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CDC: Coronavirus Fatality Rate 0.26%, 8-15x Lower than Estimates

edited May 2020 in Off-Topic
CDC: Coronavirus Fatality Rate 0.26%, 8-15x Lower than Estimates


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/stephaniemlee/coronavirus-cdc-infection-fatality-rate



Worse than flu. More deaths than flu...but not as bad as expected (according to multiple media outlets, suppose to be 2.5 millions USA deaths predicted-projections in march)

Comments

  • If you read the entire article it indicates the CDC estimates were done with no data and not accepted by epidemiologists and are completely out of line wit other countries

    Anyone who lives in the NE or other hard hit urban areas knows this is not the flu. It is at least 10 times as deadly.

    AND ALL OF THESE DEATHS HAVE BEEN IN TWO MONTHS

    You should reference the entire headline please

    "The CDC Released New Death Rate Estimates For The Coronavirus. Many Scientists Say They’re Too Low.

    Public health experts are accusing the CDC of bending under political pressure to say the coronavirus is less deadly."

    It makes little difference how many people we actually discover were infected and not sick, other than that will imply there is significant herd immunity. The antibody test studies are extremely suspect as they have not been well validated and depend on sampling procedures and careful analysis. The one most popular with Fox news aws funded by JET Blue and very poorly done.

    The oft quoted "25,000 to 60,000 flu deaths a year" comes from not actual culture positive cases but "excess mortality statistics" ie deaths above the baseline. Actual culture positive flu deaths are many less in the 3400 to 15,000 range.

    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2766121

    From this article:

    " This apparent equivalence of deaths from COVID-19 and seasonal influenza does not match frontline clinical conditions, especially in some hot zones of the pandemic where ventilators have been in short supply and many hospitals have been stretched beyond their limits. The demand on hospital resources during the COVID-19 crisis has not occurred before in the US, even during the worst of influenza seasons. Yet public officials continue to draw comparisons between seasonal influenza and SARS-CoV-2 mortality, often in an attempt to minimize the effects of the unfolding pandemic.

    The root of such incorrect comparisons may be a knowledge gap regarding how seasonal influenza and COVID-19 data are publicly reported. "

    the 100,000 covid deaths for the most part are actual culture positive cases, or in some states patients who die with respiratory failure with CAT scans and other clinical finding identical to Covid.

    So these 100,000 Covid deaths are similar in definition to the 15,000 culture postive flu deaths in a bad year.

    Using "excessive deaths definition" not culture positive for covid I have seen good estimates of 150,000 deaths. Again this is in two months. IF this continued for the entire year we would probably hit 1,000,000

    the 2.5 million came from projections that assumed nothing would be done and the current ( February 2020) hospital resources would be overwhelmed nationwide, like we saw in New York.

    The best discussion by far of this and the ongoing response and the effect of social distancing is Tomas Pueyo

    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

    I would encourage everyone to read all four of his articles. They are factual, backed up by statistics and data and reflect the ongoing epidemic
  • Thanks for the clear post highlighting the apples and orange comparisons that appear in the popular press, the low quality of some data, how different figures are collected, etc.

    "the 100,000 covid deaths for the most part are actual culture positive cases, or in some states patients who die with respiratory failure with CAT scans and other clinical finding identical to Covid"

    Correct of course, and this leads to a point that tends to be glossed over. One often reads about how the number of cases is undercounted (the denominator in death rates), but less often about how the number of Covid-related deaths (the numerator) is also undercounted. Or at least not counted the same way as for influenza-related deaths.

    Stories implying that the covid-related death rate is much lower than reported because of undercounting cases are meaningless, so long as they ignore the impact of undercounting deaths.

  • edited May 2020
    You can get a good idea with "expected deaths" reports as they are pretty steady year to year. There are several articles about expected deaths and Covid19 deaths and almost all have higher number of deaths compared to Covid19 deaths. Where did the others deaths come from? i.e. normal expected deaths 1000, actual deaths 1800, covid reported deaths 500. Where did the 300 extra deaths come from? Only the shadow knows.
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