Wuhan Killer Sneeze (thanks Tea)

[baboon2004]

don't know, but one idea is that until we can see hospitalisation rates versus death rates, then the stats are hard to draw any conclusion from

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I'm suspicious of the very word lockdown

as I said a few pages back, it doesn't have any precise meaning, which is bad for a number of reasons

I don't like the connotations either and ideally there would be another word, but one hasn't emerged

quarantine would be better but it's probably too narrow to cover the range of what's happening?

and/or politicians don't like to use it if they don't have to because it sounds frightening

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

don't know, but one idea is that until we can see hospitalisation rates versus death rates, then the stats are hard to draw any conclusion from

the stats have to be taken with a grain of salt for any number of reasons, sure

I'm just wondering about such huge disparities. Germany has a CFR of ~0.58%, with 41.5k cases. Italy has a CFR slightly of almost exactly 10%.

how does Italy have a fatality rate something like 17x that of Germany?

age, smoking, etc probably play a factor. the health care system not collapsing in Germany is huge, obviously.

and perhaps there are differences in the way cause of death is recorded? that one is purely a guess.

but Germany even seems to have a vastly lower rate of serious cases reported as serious (which I take to mean ICU/ventilator).

tbc, I don't think anyone actually knows right now, just wondering if anyone had seen anything by an epidemiologist or similar in this vein

 

[Mr. Tea]

Although isn't urine sterile or something anyway?

Exactly. So if you get some poo on your hands, just wash it off with wee.

"Nature's soap", I call it.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

obviously, no disease has a single fixed CFR, and it's an imprecise measure because neither cases or deaths are perfectly recorded

but still with a relatively large sample size it seems like it can give a reasonable idea of lethality

everything I've seen refers to age, basically - Italy has a lot of old people, plus a higher % of people infected have been old people there than in other places

it just seems crazy that Germany has a CFR lower than South Korea, while Italy's is the highest in the world so far

 

[luka]

What's CFR mean?

 

[droid]

obviously, no disease has a single fixed CFR, and it's an imprecise measure because neither cases or deaths are perfectly recorded

but still with a relatively large sample size it seems like it can give a reasonable idea of lethality

everything I've seen refers to age, basically - Italy has a lot of old people, plus a higher % of people infected have been old people there than in other places

it just seems crazy that Germany has a CFR lower than South Korea, while Italy's is the highest in the world so far

I think there's something up with the German numbers. Its partly due to all the testing theyre going, which is picking up milder cases, but I read somewhere that they may be recording co-morbidity mortality deaths as not being coivd related and/or they may not be swabbing many bodies.

 

[droid]

UK doctors not being allowed to report pneumonia deaths as covid without testing, and being refused tests.

 

[baboon2004]

I read that too about Germany

Now fears that there could soon be a new crisis area in the south of Italy

 

[Mr. Tea]

Only 12 new deaths in the UK today, according to Worldometer:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

However:

UK doctors not being allowed to report pneumonia deaths as covid without testing, and being refused tests.

Have you got a link for that, droid? Not that I don't believe you.

 

[droid]

There was an interview with a doc on TV this morning apparently.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

they may be recording co-morbidity mortality deaths as not being coivd related and/or they may not be swabbing many bodies.

right, that's what I was getting at with "differences in the way cause of death is recorded", so that confirms that suspicion

whereas Italy apparently goes the other way and records all co-morbidity events as COVID deaths assuming there's been a positive test

perhaps that is enough to account, along with other factors, for the difference

because German death numbers seem absurdly low compared to basically everywhere else, even places that are aggressively testing

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the UK death numbers also look very suspicious for the number of cases, which itself looks suspiciously low

especially given the relatively late and incomplete lockdown

hopefully yes, it doesn't give people the idea that this isn't serious/can ignore quarantine measures etc

 

[Mr. Tea]

Typical UK govt thing of not lying outright by knowingly giving totally bogus numbers, like they would in those bad countries like China or Iran, but nonetheless being dishonest.

 

[Mr. Tea]

the UK death numbers also look very suspicious for the number of cases, which itself looks suspiciously low

Yeah, the fact that there's so little testing does make you wonder if there aren't tons of people dying from it but being recorded as seasonal flu, bronchitis or whatever.

 

[baboon2004]

Worldometer is out of date for the UK. The total at 5pm yesterday was 578, up 115 from 8 hours earlier (as they're changing the times at which they start/end the count), if I've read this correctly. Can that be true, it's crazy if so

Only 12 new deaths in the UK today, according to Worldometer:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

However:



Have you got a link for that, droid? Not that I don't believe you.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

What's CFR mean?

case fatality rate

total number of attributed deaths/total number of diagnosed cases x100

obviously in an ongoing pandemic it's a constantly changing number as more information comes in

the actual lethality is something called IFR (infection fatality rate) which tries to take into account undiagnosed cases/deaths, but that can only be estimated

so CFR has to be taken with a grain of salt, especially given as we're seeing non-uniformity in reporting of cases and deaths

but it's the only measure directly based on available information, without any estimating

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

another thing I turned up is that higher nurse rate in a country is so far correlated with lower death rate

and Germany apparently has a far higher nurse rate (13.2/1000 people) than of any seriously effected country so far

which makes sense intuitively as 1) nurses are the actual backbone of patient care 2) high nurse rate is probably an indicator of a good health care system

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

which is good news for Ireland (highest nurse rate on Earth, from what I could find) and most of northern Europe

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

but the real truth is, no one exactly knows for now

it seems pretty clear there's not enough data for even experts to make anything more than educated guesses

I assume that really things like this are only figured out in retrospect