What 1% mortality really means.

[Arkansas Granny]

Link to tweet

?s=20

Link to tweet

/photo/1?

[BigmanPigman]

1. This is worse than the Spanish Flu as far as percentages go...

"In the U.S., about 28% of the population of 105 million became infected, and 500,000 to 850,000 died (0.48 to 0.81 percent of the population)."

[FBaggins]

12. Not apples to apples

.81 percent of the population dying with 28% infected implies almost a 3% death rate.

[coti]

2. It's actually 2+% mortality

All you need to do is divide estimated deaths in two to three weeks (because deaths are a trailing indicator) by cases today. That should be about 320k-330k divided by 15.16 million, which is about 2%.

Not sure where this 1% number came from, but I have noticed we are far too willing to repeat bullshit numbers made up by RWNJs.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. The author of the tweet is using the 1% figure since that is the number

often cited by RWNJs.

[captain queeg]

6. There was an article in the NYT last week

They said if you look at the daily number of new cases, 3 weeks later approx 1.7% of that number would die. Not scientific, it was just a rule of thumb that has held pretty steady. They also said the thanksgiving holiday would likely throw a wrench into that calculation.

[FBaggins]

11. That assumes that 100% are tested

You can’t just compare deaths to those who test positive. The number of people who catch it and are never tested (and perhaps never have symptoms) is orders of magnitude higher than the number of deaths that are unknowingly COVID related

[myccrider]

22. Case Fatality Rate vs Infection Fatality Rate

[Not disagreeing with your point, just clarifying that there are different ‘official’ ways of measuring death rates.]

CFR is the number of confirmed cases divided into the number of deaths. IFR is the number of estimated cases (includes asymptomatic and mild cases not usually reported) divided into the number of deaths.

Although, from all I’ve read, neither is a fixed, unchanging number for any disease because circumstances can vary tremendously during and with every outbreak.

For instance, because we are doing so much testing, we are almost certainly picking up many more asymptomatic and mild cases that will be ‘confirmed’ than we would with, say, the seasonal flu (where even the CFR is actually estimated and is usually thought to be less than 0.1%). The CFR at the beginning of the pandemic was way higher than now because, in part, there was little to no testing, making the confirmed cases a smaller number, and medical treatment was completely hit or miss, i.e. ventilation doing more harm than good for many, making the number of deaths per hospitalization (another way to measure death rate) higher than now.

Plus, sadly, the CFR will likely shoot up as the healthcare system is overwhelmed and people that might have survived under normal circumstances are left to die due to lack of resources.

I’ve read that the IFR for Covid-19 is thought to be between 0.2-0.3%, based on researchers who have gone into an area and tested 70% or more of people to get the actual infection rate.

Regardless of all that, too many people are dying and are going to die because bozos in our country couldn’t be arsed to wear masks, stay at home as much as possible and stay out of large gatherings. The whole argument that Covid only kills 1% or 0.3%, or whatever number used, is made by those who want to avoid doing those simple things and who refuse to admit the reality of what those numbers will and are doing to the healthcare system. Plus the whole possibly half a million or more dead by March 2021!!!

[Mariana]

3. It would be nice if the writer had included sources for those numbers.

I don't doubt that huge numbers of Covid-19 patients have lingering and perhaps permanent problems. My cousin is one of them, he had Covid-19 in March/April and he still has breathing issues, although he is very gradually improving. Still, I'd like to know where these numbers came from.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Another thing left out of this is

what period of time is involved? Do the 1% die in a week? A month? A year? Two years? The time frame does matter.

And it also assumes every single person in this country is infected. I honestly don't think that will happen.

[Blue Owl]

7. K&R for visibility

[LeftInTX]

8. Doesn't 1% mortality mean that 1% of the people who contact it die?

Not one 1% of the US population.

Where I live the Covid mortality is 1,537/86,998 = 1.77%
In the state it is 23,187/1,340,000 = 1.7%
In the US 282,000/14,800,000 =1.9%
In the world 1.54M/67M = 2.5%

I agree the severity of the disease is not taken into consideration...I think when it first arrived on the scene, people were expecting 1% mortality and weren't aware of the long term, systemic consequences. Most people perceived it like a bad pneumonia. I think all the consequences are causing the death rate to go higher. When it first arrived, people were expecting that healthy young adults would get through this and not-so-healthy adults would also be OK. It was supposed to be fatal to the elderly.

[DeminPennswoods]

9. IIRC, in the beginning Fauci said SARS2 would

be 10x deadlier than the flu, which, again IIRC, has a mortality rate of about .1%. That translates to a covid19 mortality of 1%.

Currently mortality is a little under 2% and has been falling slightly over the past few weeks. If, as some claim there are many more covid19 cases than are being reported, then mortality is even lower.

[uponit7771]

10. CV19 Death rate is 3.2% of RESOLVED cases. People who are still alive with C19 as sick but...

.... but haven't died or gotten well don't get counted as a death or ecovery; their outcome is still pending and shouldn't be calculated as part of deaths ... they're not dead.

World o meters has the us deaths % separated from recoveries

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[FBaggins]

13. Resolved isn't a useful statistic

Those who test positive without significant symptoms aren’t universally followed up on to see if they recovered... and the millions who caught it and never had symptoms or a test do not get counted as “recovered”.

[uponit7771]

15. Its the least speculative number we have right now of the death rate and is how its been calculated

... in the past.

[FBaggins]

16. That advantage does not outweigh the disadvantage

It does not answer the question "how likely is COVID to kill you if you catch it?"

[uponit7771]

17. The issue being addressed here is hard data vs guesses, WOM is giving hard data. the rest has not ..

... been factored in because its speculation and has not been accounted for so there's no way for.

and

Its what has defined death rates in the past, we're not going to change hundreds of years of calculating death rates because this is CV19

[FBaggins]

18. No it isn't

The issue being addressed here is the mortality rate of COVID. You can't get that by comparing measured deaths from COVID to a number that bears no relation to the number of people who have been infected.

Its what has defined death rates in the past

No, it isn't. Death rates have always compared deaths to the total estimate of those infected. Not "known to have been infected and also known to have later recovered"

[uponit7771]

19. I'll believe worldwide scientist vs wild estimates one can pull out of a tree (link to worldometers)

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/

[FBaggins]

20. Have you read your own source?

They call your position "naïve" and "misleading"

One of us agrees with them. You might be surprised to discover which.

Nor does that measure represent "hundreds of years of calculating death rates". It's a novel method that was proposed fifteen years ago and specifically said:

However, simple estimates of the case fatality ratio obtained from these reports can be misleading if, at the time of analysis, the outcome is unknown for a nonnegligible proportion of patients.

Which is exactly the scenario you're pushing and exactly the concern I voiced. The outcome for a massive number of cases is unknown in the figures you're using. There are not 6+ million unresolved cases in the US still waiting for an outcome.

[uponit7771]

21. Yeah, you left out of the part before nave and misleading. I'm talking about what we ... KNOW ...

... right now from what is known right now not from the tree speculation or "Once an epidemic has ended, ..." (the part you left off) because we don't time travel into the future.

It goes without saying when all is said and done etc etc ... we'll know more that doesn't prevent us from calculating a best CFR.

But

From what we KNOW ... right now from what is KNOWN ... right now WOM reports the current CFR as 3.4%

I'm going to go with the scientist on this one

[nitpicker]

14. To repeat: It matters WHO is getting CV

In states mostly driven by meatpacking plant and prison outbreaks, the current fatality rate is 1% or less.

((Utah is a special case, as many there lead a "clean" lifestyle.))

On the other hand, if it gets into nursing homes, all bets are off.