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Sweden Update
For those who may not recall, Sweden did not shut down. They kept schools and businesses and restaurants open, encouraging only those at risk to quarantine. So… how are they doing?
It definitely looks like Sweden has stabilized. Which is excellent news for those who want to unwind the lockdowns ASAP.
Published in General
I agree that the mortality rate will end up lower than it currently appears, for the same reasons you cite. But it seems unlikely to me that this virus has spread so far in the past few weeks that it would surpass flu infection numbers, especially considering the social distancing being practiced in the last month. That would be great news if it has, but I doubt it.
Keep in mind, much of what is said about Cov-19 is true for the flu as well. The flu also disproportionately kills the elderly and those with immune system problems. We don’t randomly test the population for influenza either. As with Cov-19, people don’t get tested for the flu until they present symptoms. Not to mention the fact that vast numbers of people never bother to get medical treatment at all when they have the flu. They know what it is and they just ride it out.
Cov-19 has gone from being non-existent on our shores 2 1/2 months ago, to being the leading cause of death in this country. It is far more likely this will turn out to have a significantly higher fatality rate than the flu. I hope that’s not the case, but that’s the way it’s looking.
So 170 new deaths in Sweden yesterday in a country of 10.3 mil. Very sad.
What is the basis for this statement?
And, based on your next sentence after that, are you proposing we let those people die without spending any resources on them?
18%, almost 1 in 5 are under 60.
How many were affected by Ebola around the world and in the US? If is far deadlier , and far far harder to spread. So, apples and hand grenades.
Yeah it sucks.
We didn’t need to be here.
But here we are.
And there are no magic bullets or easy answers.
The CFR ( which is by the way an estimate of “Influenza Like Illness” by the CDC) of influenza is typically 0.1%
So, at 1-2% it’s 10 to 20 times as deadly as the flu.
And now compare missed days of work and lost income.
Aside from the fact the health care is so highly regulated that it (almost) may as well be nationalized, and again, the feds did nothing to prepare for this, or to require that hospitals prepare for it….I am painfully aware of how health systems do their inventory. That’s my point. It was a massive failure that cost many lives, and would have cost many more if the surge was worse.
In normal times it is a serious offense to not use PPE properly, because the risks of not doing so are well understood. However when this all started, they were circulating videos on how to re-use single use items indefinitely and even how to improvise if needed, and use items such underwear as a makeshift mask. Myself and the members of the medical staff of my hospital bought our own PPE, to the extent that we could find it. Even though my hospital hasn’t been hit hard at all, we are still having to re-use things that are supposed to be single-use only. All this because of a lack of planning for something that we knew was going to happen.
Hospitals not having enough basic PPE on hand to at least provide a good buffer during something like this after SARS and MERS is akin to a military unit not having enough ammo and other basic supplies on hand to complete an operation well after receiving a warning order. In the military that would get an officer fired. In civilian healthcare, it should warrant a criminal investigation.
Sorry, but that graphic tells you absolutely nothing about the risk of being in a given age group.
18% of the deaths in NYC were in folks under 60. But how many of those had serious pre-existing health problems?
What percentage of the population exposed to the virus is under 60 vs. over 60? Given that the 0-60 age group makes up a large majority of the population, and that this demographic is much more likely to be working full time and visit restaurants and bars more frequently, it is reasonable to presume that exposure is much more common in younger people.
Again, it is very likely that when all this is said and done, we will be looking at a total CFR under 1%, and much lower than that in younger, healthier people.
Glad to see we both agree this requires a massive rethink by both public and private sectors (and beyond just healthcare in the latter case).
By the way, your estimate of CFR for flu (0.2 to 0.4) is an overstatement. For the nine full flu seasons starting in 2010 the number ranges from 0.095 to 0.170.
Sorry, if you reduce the number of car trips per person you are reducing the number of deaths. Each mile driven is an invitation to fate. If you close all establishments that serve alcohol, you are dramatically reducing the number of deaths. Fate loves impaired drivers of whatever stripe.
LOl. Except for you know, dying.
What difference does that make. Huge swaths of America are overweight, have hypertension, diabetes or heart disease. Not to mention people who are immunocompromised for various other reasons. If you are in peak physical conditions congratulations.
Who. Cares. Make a case where it makes a difference. You think everyone over 60 lives in a cave?
We don’t know that yet, and won’t know that till this horror is over. Right now the facts as we know them, don’t support that hypothesis.
Well, the dead are going to miss lots of work and income.
And comments like yours will pretty much guarantee we end up with a Democrat for president and congress.
Today Sweden clocked in with another +130 dead= US 4290 ( we fought 2 wars over 3,000 dead one time)
Sweden total 1333= US 43,989
Oh, first death was March 12, just over 1 month ago.
Let’s not be Sweden.
Yes, Sweden is currently showing 132 deaths per million vs. 104 for the United States. In more comparable nearby European lockdown countries we see:
UK 202
France 275
Italy 367
Spain 409
Netherlands 193
Switzerland 148
And our 31,000 deaths at the moment from Covid include no serious accounting for deaths of despair, from deferred medical visits and elective surgeries, etcetera. In the final accounting we could well be doing much worse than Sweden, which is avoiding these categories. Deaths from despair in lesser downturns have been estimated as high as 1500 per million, dwarfing the current and the projected Covid toll.
Comments like your will pretty much guarantee we end up with a Democratic president and Congress because they are the champions of these kinds of simple-minded, ham handed policies. AOC, text your office. If the Republicans are going to botch it just as badly, it is time to clean house again and let the Great Democratic Depression sweep in a Republican age in 2024. They are, after all, the masters of chopping up a shrinking pie at the expense of the hoi polloi.
Let’s Be the Freaking United States of Freaking America!!!
It’s actually NOT a horror.
Are you serious? The number of folks who are actually infected makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE in terms of how deadly this thing is. And that graphic doesn’t tell you that, so it really tells you nothing useful. It certainly doesn’t contradict my statement that young, healthy people have little to worry about.
That graphic show that 988 people in NY under the age of 60 have died (18% of 5489 total). That sounds horrendous, but if, say, *250,000 people in that age group have actually been exposed to the virus, then you’ve got a case fatality rate of 0.39% in that cohort. If you exclude those with serious pre-existing disease (like morbid obesity, uncontrolled diabetes, severe COPD) because they aren’t representative of the population and they don’t meet the definition of “healthy”, then the CFR is even lower.
Young, healthy people have little to worry about.
*Of course we won’t have a good idea how many people in total (or in this case, in each age group) have been exposed until we have lot a lot more testing. But the seasonal flu infects between 10 million and 50 million people each year, and coronavirus appears more contagious than influenza A or B. Considering that and the extremely high population density of NYC, it is a very safe bet that the number of people who have been exposed to coronavirus there but not gotten seriously ill is very, very high.
Sure. My thinking from the beginning was that COVID-19 is much more contagious than anyone thinks, and a bit more deadly than the seasonal flu. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the mortality rate is just the same as the flu, but COVID-19 is an order of magnitude more contagious than seasonal flu. That means, using your numbers above, that the disease infects between 100 million and 500 million. But lets use a lower number like 200 million. And let’s use mortality rate of .07% (which I pulled from the CDC a few weeks ago). That’s 140,000 people dead as opposed to 14,000.
My point is we can’t talk about just the mortality rate if we talk about how deadly a disease is. We have to talk about the mortality rate AND the infection rate. We don’t know the infection rate. Maybe some day we will.
Does any of that justify a complete lockdown of the economy? Not in my mind. But it does justify some action. It also justifies caution.