Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

wut?

 

even though deaths have risen this week, it has not been meteoric in nature, hopefully they level off at about where they are, and begin a slow daily drop like about a month ago

 

This continued decrease appears to be good news. When you consider, though, the fact that cases have skyrocketed, is a minimal decrease in death rate really good? Just for example . . .

100k cases, death rate of 10% = 10,000 deaths
500k cases, death rate of 8% = 40,000 deaths
2million cases, death rate of 5% = 100,000 deaths
8million cases, death rate of 3% = 240,000 deaths

I'm just playing with numbers here, but with the kinds of exponential growth in cases we are seeing and the gradual decrease in fatality rates, there are still hugely increasing numbers of fatalities.

 

The three day increases have been largely up, then a little bit down, but mostly up. The latest interval is alarming in all ways . . . not good news.

Increases

Date.......world cases.....world deaths.....U.S. cases.....U.S. deaths
May3........255,940............14,061...............93,006...........4,731
May6........258,072............16,907...............75,063...........6,212
May9........278,941............15,389...............84,217...........5,238
May12......239,189............12,376...............61,327...........3,388
May15......284,608............15,658...............75,649...........5,082
May18......266,271............11,660...............66,009...........3,474
May21…....303,083…….....…14,472………........70,608…….......4,373
May24..…..303,683…….....…12,072…….....…...65,534…….......2,946
May27…....291,339…….....…10,756………........59,367…….......2,807
May30…....364,906…….....…13,454………........71,017…….......3,450
June2…...…324,528…….....…11,316………........64,385…....…...2,502
June5…...…365,955…….....…15,934………........84,503…….......3,331
June8…...…349,307…….....…10,486…….....…...60,785…….......1,665
June11…....395,623…....……15,077………........63,208……........2,979
June14…....394,966……....…11,489…….....…...72,527……........1,824
June17…....416,062……....…16,082………........72,243……........2,083
June20…....513,453…....……15,422………........96,107……........2,039
June23…....431,986……....…12,264…….....…...93,590……........1,493
June26…....558,418…....……17,896……….......128,788…..........4,167
June29…....535,253……....…11,239……….......128,855…..........1,143
July2...…....574,195……....…15,882……….......155,378…….......2,702
July5...…....573,206…....……12,875……….......145,739…….......1,084
July8...…....610,409…....……15,274……….......176,004…….......2,293
July11...…..674,987……....…15,599……….......196,714…….......2,541
July14.....…615,422……....…13,572……….......189,431…….......1,740
July17.....…731,765……....…18,120……....…...224,935…….......2,921
July20.....…665,107……....…13,872……….......191,417…......….1,770
July23.....…797,581……....…23,257……….......208,562…….......3,499

 

I know this is not a popular opinion, but I am still unsettled by the focus the fatality rate is receiving. To me, it is a measure of our treatment success (go science!) and our efforts to isolate the most vulnerable. It is not, however, indicative of our success at ending this pandemic. As some have calculated, a smaller case fatality rate in the face of a much larger number of cases may still be a disaster in lives and the economy.

It reminds me of someone boasting about third down efficiency when the team is down by 35 pts. It's nice to see you're good at something, but you're still getting blown out.

I want to see cases and positive rates going trending down. [/rant]

 

My sense is the "experts" have had the true death rate pegged somewhere in the .5%-1% range for awhile now. South Korea basically pegged it there very early with their robust testing, and I've gone with that assumption ever since then - nothing I've seen has convinced me of anything substantially different. Of course they also seemed to identify very early that death rates vary wildly across age groups, so pegging an "overall" rate can also be kind of misleading. It can both give people a false sense of security, or terrorize them, depending on which age group a person belongs to. I'd say with these numbers, anyone over 60 should be pretty terrorized.

South Korea: COVID-19 death rate by age group | Statista

For people in the 30's and 40's, the death rate is "flu-like", but that is obviously still concerning considering the lack of any natural immunity and lack of any great therapeutics for those who get seriously ill. These people should be concerned for themselves, not be fearful, but also should have consideration for their neighbors who may have good reason to be fearful.

However, it only takes a person in their 50's to see it hit .66%, which is already several times more deadly than influenza. This is where there should be genuine concern, and obviously once you hit 70's and 80's this thing is extremely deadly and many many times more fatal than influenza.

 

I totally get where you're coming from with this, but it's a pretty cornerstone stat and one I'm glad to see trend downward. What are the important stats?

• Cases, Cases/mil
• Deaths, Deaths/mil
• Death rate (deaths/case)

 

I don't think these mortality vs "official cases" numbers really mean anything though, other than showing the "official" numbers moving in the direction of the "theorized" numbers. Which makes sense, as we are testing more and creating larger sample sizes. While the U.S. testing has improved, it never caught up to really represent a "random sample". It's still not even close to a random sample, it's still heavily biased towards people showing symptoms, which is why the mortality was 5+% and even now is still 3+%. South Korea's early testing was so robust, it more closely resembled a "random sample" - capturing everyone, including asymptomatic and not infected, and thus their rates are both much lower and more representative. IMO.

That is not to say the rate lowering means nothing, it does at least indicate our testing has broadened from the total disaster it had been for several months. It may also represent that we are doing better treating the disease, by all accounts the medical field is learning as we go. But I think looking purely at hospital admittance and ICU survival rates would be better tools to evaluate that type of success.

 

Agreed. It is important to understand the entire context of the stat, which you've outlined well here.

I guess my point is: I see the hoax crowd pointing it out, and the it's-real crowd minimizing it and we should all be cognizant of our biases at work.

Again, context and understanding are very important, but the number falling is also very good. Both can happen simultaneously.

 

Agree here for sure. We need to get this thing on a down slope.

 

Agreed. The good seroprevalence studies have generally showed it in that range. I assumed most people knew it was never a 5% fatality rate that you get from simply dividing the number of fatalities by known cases. The truth is we were only catching 1 in 10 cases early on and now are catching way more of them so the denominator is getting closer to the actual number. However, better treatment and protecting the vulnerable does help the rate as well.

 

# of people hospitalized with covid would seem to be relevant as it tracks the severity of the cases and is likely a leading indicator to the number of deaths sans new and improved treatments

 

You have to consider cases because even mild ones require at least SOME kind of treatment, testing, etc. that tax the system; not to mention, even the lax new guidelines won't allow openings where the spread is still so rampant.

Fatality rate's important; but we're not getting it done with those numbers... our resources are not inexhaustible.

 

Make sure your hand sanitizer isn't toxic! Link to 75 recalled products--

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/24/hand-sanitizer-recall/

 

This is pretty sobering...
A Texas hospital is so overrun with coronavirus cases that officials say it will send the patients least likely to survive home to die

 

FAKE NEWS!!! This is exactly what happened in Italy. At the time I thought "There is no way that will happen in the US". Then came New York. Now 3 months later in Texas. This is inexcusable.

 

what, no nursing homes available, gotta get a cuomo shot in every time i can