Another View of the Statistics - Mine

[friendly fred]

In the USA, we have 34,273 deaths out of 3,723,634 tested.

That's a one percent death rate (well, actually less than that) out of symptomatic patients who met the testing criteria of fever and difficulty breathing - a credible candidate for a test in the judgement of medical professionals who have gotten a lot of experience by now.

Even if deaths double from this amount, which is what the IHME model essentially predicts - that will be a 2% death rate among symptomatic patients. However, some small antibody studies, such as in California, state this:

"These prevalence estimates represent a range between 48,000 and 81,000 people infected in Santa Clara County by early April, 50-85-fold more than the number of confirmed cases."

If true we are looking at a death rate about the same as the flu.

.02/50 = 0.0004

Expressed as a percentage 0.04%

Death rate per 100,000 people who get it: 40 people, probably old and sick already.

If everyone in Texas gets infected: 30,000,000 x 0.0004 = 12,000 deaths.

IHME is predicting about one thousand deaths in Texas.

So, have we temporarily forestalled 11,000 deaths of old and sick people but sacrificed herd immunity and sacrificed our way of life? Given up the freedoms our forefathers died to get for us?

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...Ccg_ohr2FE_hZU

Potential flaws in my estimates:

1. I don't know how many are asymptomatic that were tested.

2. I don't know who received multiple tests.

3. Assumes robust and accurate testing and reporting.

4. Poor selection criteria (i.e. improperly randomized and representative) in Santa Clara County.

[matchingmole]

Darn close to interesting.

[friendly fred]

Originally Posted by matchingmole

Darn close to interesting.

Thank you kind sir. I hope Cuomo gets widespread testing done in NYC like he plans to do, so we can see how that turns out.

[oeb11]

FF - very well done - i agree.

Particularly to emphasize the Overall case mortality rate will be much less than 1% - compared to the 4% predicted early on.

Please emphasize the case mortality rate of symptomatic patients requiring medical intervention - ie hospitalization - of less than 1%.

It will be true that elderly patients with significant underlying disease - diabetes, lung disease, etc, will have a higher mortality rate.

[friendly fred]

Similiar results in a separate test in LA County!

USC-LA County Study: Early Results of Antibody Testing Suggest Number of COVID-19 Infections Far Exceeds Number of Confirmed Cases in Los Angeles County

Los Angeles (April 20, 2020) - USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (Public Health) today released preliminary results from a collaborative scientific study that suggests infections from the new coronavirus are far more widespread - and the fatality rate much lower - in L.A. County than previously thought.
The results are from the first round of an ongoing study by USC researchers and Public Health officials. They will be conducting antibody testing over time on a series of representative samples of adults to determine the scope and spread of the pandemic across the county.

Based on results of the first round of testing, the research team estimates that approximately 4.1% of the county's adult population has antibody to the virus. Adjusting this estimate for statistical margin of error implies about 2.8% to 5.6% of the county's adult population has antibody to the virus- which translates to approximately 221,000 to 442,000 adults in the county who have had the infection. That estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported to the county by the time of the study in early April. The number of COVID-related deaths in the county has now surpassed 600.

http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phc....cfm?prid=2328

[Tiny]

Very interesting info, especially the high ratios of number infected to number of confirmed cases. Thanks for posting this.

I think the .04% fatality rate is low. This is why:

If you take the number of deaths to date in Santa Clara County, 83, and divide by the midpoint number of people infected (64,500), you'd come up with 0.129% fatality rate. You'd expect that would increase with time, as more people who were infected by early April die. For Los Angeles County, with 617 deaths, the fatality rate as % of people infected using the midpoint (332,000) would be higher, 0.186%, and again you'd expect that to increase.

New York City has a population of 8.4 million and 10,344 deaths. To date, 0.123% of the population has died. That's 123 people per 100,000 population. Considering that everyone in NYC wasn't infected and considering additional people will die, the actual fatality rate is greater than 0.123%.

Both Bill Gates and the head of the CDC a week or two ago were guessing around a 1% to 1.2% fatality rate. I suspect they're a bit high. The lowest estimate I've seen is around 0.16%, from taking the actual 1.3% fatality rate on the Diamond Princess and trying to adjust for the passengers being older than average. I'm taking numbers from an article oeb linked to and adjusting for additional people who've died since it was published. Here's the original article,

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/...reliable-data/

Even though our differences are large in % terms, I'm kind of quibbling. I think this info about Santa Clara and Los Angeles Counties is a strong indication that the fatality rate will be less than the experts like Gates and the head of the CDC were predicting very recently.

The bigger unknown now looks to be the % of the population that will be infected before a vaccine is developed. This will vary from area to area depending on things like population density, the ability of local health departments to identify and isolate carriers, and social distancing practices.

[Sienna91]

Good point . people have to realize that when you discuss a statistic you have to discuss the entire thing. I can look up the amount of people that have gotten attacked by cats and I'm pretty sure it's a large number but if I compare that number to car crashes it is trivial. and that's not to say that this isn't a big issue because it is but you have to compare and contrast.

[Jackie S]

I think one item of interest would be to find out why some people who contract CV-19 experience no more symptoms than a cold, and others end up dead.

A good case in point is the former Boxer Termite Watkins. He has been fighting this for going on 4 weeks, coming close to death.

He is on the way to recovery, but reports are he will have an extension rehabilitation.

Before CV-19, he was a reasonably healthy person.

IMHO, I think millions have been exposed and actually had mild symptoms with no more concern than the sniffles. The big question will be are they now immune to future outbreaks?

[gnadfly]

Mortality rate won't be determined until there's more exhaustive testing.

More than half the fatalities are taking place in the NYC/North NJ area. My guess is there's some other factor than population density, public transportation, age and infirmity.

What happened to the calls to have the recovery "data driven?"

[1blackman1]

One disconnect that you miscomprehend Is that number of tests performed differs from number of people tested. I’m not sure the factor but there’s far less people tested than those performed. That’s the number you really need for your math to be relevant.

[friendly fred]

Originally Posted by 1blackman1

One disconnect that you miscomprehend Is that number of tests performed differs from number of people tested. I’m not sure the factor but there’s far less people tested than those performed. That’s the number you really need for your math to be relevant.

No way to control for that at this time.

[friendly fred]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Very interesting info, especially the high ratios of number infected to number of confirmed cases. Thanks for posting this.

I think the .04% fatality rate is low. This is why:

If you take the number of deaths to date in Santa Clara County, 83, and divide by the midpoint number of people infected (64,500), you'd come up with 0.129% fatality rate. You'd expect that would increase with time, as more people who were infected by early April die. For Los Angeles County, with 617 deaths, the fatality rate as % of people infected using the midpoint (332,000) would be higher, 0.186%, and again you'd expect that to increase.

New York City has a population of 8.4 million and 10,344 deaths. To date, 0.123% of the population has died. That's 123 people per 100,000 population. Considering that everyone in NYC wasn't infected and considering additional people will die, the actual fatality rate is greater than 0.123%.

Both Bill Gates and the head of the CDC a week or two ago were guessing around a 1% to 1.2% fatality rate. I suspect they're a bit high. The lowest estimate I've seen is around 0.16%, from taking the actual 1.3% fatality rate on the Diamond Princess and trying to adjust for the passengers being older than average. I'm taking numbers from an article oeb linked to and adjusting for additional people who've died since it was published. Here's the original article,

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/...reliable-data/

Even though our differences are large in % terms, I'm kind of quibbling. I think this info about Santa Clara and Los Angeles Counties is a strong indication that the fatality rate will be less than the experts like Gates and the head of the CDC were predicting very recently.

The bigger unknown now looks to be the % of the population that will be infected before a vaccine is developed. This will vary from area to area depending on things like population density, the ability of local health departments to identify and isolate carriers, and social distancing practices.

Very good points.

Thanks for your well reasoned response.

[friendly fred]

Originally Posted by Jackie S

I think one item of interest would be to find out why some people who contract CV-19 experience no more symptoms than a cold, and others end up dead.

A good case in point is the former Boxer Termite Watkins. He has been fighting this for going on 4 weeks, coming close to death.

He is on the way to recovery, but reports are he will have an extension rehabilitation.

Before CV-19, he was a reasonably healthy person.

IMHO, I think millions have been exposed and actually had mild symptoms with no more concern than the sniffles. The big question will be are they now immune to future outbreaks?

Apparently he is recovering, and he is 63 years old. It seems like he caught a bad case but came off the ventilator after 2 weeks!

https://abc13.com/maurice-'termite'-...-icon/6095630/

[friendly fred]

Originally Posted by gnadfly

Mortality rate won't be determined until there's more exhaustive testing.

More than half the fatalities are taking place in the NYC/North NJ area. My guess is there's some other factor than population density, public transportation, age and infirmity.

What happened to the calls to have the recovery "data driven?"

Data driven with the right context is best....however these are promising data points.

NYC is also doing serology tests so hopefully more similar results will show the lower mortality rate.

[EagleEye]

Those studies are interesting but have not been formally peer reviewed.


The other data point that I am curious about is the definition of fatalities. Are these studies only hospital based COVID-19 deaths or morgue based. Not all people who are dying of this are doing so in a hospital. I did not dive deep enough into these studies to determine if non-hospital fatalities are factored in, and if not, what are the numbers dying in a non-hospital setting.