What is clear, in both America and Britain, is that poorer communities are far more affected by the virus - and in the UK, about half the deaths have been in old people’s homes.
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Where are you getting these numbers? Everything I’ve read puts the numbers significantly lower. This for example puts the U.S death rate at 1.3%, and other nations (like China) at around 5%.
Also, my understanding is many European nations count coronavirus deaths differently than the States or each other. See Is comparing Covid-19 death rates across Europe helpful? | Coronavirus | The Guardian for example. There has been significant disagreement in the U.S. on how deaths should be reported as well, with people claiming covid deaths are both under and over reported.
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I update my spreadsheets from COVID19 Tracker. But the issue isn’t whether the numbers are different, they aren’t. The question has to do with nomenclature. When people say death rate, they can mean two entirely different measurements. Which is why I am very specific about what rate I’m referring to.
If I say rate of fatality of population, the number is ever increasing. Number of deaths within a jurisdiction divided by the last known population count.
If I say rate of fatality of cases, the number can go up or down based on the number of recoveries or blitzes of testing. Testing blitzes have a short term effect of lower fatality rates because the add new active cases that may not be severe; and also likely increases the ratio of recovery.
I’d be happy to share my spread sheet and charts last updated two days ago.
Also, you can ask @FaithAlone, my analysis has been a lot closer for the last couple months than most of the other models.
I suspect part of the confusion is the difference between Case Fatality Rate vs Infection Fatality Rate. The CFR can be calculated easily, but is largely useless. The IFR matters, but it is impossible to calculate without knowing how many infections there are. All we can do is estimate that. That article claims a CFR or 1.3%, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. The CFR for the USA is about 6%, as seen here. You can easily check it yourself. US total deaths divided by US total cases.
I’ve never seen an IFR estimate above 0.9%.
There is no doubt that the total unexpected deaths the last month are quite a bit higher than the total “Covid deaths.” There may be some deaths improperly counted as Covid, but it is certain that the count is too low at the moment.
Finally, the University of Washington model has been revised up again substantially to 134,000.
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Thank you. I am aware of the difference, but CFR had slipped my mind, and I quoted that number from the article mistakenly thinking it was IFR, which as you point out, is usually estimated under 1%.
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I agree that it’s likely that Covid deaths are being under-counted, but there has been so much disruption in everyone’s lives over the last few months that I could easily see certain types of non-Covid deaths increasing also. Suicide seems like an obvious one, both from social distancing and economic disruption and uncertainty. Alcohol-related deaths could be rising also, even if people are not driving much at the moment.
I’m also hearing stories that as people have been avoiding hospitals, there are lots of folks having strokes and heart attacks who aren’t going to the hospital for treatment until it’s too late.
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Yes. I meant to say just this, earlier. In the context of this discussion, we have yet to find out how many of those extra deaths were caused by us responding with a lockdown. Still, I doubt it’s a large percent of them.
For those interested in looking at and comparing rates I’ve made a number of charts that look at actual numbers, rates of population, rates of cases, and rates by population density.
Anyone interested in arguing these numbers against other causes of death, I’m not interested. These charts are to help us see where we compare internationally and nationally in some instances for COVID19.
COVID19 5-9-2020.pdf (1.1 MB)
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It will end if for no other reason that lack of compliance is increasing.
The truth is, we never had a real shutdown like occurred in other countries. COVID-19 is still spreading at a substantial rate. We did prevent hospitals from getting overwhelmed, but perhaps outside of a few cities that would not have happened anyway. At any rate, we didn’t suppress the virus enough to set up a test-trace-quarantine regime, so COVID-19 is with us for the long run. I fear the half-measures we have employed will result in the U.S. having both greater economic damage and a greater death rate than other developed nations.
The economic damage is here. I found out this morning that one of our core church members is planning on selling his house and moving to a cheaper area because his industry has been killed by the coronavirus. There is now talk about not opening colleges for in-person classes in fall – will the same happen for K-12? Is it an overreaction (Lev. 26:36)? Maybe. But COVID-19 is dangerous for certain demographics, and has a slight but strange risk of death or organ damage for the young and healthy. Even with an end to the shutdown, I don’t see any quick return to economic normalcy.
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