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The Science is Settled: It is Time to End the Lockdown
The CDC announced new numbers on COVID mortality. For those interested, fatality rates (by age) are now reported as:
- 0-49 years old: 0.05%
- 50-64 years old: 0.2%
- 65+ years old: 1.3%
- Over all ages: 0.4%
Additionally, apparently 30% of the cases are asymptomatic – so mild you do not know you had it.
The people who said it was only slightly more serious than a bad influenza season turn out to be wrong. It turns out to be less serious. As for the doomsayers? This. I know next time could be worse. Maybe.
It is time to declare victory, end the lockdowns, mask-wearing, and social distancing. Hold a victory parade and let’s return to normal.
Published in Healthcare
She doesn’t argue with anyone. Just shakes her head. Really, there’s a lot of wisdom in that. More than I have.
Thanks for the link. I don’t know, either. All I have heard anecdotally is that there will be few jobs in New York when the lock-down ends. I hope this isn’t true.
I know Khurram, and I’ve been supporting his ministry.
Yes, I figured you meant this too, that but I just couldn’t help myself. It’s the seldom spoken flip side to, How many do you want to kill?!
So…
A: We haven’t a vaccine for this, so raw numbers are going to be higher of course. An nobody wants anyone to die. But Seawriter’s point, if I may be so bold, is that everyone (hyperbole) are going around like death is around every corner. Like there’s a hidden mist in the air that will kill you if you so much as breath it. Many of us have said for many weeks that the mortality rates were way overstated. It turns out that some of the things “we” did to combat the virus actually killed people.
B: I think it likely that we’ll find that there are downstream effects of having contracted COVID-19. So, sure, fatalities shouldn’t be the only consideration. If you are old you’ve got a chance of going to the hospital that higher than I’d want it to be. And high enough that if I had family in a nursing home, I’d see them behind glass for a while.
C: Haven’t got one…but be happy, my friend.
That’s 97K with something less than 10%, as best we can tell, of Americans exposed to the disease. So we could see a million by the end, mostly among pensioners. Maybe herd immunity cuts that in half. And it is a brutal, ugly death for those who get the full ride.
Get the young and the healthy back to work. Protect the vulnerable. Open the damn medical system.
Why does CDC say 30% of cases are asymptomatic? The data I’ve seen suggest it’s way, way higher than that — at least if you’re thinking of scaling “cases” up by some factor to reach total infections, which is of course the point.
NYC: 260,000 confirmed cases, estimated 2.7 million infections.
Los Angeles: 14,000 confirmed cases, estimated 320,000 infections.
Boston: 2,500 confirmed cases, estimated 100,000 infections.
(I’m not posting the Stanford one because of questions about the math.)
And others, but you get the point. Every time somebody estimates the true infection rate, it is much higher than the case rate. An order of magnitude or more.
Why are we still hearing about “cases” as if this number means something?
To keep the panic rolling. And it may not even be malicious. Media knows that bad news sells. Politicians badly need to justify their own actions. When the panic ends, so does their special status.
Because history has shown when they come out in public forum and limit themselves to what they actually know, the crickets are deafening.
I cashed a check at the drive-up window a couple days ago. The clerk inside the building was wearing a mask, but I wasn’t.
I can understand that. Honestly, I’m more inclined to argue back with someone online rather than in real life myself – and not always then.
I’m not buying this. If you dig into it the number of deaths from the seasonal flu are the ones that are inflated.
The number the CDC publishes every year for seasonal flu deaths is an estimate. Those numbers are not a count of actual confirmed cases of the flu where you had a body and a medical chart saying that’s what it was.
If the seasonal flu deaths were counted like we are counting COVID-19 deaths the total all year for seasonal flu would probably be about 4,000.
So, you bet your rear end that COVID-19 is worse than the seasonal flu.
Even going by the CDC’s vapor numbers for seasonal flu the infection fatality rate is 0.04% compared to the figure cited for COVID-19 overall, which was 0.4%. That’s not the same, it’s 10 times worse.
As I said elsewhere, 10x a small number is still a small number. Question is whether it is so deadly that it justified this response.
The fatality ratios cited by CDC are *case* fatality ratios, defined as “The number of symptomatic individuals who die of the disease among all individuals experiencing symptoms from the infection.” So to get the fatality risk for the total population, you need to multiply the symptomatic rate (.7) by the CFR, which gives you .14% rather than .2%.
This is not a trivial number, though. .14% is 140 deaths per 100,000 people, over a period of about 1 year. For perspective, the annual fatality rate in the very hazardous profession of logging is 97 per 100,000. For commercial fishing, another high-risk profession, it is 77 per 100,000.
Also, the CDC numbers are *averages*…men with preexisting conditions are at relatively higher risk; women who are in good health at relatively lower risk.
Another useful presentation of age-based risk is here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-07/comparing-coronavirus-deaths-by-age-with-flu-driving-fatalities
This is an example of how the media have artificially redefined the question in such a way that a stream of shockingly unjustifiable government actions seems justified.
The media created a panic over the disease, and then flooded us with data about a metric that the public never even heard of–the infection fatality rate–day after day, week after week, month after month, until many citizens instinctively accept that the it must be a legitimate measure of the impact of a disease, and that somehow the experts have determined that this particular level of that statistic (which, BTW, is cooked up from no scientific data to begin with) is such a threat to the continued existence of social order that it necessitates whatever seemingly arbitrary unconstitutional measures politicians choose to decree.
There is no basis in human society for giving such regard for this invented measure. It only serves to create the illusion of a existential threat when the relevant data would show that there is none.
There are two groups of people here:
Those who have had it, but were never tested, so never included in the statistics, and did presented symptoms. I have several friends in this group.
Those who have had it, were never tested, so never included in the statistics, and did not present symptoms. In my circle of influence, one family of 5 had 4 present symptoms, none of them tested for COVID-19, but one recently tested positive for anti-bodies. One of the 5 probably did catch it, but never presented any symptoms.
The 30% (though I think CDC is actually saying 35%) is that second group. So two different numbers.
They seem to be using it to encompass anybody who had the virus but was never diagnosed. If they meant only the second group, there would need to be another category for people who were infected, showed symptoms, but never showed up at a doctor’s office.
Either way, they seem to be understating the true rate of infection.
That’s exactly what they are saying: “A pre-symptomatic case of COVID-19 is an individual infected with SARS-CoV-2 who has not exhibited symptoms at the time of testing, but who later exhibits symptoms during the course of the infection. An asymptomatic case is an individual infected with SARS-CoV-2 who does not exhibit symptoms during the course of infection.”
Then go on to say that the asymptomatic folks represent 35% of those infected.
This is all based on the “latest surveillance data.”
From that they arrive at a fatality rate of .4%
Assuming they are using data prior to April 29th. So the number of deaths on April 28 was 59,265. From that I caluclate they must be assuming total infections at 14.8M, which is about 4% of the US population. The anti-body testing that’s been done varies widley, from .4% to 25%.
So I don’t know that they are understating the rate. But they are taking in to account more than just “confirmed cases” and arriving at a fatality that doesn’t seem to justify the measures we’ve taken and continue to take.
I’m not sure whether it’s that or that asymptomatic cases are an additional 35% on top of confirmed cases, but whatever.
Right. I don’t think I implied they were using just confirmed cases, or if I did, I didn’t mean to. My point was that 35% seems too low to account for the difference between “cases” and actual infection.
The antibody tests vary by location and timing, so you can’t treat them as independent samples from the same distribution. However, my point is different: the ratio of infections to confirmed cases seems to be high. More than 1.35. More than 10, actually.
A: They very much are saying that asymptomatic cases are estimated at 35% of the total cases, known or unknown. How they arrived at that is unclear.
B: I take your meaning. My only point is to say it is not clear to me that the CDC are intentionally understating the infection rate. Not saying you are saying that. Only saying that I’m saying that they aren’t saying that. See…that’s fun.
Anyway…I am not sure if we will ever know the breadth of infection over the previous few months.
You imply that there is according to our constitution some value of some epidemiological “fatality” statistic that would justify the cancellation of constitutional human rights and the mass imprisonment of the people, without any prior limits.
I disagree. I find no such language about unacceptable levels of deaths from disease in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the writings of the Founders.
If you were right, then we never had any rights, and were morally unjustified in overthrowing our despotic class-based government and establishing our present government of self-rule. Influenza itself, let alone smallpox and malaria, would justify the political class making the people their prisoners.
Why not?
It might be too much work (too expensive) to find out, and Americans might have better things to do. Finding out might be a problem of civil liberties. Maybe a sample of the population would suffice, but it would depend on how good a sample we could get without resorting to such intrusions. Hard to say at this point.
I see. It seems like those samples are already underway. If you mean we’ll never know with precision, I agree. Impossible.
In my view, the lack of antibody testing is practically criminal, given the incredible cost we’re absorbing. Knowing the relevant parameters — R, IFR — is critical.
Mark prowls in the dead of night, in search of hairs to split!
Why am I not sure? Because what is “true” about this virus seems to change every day.
And some people might think that doing the antibody testing is criminal, depending on how it is done, of course. I suppose we’d have to check the statutes.
If this was France we could probably get some judge to put on her robes and give us her opinion while thumping her lawbook for the cameras. Here in the U.S. we use actual cases brought before the court to settle matters in adversarial fashion.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why is a voluntary, random sample to determine the extent of infection an affront to liberty?
If it’s voluntary, it’s not a random sample. It might be representative enough to do good stats just the same, but it might not be. And then what?
So your problem with serology tests is that you think people must be forced to submit to them or they are not useful? That doesn’t make my list of Things Worth Worrying About. I’ll take the information available from voluntary, and thus “non-random” tests, thank you very much.