I'm confused why there is still so much fear and abnormal life in the US when the US CDC says the mortality rate is miniscule, e.g. [1]. We're not completely back to normal yet in Vietnam, but a lot closer.
1. There isn't much trust in what the government is saying at the moment, especially since their communication is usually mismanaged, incorrect or contradictory. For example, some states have passed laws/orders blocking the public release of COVID data.
2. People are also afraid of simply getting COVID, not just dying from it. It has been shown to cause permanent health issues even in young people.
It really has not at all. How can we show "permanent" issues for something less than half a year old? Anyone who's had pneumonia before knows it causes a lot of upfront damage. I had it back in University and it took a week before I could get out of bed and nearly a month before my lungs didn't feel like bricks. I was still coughing for 2~3 months after.
Today I am 100% recovered. Everything I've seen in the fear-mongering "permanent damage" news articles looks to be the same effects as any non-covid pneumonia. We won't KNOW if any of this is permanent until March 2021, but I think it's highly unlikely.
But it's important to note, permanent damage is literally impossible to determine right now. Simply not enough time has passed.
Not OP but a quick Google search found this. I have also read plenty of articles of a similar nature. It doesn't take much work to find a reputable source for this type of information.
Long term may be a better description than permanent. But we don't know and won't know for a while what long term complications are caused. Look at HIV, you get a cold and then nothing maybe for years, then everything falls to pieces. It may not be as severe as HIV and it may be more severe than pneumonia. Why do you want to take that risk when you can avoid it with some simple precautions? If it turns out that these aren't permanent then you can go and catch it next year, no need to rush in now is there.
You can use Google. It's not hard to find. As for true studies, there probably aren't any. We're talking about a virus that has only been known about for less than a year.
The horrific death totals early on have completely skewed people's opinions of the severity of this disease. It's not a binary live/die, there are all kinds of other complications associated with it and too many people seem to think that spending 3 weeks in the ICU is no big deal because "hey, you survived".
Abnormal does not even begin to describe it. At least on the West Coast. No one is doing anything, most people remain in their houses all day, every day. The few people I see out are simply buying groceries or going for a walk.
A lot of bars and restaurants where I live have SELF ELECTED to re-close even after the county allowed them to open back up under very strict regulations.
It's a nightmare. There's really no other way to describe it. Either the West Coast is entirely different from the East Coast or we haven't even begun to realize the economic impact this situation is going to bring. Anything short of a complete collapse will be a miracle.
The CDC report lists a number of planning scenarios.
> Are estimates intended to support public health preparedness and planning.
> Are not predictions of the expected effects of COVID-19.
> Do not reflect the impact of any behavioral changes, social distancing, or other interventions.
The number you're quoting is derived from (but not quoted in) one of the scenarios, which is described:
> Scenario 5 represents a current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States, with the same caveat: that the parameter values will change as more data become available.
You can work it out if you read the article. It says the high infection/death rate estimates were based on no interventions and no change of behaviour i.e no voluntary social distancing and working from home. Looking at the reaction to the lockdown, from some sections of US society, it is pretty obvious that without the lockdowns enough people would have made no changes to their behaviour and would therefore contribute to higher infection levels and desths. Further, plenty of employers would not have allowed working from home and would have expected people to attend work or lose their jobs. So infected people, predominantly poorer people, would have had no choice but to work when ill and with the atrocious healthcare system would have been unable to access help even if they didn't have to work. So those huge numbers we saw estimates of at the beginning could easily have been achieved in the US, and possibly still could. Florida saw over 10k cases a day this week. This isn't tailing off or going away, it was slowed.
Vietnam had a quick response to the problem, but it also doesn't have the same level of international travellers passing through it so it is easier to contain. The US could have contained it but that means shutting 150 airports, as opposed to Vietnams 3 airports.
Vietnam gets about 45k visitors per day, in comparison the US/Mexico border crossing in California/Tijuana has 75k crossing per day. That's one border point and there is also the US/Canada border too.
So it is in part because Vietnam handled the pandemic better than the USA, but that was also more easily achieved due to the size and complexity of each nation.
Do you have anything more recent? We're about 45 days past that estimate and the fatality rate for people who test positive is holding steady at 4.5% if you divide it out. Clearly that doesn't include anyone who never got tested (and likely people w/o symptoms didn't), so I'd like to see if the CDC still stands by the numbers here from May.
nyc said 21.6% antibody on 6/13. 32k deaths, 8.4M ppl => 1.8% IFR. CFR is much more complicated because policy changes on testing and hospitalization will make cause CFR to bounce around. Anyone argue that's a worse case scenario?
(1) Why are you ONLY looking at the fatality rate?
I don't have all the links here, but just because you don't die doesn't mean there aren't other serious consequences (especially for people with existing conditions). People are losing their taste/smell etc. There's a lot of unknowns but it doesn't seem like it's that benign. You are treating it as binary either you live or die.. seems like it's more complicated than that.
(2) A fatality rate of 0.3% to 0.4% might not seem to bad, but you can't look at that alone. The contagion rate is HUGE compared to other viruses. So while the rate alone might not seem terribly bad, the fact is that with how contagious it is the vast majority of the population will/would have ended up getting it if proper precautions are not taken.
Because the case rates are almost entirely worthless. They're combining PCR AND antibody tests into the case rates!
A lot of people who are finally able to get elective procedures (some which are critical health procedures) are getting tests because everyone is required to now when you go into some hospitals. If they test positive for antibodies, they're counted AS A NEW CASE!
That's insane! They may have had it at one time and never even realized it. Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40.
This is absolutely, 100%, mass-hysteria.
Let us look at the numbers and decide our own risks!
Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of people have been out there every week for over a month, and there are no massive increases in fatalities. The Texas numbers are skewed because people are coming in for normal accidents, happen to be CoV2 positive, and then suddenly someone in a car wreck in an ICU is now a Covid19 case as part of the "Second wave" bullshit.
Ok I guess just ignore what I said and spout off random stuff.. great response.
>Even now, the fatality rate is 0.001% for all Americans and it's much lower if you're under 40.
Uh, 0.001%? Are you dividing like deaths by the full population? Not sure what you are trying to infer from that. Maybe if the country had done nothing in response then looking at the death rate like that after a long time makes some sense.. but that's not the case.
Think about it this way. Let's say there is a virus with 100% death rate. It starts killing people, but then we are able to quarantine the people that have it and stop the infection. You would be like.. omg the death rate is only 3 / 330,000,000 it's sooooo low!
Well no, it's because we stopped the outbreak early. Are you going to sit here and tell me that locking down a lot of the country for months did nothing to vastly reduce the death rate, and you are going to act like lockdown deathrate = death rate of doing nothing?
>Go to the beaches of Indiana or Florida or Texas. 1000s of people have been out there every week for over a month, and there are no massive increases in fatalities
It's a beach. Outside. People are not packed right next to each other. It's windy. People bring their own things, they aren't going around constantly touching things other people are, etc. A beach is probably one of the sanest things you can do right now.
Have you noticed that since things like bars have opened up now cases are rising like crazy in Florida/Texas because people are packed in breathing the same area and touching all the same stuff?
Look- we have LEADING EXPERTS in the fields who basically dedicate their lives toward this kind of virus and what should be done.. but oh you are claiming it's 100% mass-hysteria. I guess you are the smartest person in the world who no one listens too. Must be hard to be you every day.
Why is there this laser focus on Fatality rate as a talking point for anti-mask anti-lockdown types? Is death the only undesirable outcome? Polio had historic mortality rates around 5% in children, would you want your children to catch polio? Would you push for herd immunity for polio and have >60% of the children in the country catch it? It's simply absurd! There are other health risks besides death to consider. How does no one see that?
Half of the US seems to think this is just a GLOBAL conspiracy to hurt Donald Trump, like are you dense? You think the entire world would torpedo their economies just for the chance to hurt Trump? These people need help.
I am consistently disappointed by the lack of critical thinking in HN comments.
Fatalities is the best data we have, has common definition, and can be used to set policy. Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable outcomes besides death, but there is a lack of data on the rates, duration, or importance.
>Everyone in the US knows that there are other undesirable outcomes besides death
You can't really believe that. Maybe a small fraction of the population seems to be aware of this. The rest parrot some version of: "95% of people survive, its just the flu!"
I really do. Being hospitalized and recovering is an undesirable outcome, and for that matter, so is having pneumonia or the flu like symptoms at home.
Nobody denies those outcomes exist.
I agree there is a longer list of negative health outcomes, such as chronic fatigue, shortness of breath, diabetes onset, ect. The association of these with covid-19 is less understood in the medical community, and less widely known to the public, and their importance when setting public policy is less clear.
It makes sense to focus on fatalities, because while they are not the only negative, it is the most significant, any other outcomes would roughly track with it.
> Polio had historic mortality rates around 5% in children, would you want your children to catch polio?
No, nor would I want my children (or anyone) to get covid. This is a separate question from whether the current lockdown measures increase life expectancy and if so, whether they’re worth it.
> There are other health risks besides death to consider.
Yes, there are. Again, a reasonable person might think the probability of those occurring is either (1) low enough to begin with or (2) not much decreased by the lockdown, that the negative effects of the lockdown outweigh it. Do you have any non-anecdotal discussion of (1) how common permanent disability from Covid is, and (2) how many severe covid cases are prevented by lockdowns?
> Half of the US seems to think this is just a GLOBAL conspiracy to hurt Donald Trump
Nobody in this thread said that covid is not serious or that it is a conspiracy, or anything about Trump, so this is a complete non sequitur. Certainly, there are people in the US who believe that covid is a global conspiracy to hurt Trump, which is absurd, but it’s an obvious fallacy to argue like “some people make absurd arguments for proposition P, therefore P is wrong”.
>Again, a reasonable person might think the probability of those occurring is either (1) low enough to begin with or (2) not much decreased by the lockdown, that the negative effects of the lockdown outweigh it.
If you think your average anti-mask anti-lockdown American is making that kind of analysis then frankly I think you are disconnected from reality...
>Do you have any non-anecdotal discussion of (1) how common permanent disability from Covid is
Permanent disability is obviously impossible to prove at this point.
Perhaps the best microcosm we've had to learn from so far is the Diamond Princess cruise ship. The Japan Self-Defense Forces Central Hospital did an in depth study: "Of 104 cases, 76 (73%) were asymptomatic, 41 (54%) of which had lung opacities on CT. Other 28 (27%) cases were symptomatic, 22 (79%) of which had abnormal CT findings."
54% of asymptomatic cases had lung opacities, and 83% of those were ground glass opacity. That usually indicates pretty nasty lung damage. Symptomatic cases as expected showed more and worse damage.
Here's an analysis, what is the expected economic cost of achieving herd immunity? If you expect 60% infection rate to provide herd immunity thats 196 million cases in the US. Play with the numbers, 1-5% mortality rates, 50% of asymptomatic and 80% of symptomatic cases had some degree of lung damage. We're talking 500K - 1M+ deaths and tens of millions of people with lung damage. Have you actually factored that into your "The stonks must go up so lets sacrifice grandma" argument?
This is also a pointless exercise because virtually every major developed country on the planet has basically beaten this thing with... wait for it... LOCKDOWNS and MASKS. Crazy right?
> If you think your average anti-mask anti-lockdown American is making that kind of analysis then frankly I think you are disconnected from reality...
I never said anything about what the average anti-lockdown American believes. Frankly, I have no idea. Again, what does this have to do with whether lockdowns are good policy or not? If 99.9% of people believed the earth was round based on some flawed argument, would you conclude that it must be flat?
> virtually every major developed country on the planet has ... beaten this thing with lockdowns and masks
Nobody has beaten it, since the pandemic isn’t over. Once places that had very few cases start opening up, it stands to reason that the outbreaks will start again, as happened in Arizona for example. It seems clear that the only way to truly beat covid without it naturally burning out due to herd immunity is to impose a strict lockdown until a vaccine is widely deployed, which I believe to be impossible.
(Unlike probably anyone who thinks this is a scam to hurt Trump, I hope I’m wrong and a vaccine comes out quickly, because things going back to relatively normal in the near future is a much better outcome than various jurisdictions stubbornly locking down until their unemployment systems collapse, causing mass unrest...)
We've had nearly 3 million cases with over 130k fatalities. If the numbers are being grossly underreported, then it's certainly possible the mortality rate is < 1%, but given the numbers we have now, our mortality rate is closer to 4.5%.
There are a lot of overcounts. People who die of gunshots are COVID-19 deaths if they test positive. A huge number of people have died from secondary effects: being unable to get essential heart surgery, suicide, some people have even died of Malaria because doctors assumed it was COVID and told them to not come in.
I was wondering if we were undercounting too, but the more I look at the data, to more it's likely we're overcounting fatalities by a large amount.
It's virtually certain that Covid deaths are undercounted in the US. Excess deaths are nearly 30% higher than expected. Belgium has used extremely strict counting for deaths, their per capita death numbers are likely the most accurate in the world and are ~2 times higher than the US' numbers.
“Our (DOH COVID-19) dashboard numbers do include any deaths to a person that has tested positive to COVID-19.”
“We don’t always know the cause of death for a death when it is first reported on our dashboard. That is true. Over the course of the outbreak, we have been monitoring and recording the causes of death as we know it. We currently do have some deaths that are being reported that are clearly from other causes. We have about five deaths — less than five deaths — that we know of that are related to obvious other causes. In this case, they are from gunshot wounds.”
> We have about five deaths — less than five deaths — that we know of that are related to obvious other causes.
That's a strange phrasing. Less than five? Did they forget the word "four"? Or is it three, two, or one? Why beat around the bush if they have a number?
I get it for bigger numbers, if somebody refers to 997 of something as "about a thousand, less than a thousand", I get that. "nine hundred ninety seven" is a mouthful. But "about five, less than five"? Give me a break.
That section of the article is a quote of someone speaking. It could have been phrased more accurately, but reading that sentence as a quote of someone speaking it just sounds like they did not quite remember the exact number when they were asked the question, and their word-for-word response was written down.
The mortality rate so far has been under the assumption that those who need to be hospitalized can be. If everyone catches it at the same time and we can't treat them, the mortality rate is bound to rise significantly.
Considering that COVID has killed nearly two Vietnam War's worth of Americans in 7 months and is surging by the day in many areas, I think we could stand to have a bit of fear and spool some things down for now.
With that very dubious estimate, that's still over a million deaths and millions more occupied ICU beds if everyone in the US got infected (which we are trying hard to do, apparently).
Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total fatalities in the US alone, assuming 70% of the population needs to be infected to achieve "herd immunity" without a vaccine.
It's premature for anyone, anywhere, to declare victory over the virus at this point because: 1 - there is a very high likelihood that we will have at least one more major global wave of the virus before we get an effective vaccine, 2 - we still do not know how effective said vaccine(s) will be, 3 - it's entirely possible that we will never get an effective vaccine (or it will arrive too late to mitigate most of the damage), at which point the only option will be to let the virus run its course.
> Even at 0.3% IFR you're still talking about ~700k total fatalities in the US alone
Yes, there are a lot of people in the US, so even things with a very tiny chance of killing you will cause large numbers of deaths in absolute terms.
On the other hand, to be fair, if you’re considering absolute numbers of deaths, you _also_ have to consider absolute quantities of suffering from the lockdown. Take the probability of a person being thrust into poverty, or developing serious mental health problems, or just spending some of their precious time on earth unable to socialize normally... and multiply that by 300,000,000.
There would be many ways of saving 700,000 or more lives that are much less invasive than the current lockdowns, like heavily restricting meat consumption or driving. However, we don’t implement them because the per-capita increase in life expectancy is judged not to be worth the decrease in life quality.
No one is denying that the lockdowns are having serious repercussions throughout all of society. There will definitely be many unintended deaths from other causes that would not otherwise have happened without Coronavirus.
That said, you are just flat out wrong about how many people die in the US from driving and Coronary Heart Disease each year. Together, those two account for ~400k fatalities each year. In the best case scenario, Covid may cause almost double that number in less than 12 months. In the worst case scenario, it could be many times that number. Also, we need to keep in mind that while covid predominately kills the elderly, some younger people will still die from it. CHD pretty much only kills the elderly.
This is incredibly disingenuous comment mahaganapati. You have many responses to your initial statement, most of which explain why your simplistic comparison of Vietnam Vs USA is not valid, but you have replied to the one commenter who confirms your own opinion. I hope you read the other responses and understand why I am calling you out on this.
When I made that comment there were not many other replies yet. However I still remain unconvinced that this is not just another product of American hype media.
The elderly have a massive hold on the American political system that outweighs the fraction of the population they represent. They are typically consistent voters, and if you go to a polling place, it will likely be an elderly lady or gentleman running it. Given that they represent they vast majority of casualties, putting them at risk is a political non-starter, even if the most logical realpolitik solution.
This has been my thought as well for some time now, but a lot of the most strident voices for "control it all costs" seem to be coming from the young (at least online), maybe it's different in real life?
[1] https://reason.com/2020/05/24/the-cdcs-new-best-estimate-imp...