Saturday, May 2, 2020

New York study is confirming my earlier suggestions

Coronavirus Survey Reveals 13.9% In New York Have COVID-19 Antibodies, Cuomo Says
“We have undertaken the largest, most comprehensive study of New York state to find out what is the infection rate,” Cuomo said Thursday.
The state took 3,000 tests throughout New York to get a so-called snapshot of the infection rate.
The number from New York City was startling: More than a fifth tested positive, having recovered or been asymptomatic.
Cuomo said if the 13.9% statewide infection rate holds true, that would suggest a total amount of infections of around 2.7 million statewide, with a 0.5% death rate.

A while back I posted a piece regarding the fact that I felt that the reported death rates were too high by double digit factors. Many people here pushed back (some even came out of hiding to suggest I was incorrect).

Obviously I floated several scenarios, but at the one end I suggested that an overall infection rate of 15% or more would put the national death rate roughly in the same range as the seasonal flu (which is generally in the 0.1% - 0.2% range). 13.9% is certainly in that general vicinity and would play out to a death rate at the upper end of that range when all is said and done (probably around 0.17%)

But I am not yet convinced that what is happening in NY is happening everywhere. I suspect that many part of the country will have much lower exposure rates, due to completely different conditions. The virus simply will spread easier in tight metro locations where people are most likely to be in contact with others. I suspect that it will end up closer to the lower end of the possible range (4%) than the higher end (15%).

But if we end up with any sort of infection rate that evens out to at least 5% or more nationally, that will suggest that the vast majority of the population had very little to fear when it came to fatalities. Consider that we have still only tracked 51 deaths (out of over 37,000 death certificates) from people under 25. If 5% of that population has contracted the virus, that is approximately 5.2 million cases and only 51 deaths.  Doesn't take a math genius to figure out that this the rate of death is about one in a 100,000 or 0.001%.  It might rise as the death toll rises, but at worst, we are still looking at something that is a fraction of how the seasonal flu or seasonal pneumonia  kills younger people.

Oh, and we shut down our schools for this.

11 comments:

Indy Voter said...

No. The schools were shut down to keep them from becoming a source of spread of the virus within local communities. While the virus has relatively mild effects on kids, possibly even having no symptoms showing, kids can still get the virus and become contagious. There was a very real potential that the virus could quickly spread through a community through transmission by asymptomatic kids.

Anonymous said...

Afraid of one's own shadow indy.

C.H. Truth said...

Sorry Indy...

But the numbers are not showing this to be true. Neither children or parent aged adults are showing the sort of ill effects that justifies shutting down the entire school system.

You seem to ignore the concept that 60% of the population (those under 45) only make up 2.8% of the overall deaths so far.


The reality (and this can not be hidden forever) is that this is a virus that negatively affects the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.

The effects on children, healthy adults, and the vast majority of the country not living in a nursing home is turning out to be statistically less than the effects of the seasonal flu or seasonal pneumonia.


There was a better way to protect the vulnerable without shutting down our entire society. To "pretend" differently is to ignore the statistical and medical realities.

anonymous said...

Neither children or parent aged adults are showing the sort of ill effects that justifies shutting down the entire school system.


What that statement shows, Lil Schittyis that you are a fucking moron!!!!! With kids as a carrier spreading to the rest of society, schools either shut down or you kill or the kids to stop the spread....Sorry sport, plenty of parent aged have died from the virus and you saying that is not germane is just fucking STUPID!!!!!!! Just because you don't give a shit for life confirms that you and the old man white part are just a group of power hungry assholes!!!!!

anonymous said...

For the genius Lil schitty....the only person here who knows EVERYTHING!!!!! Suggest he review the whole article as it may alter his naive and flawed analysis!!!!!

The coronavirus, Faust writes, “is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/02/theres-more-accurate-way-compare-coronavirus-deaths-flu/

Christopher Ingraham
May 2, 2020 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
Months into the coronavirus pandemic, some politicians and pundits continue to promote ham-handed comparisons between covid-19 and the seasonal flu to score political points.
Though there are many ways to debunk this fundamentally flawed comparison, one of the clearest was put forth this week by Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School.
As Faust describes it, the issue boils down to this: The annual flu mortality figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are estimates produced by plugging laboratory-confirmed deaths into a mathematical model that attempts to correct for undercounting. Covid-19 death figures represent a literal count of people who have either tested positive for the virus or whose diagnosis was based on meeting certain clinical and epidemiological criteria.
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Such a comparison is of the apples to oranges variety, Faust writes, as the former are “inflated statistical estimates” and the latter are “actual numbers.”
To get a more accurate comparison, one must start with the number of directly confirmed flu deaths, which the CDC tracks on an annual basis. In the past seven flu seasons, going back to 2013, that tally fluctuated between 3,448 and 15,620 deaths.

Anonymous said...

When Biden is elected watch how fast this "crisis"😂 ends.

Commonsense said...

What that statement shows, Lil Schittyis that you are a fucking moron!!!!! With kids as a carrier spreading to the rest of society,

No, not really.

A study by the Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health and supported by the World Health Organisation amongst other research parties, have found there has not been a single case of a child under ten passing on the illness.

It found evidence that “consistently demonstrates reduced infection and infectivity of children in the transmission chain”.

Dr Alasdair Munro who led the research, said: "Covid-19 appears to affect children less often, and with less severity, including frequent asymptomatic or sub-clinical infection.

"There is evidence of critical illness, but it is rare. The role of children in transmission is unclear, but it seems likely they do not play a significant role."

Supporting the research findings, a British boy who contracted coronavirus did not pass it on despite being in contact with over 170 people.

Commonsense said...

That is what we call facts Denny.

Anonymous said...

I have violated and will continue to violate any unconstitutional order by my or any other Govenor.

Anonymous said...

Mayors/Sheriff's in California are rejecting CA. Governor's orders to close beaches.

Good for them.

C.H. Truth said...

The problem isn't the first response. Prior to knowing what we currently know about the virus, the total lock down seemed like a reasonable approach.

But a reasonable approach as time goes on must include acknowledging, accounting for, and adjusting for more solid information as we garner it.

The stick our head in the sand ostrich and do more of the same is not a valid responsible approach. Not when people's livelihoods lie in the balance.


It's simply a fact that the virus does less harm to children and younger adults than the flu and pneumonia. The numbers are obvious, overwhelming, and simply do not lie. Anecdotal quotes from a doctor really doesn't change that.

We are now looking at over 38,000 Covid-19 death certificates... and the data is obvious. Flu and pneumonia have accounted for seven times as many deaths in people under 25 than Covid-19 has during the same time period.

That doesn't account for the majority of the flu and pneumonia deaths that occurred earlier in the cold and flu season, which would make that number drastically higher.