.

You're annoyed because people responded to the question the OP actually asked? That's rather silly, isn't it?

[SlogginThroughIt]

13. I am saying that is what matters.

We need more testing but the important thing is if you have to go to the hospital it isn’t good. The parroting that it might not be that bad IF you don’t react badly is what is dangerous. We don’t want people taking that risk BECAUSE even if they get a less serious reaction (or none) others will go to the hospital and potentially die.

It isn’t silly. It is messaging and it is important.

[Mariana]

10. Like everywhere else, it's probably hard to get tested

if you're not sick enough to be admitted to the hospital. If they're denying the test to people with more mild cases, it makes the death rate look much higher than it really is.

[MineralMan]

14. Due to insufficient testing, we have no idea how many have

the disease. So, those numbers are meaningless, really.

[Igel]

15. More useful numbers are cumulation hospitalizations and deaths.

Even then, not everybody who dies from the bug is admitted the hospital.

Live with uncertainty.

[jmg257]

16. Cuomo getting into hospitalization numbers now in his presser.