Is Coronavirus less fatal than early predictions suggested? Two Stanford medical professors suggest that current mortality estimates are way too high.

American Thinker ^ | 03/26/2020 | Andrea Widburg

[SeekAndFind]

Coronavirus is an icky disease that takes a cruel toll on the elderly, the sick, and the unlucky. In this modern era, we can outwit many things that once routinely killed people, but the Grim Reaper is still out there and he’ll eventually get all of us. Scary headlines have hinted that coronavirus is now the Grim Reaper's preferred method.

Media reports have told us that coronavirus is significantly more deadly than the flu, which annually kills 30,000 to 60,000 Americans. Based on the speed with which it killed in China, Italy, Iran, and Spain, it looked as if the American death toll could easily top two million people annually. While that’s small potatoes compared to past pandemics (e.g., the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, the Spanish Influenza), it’s a staggering toll in modern America. Any actions seemed worthwhile to America from turn into a viral slaughterhouse.

But that might not be what's happening.

At the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, two medical professors at Stanford, propose that we’re using the wrong math and that we are still missing the numbers we need to do the math correctly. However, by extrapolating from available data, one can argue that coronavirus’s mortality rate is significantly lower than the early estimates.

According to the doctors, “The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.” When calculating the mortality rate, while we know the numerator (the number who have died), we’re using the wrong denominator. If the denominator is only those sick enough to get the test in the first place, that small number will return a much higher mortality rate.

The real denominator should be the total number of people who catch this contagious virus.

[SeekAndFind]

SOURCE: https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-coronavirus-as-deadly-as-they-say-11585088464

Wall Street Journal ( Behind a paywall, unfortunately ):

While Italy is being slammed by the speed of the coronavirus’s spread, the ultimate mortality rate won’t be as devastating as the early numbers predict:

Next, the northeastern Italian town of Vò, near the provincial capital of Padua. On March 6, all 3,300 people of Vò were tested, and 90 were positive, a prevalence of 2.7%. Applying that prevalence to the whole province (population 955,000), which had 198 reported cases, suggests there were actually 26,000 infections at that time.

That’s more than 130-fold the number of actual reported cases. Since Italy’s case fatality rate of 8% is estimated using the confirmed cases, the real fatality rate could in fact be closer to 0.06%.

[MrEdd]

Well, these two may be damned slow witted, but at least they are not complete lack wits.

[SeekAndFind]

WHAT ABOUT SPECIFIC DEFINED POPULATION?

The Stanford doctors do the same calculation for other defined populations, such as planes that evacuated U.S. citizens from Wuhan (all the passengers were tested), Iceland’s population, and NBA players.

In the case of the Wuhan evacuees, only 0.9% of the Wuhan travelers tested positive. Extrapolating that data out to Wuhan as a whole would mean that 178,000 Wuhan residents were probably infected, a number 30 times greater than the number China identified as having the virus.

Accepting as true China’s claim that only 3,287 people died (OK, this is questionable, but that’s the data we officially have ), the real mortality rate would be 1.85% — which is still a high mortality rate, but less than the original 4% claimed.

[dp0622]

It’s a tough illness to Gauge in that respect. It’s not the black death or Ebola with very obvious symptoms in every case

It seems like 1% might be pretty close.

it was good to keep it at Bay so we don’t lose too many of our elderly. But Trump is Right. April 16th is more than enough self quarantine

[SeekAndFind]

Considering that, in December and January, there was substantial and steady traffic between Wuhan and the U.S., the doctors believe that coronavirus’s high infection rate means that some six million Americans may have been infected by March 9. As of March 23, though, only 499 Americans had died from coronavirus.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: it was good to keep it at Bay so we don’t lose too many of our elderly.

Joe Biden’s health adviser, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel ( Brother of the other twit, Mayor Rahm ) won’t say it out loud today, but I think he’s secretly pleased with this development.

He did say that 75 years old is a good age to die.

[babygene]

Well, Duha...

Deen saying this from the beginning.

[brookwood]

OMG this BS from the American Ostrich again????
Finally we have proof of the deadliness of Covid19 from NYC.
NYC had 53,006 deaths from all causes in 2014

NYC had 2,220 deaths from Influenza and Pneumonia in 2014

https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Health/New-York-City-Leading-Causes-of-Death/jb7j-dtam

Another rough estimate for number of deaths in NYC every year,
from Quora - 1 death every 9 minutes, 158 per day, 57,000 per year

https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-die-in-New-York-every-day

So roughly 158 people die in NYC every day and 2220/100 = 22 die every day of influenza and pneumonia every day assuming a 100 day flu season.
For overall deaths there is very little seasonality. March is 108% of the average death rate for the year.

http://www.legacy.com/news/culture-and-trends/article/yes-its-true-more-people-die-in-january

90% of NYS deaths from Covid19 so far were in New York City

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/new-york-coronavirus-cases-updates.html

There were 95 Covid19 deaths in NYS 3-25 so about 81 in NYC - compared to 158 deaths from all causes on an average day and 22 deaths from flu on an average day during flu season.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

So all the moron “flubros” out there can kiss my ass, the facts are already there, FOUR TIMES the number of normal flu deaths yesterday, and more than 50% more deaths than normal FROM ALL CAUSES in NYC.

[Buckeye McFrog]

4x-7x the flu. Serious and significant. But it’s not the Andromeda Strain.

[dp0622]

Well thank God for that. The economy will recover and Trump will be credited for saving many lives regardless of what the numbers are since they are everywhere.

The people well credit him. It doesn’t matter what the media says anymore.

I can’t win with you :-) when I said you were overreacting you attacked me and when I say it was better we were cautious you attack me.

I think it’s something personal :-)

That’s okay I don’t hold a grudge. God bless you and yours :-)

[Magnum44]

Dont worry, they will get the predictions right NEXT time. /s

[Nicojones]

I hope they’re right. There also seems to be some good anecdotal evidence that heat and, more importantly UV, seem to mitigate the worst effects of this virus. Check out the data from India. They have over a billion people and there are no overflowing emergency rooms. Miami Dade Florida has had uncharacteristically sunny and beautiful weather the past two weeks. They have 500 cases and Zero deaths so far. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/96dd742462124fa0b38ddedb9b25e429

Hopefully we see this trend continue as the southern states head into summer followed by up north.

[Sergio]

Bkmk

[TalBlack]

You don’t really have to predict how deadly a bug is. Once its loose it’ll do what it does. Been loose a while now...

[semantic]

"The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.”

This elementary fact has been the topic of a lot of analysis and discussion @ FR. (Wastoute was actually the first one who began advocating it awhile ago.) But, no matter how often it's pointed out - and now being echoed by a range of medical professionals, including Dr Birx a few days ago - there's still a lot of confusion regarding various statistical projections.

So, we're left with this core analytical truth, but then we have endless repetition of false analyses, no matter how often they are pointed out. In many ways, the ongoing debate is like "inside baseball" or the game within the game.

It doesn't matter if you actually believe it's an extinction event or 'just the flu'. Rather, what's relevant is how much one can flog a certain position in order to drive media attention and perhaps manipulate political opinion. I mean, take me for example: I could just as easily drive a twitter account either way for fun or profit.

FR actually condones this behavior itself, since it would be easy enough to establish a policy that mandated using only valid statistical measures. That is, any thread or any poster who kept insisting on posting "cases" as some kind of important, meaningful factor would be warned, then bounced. Sure, maybe throw in pseudo-stats as a reference example of media manipulation, but otherwise, it's simply a designed effort to undermine the president.

Oh, I get that many here might not necessarily be sleeper cells and many are actually posting in good faith, but they might be unaware of how/why they are being manipulated into advancing an adversarial agenda. Look no further than all the questionable web sites running so-called stats - they should be universally banned. The only true number is the one being collected from actual data sources. Wiki has it's political issues, but in terms of straight-up, no debate data, they are an excellent source.

[trebb]

Yep - and numbers keep getting better as folks during the briefings keep adding perspective and letting us know the true doom and gloom numbers could not happen without total lack of measures for at least 2 cycles - while the angst-mongers take those as "inevitable" numbers. Over 4 months in, with over 2 months of not much intervention at the get-go, worldwide cases are being reported as under 600K....have to multiply those world numbers by 50 to approach the number of Flu cases during an average/mild Flu season....in America alone.

The fear mongers are driving us into a depression which will cause even more damage than the unfettered virus could ever cause and we still have folks demanding extra drastic measure.

I see your turf is in the limelight - stay well.

[wastoute]

I think we should credit you. AFAIK you were the first to “see the wrinkle in the spread sheet”. You were right about Italy. They are “clearly at the top”, their #new deaths leveled off days ago. Turns out ten days was enough. We are at ten days and look. We are flattening out. Space. It turns out space has saved us. The USA is so big we have umpteen small epidemics not one big one. I don’t believe anyone could have predicted we would be so lucky. We will still have “hot spots” as each urban center heads “up the hill” in the next two weeks. Semantic, YOU should take the credit, you saw it first.

[going hot]

I think I see the problem right there.

She should have been rubbing the ball in a circular pattern.

That jabbing attack just does not work for accuracy in predictions.

[wastoute]

We got the predictions right this time.