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Plausible COVID-19 fatality rates

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  • Plausible COVID-19 fatality rates

    The problem with finding a fatality rate for COVID-19 is that there are people who have caught it but had only mild or no symptoms, who are not included in the number of cases and so skew the calculation. But now, due to extensive testing regimes in some countries, there are places where effectively everyone has been tested, so no mild or asymptomatic cases will escape notice.

    The largest so far is Luxembourg, who have reported 644,901 tests for a population of 627,036, i.e. they've tested 102% of the population. Presumably this means they've tested some people twice and tested some temporary visitors too. But we can be sure that there isn't a large pool of unnoticed cases.

    They have reported 7,205 cases, with 5,848 recovered, 1,237 ongoing and 120 fatalities.* That gives a COVID-19 fatality rate of at least 120/7205 = 1.67%, and more likely 120/(5848+120) = 2.01%.

    A similar calculation for Monaco gives a fatality rate of around 3%. The UAE has tested more than half the populace, and have a fatality rate of 0.5%

    This suggests that there have been more than a million undiagnosed cases in the UK, and more than 2 million in the US. It also suggests that without containment measures the number of deaths in the UK and the US would have been much much higher.






    *For the sceptical, these numbers add up.
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    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

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  • #2
    2% is serious. Mortality rates for the common flu are (by quick calculation) 0.002%.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Roy View Post
      The problem with finding a fatality rate for COVID-19 is that there are people who have caught it but had only mild or no symptoms, who are not included in the number of cases and so skew the calculation. But now, due to extensive testing regimes in some countries, there are places where effectively everyone has been tested, so no mild or asymptomatic cases will escape notice.

      The largest so far is Luxembourg, who have reported 644,901 tests for a population of 627,036, i.e. they've tested 102% of the population. Presumably this means they've tested some people twice and tested some temporary visitors too. But we can be sure that there isn't a large pool of unnoticed cases.

      They have reported 7,205 cases, with 5,848 recovered, 1,237 ongoing and 120 fatalities.* That gives a COVID-19 fatality rate of at least 120/7205 = 1.67%, and more likely 120/(5848+120) = 2.01%.

      A similar calculation for Monaco gives a fatality rate of around 3%. The UAE has tested more than half the populace, and have a fatality rate of 0.5%

      This suggests that there have been more than a million undiagnosed cases in the UK, and more than 2 million in the US. It also suggests that without containment measures the number of deaths in the UK and the US would have been much much higher.
      Antibody tests show that about 2% of Luxembourg's population has developed antibodies to the virus, meaning at least 12,000 people have had it, and 120 have died. So a more realistic estimate of the infection mortality rate is about 1%. And if some people had it without developing antibodies, it would be even lower.

      https://gouvernement.lu/en/dossiers....q-testing.html

      <edit>
      Strike that last part.

      Study Finds Nearly Everyone Who Recovers From COVID-19 Makes Coronavirus Antibodies
      Last edited by Stoic; 08-10-2020, 10:44 AM.

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      • #4
        Here in New Zealand the government put quite a lot of effort into testing all the contacts of people who tested positive and tracing out how all the clusters linked up, so it's unlikely they missed many. 22 deaths out of 1570 cases gives a 1.4% fatality rate.
        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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        • #5
          It's important to remember that the fatality rate depends upon the age and health population. A country with younger and healthier citizens is going to have a lower fatality rate than a country with older and/or less healthy citizens.

          It also depends on the treatments available. It appears that remdesivir and dexamethasone have cut the fatality rate in half. So a country that got everything under control back in April will have a higher fatality rate than one like the US, where there are still lots of new cases which are somewhat less likely to result in death.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
            Here in New Zealand the government put quite a lot of effort into testing all the contacts of people who tested positive and tracing out how all the clusters linked up, so it's unlikely they missed many. 22 deaths out of 1570 cases gives a 1.4% fatality rate.
            how many of the 22 deaths were of people in the high risk groups

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            • #7
              Originally posted by RumTumTugger View Post
              how many of the 22 deaths were of people in the high risk groups
              Something that helped, in hindsight, was that the first death came quite a lot earlier than the main surge in cases (before anyone was aware covid was in the country) and was a person in a rural area not from a high risk group. That made people realise that the virus did pose a serious threat to everyone everywhere, and so generated a lot of public buy-in to the govt's actions to deal with the danger.

              I can't find stats on the demographics of the dead. Do you think though that if it only poses a lethal danger to high risk groups that we should all be fine with letting our parents and grandparents die?!
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

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