Let's make an extrapolation based on the numbers you've used.
Let's assume that COVID-19 infects as many people as a rough average of the annual number of flu infections. 47,500,00 is the midpoint of the range of flu cases that you've cited. At the current mortality rate that you cite, which is about 2.5%, COVID-19 will kill 1,186,777 people in the US if it infects 47.5 million.
There are some estimates that COVID-19 will infect somewhere between 75 million and 150 million people in the US. If it infects 100 million with the current mortality rate, that's 2.5 million deaths. 100 million infections seems like a reasonable estimate when you consider that, even with a widely used flu vaccine and some fairly well-established herd immunity, regular flu infects between 40 and 55 million people every year. Of course, there is absolutely no immunity to COVID-19 and no vaccine.
So, safe to say, comparing it to the flu is . . . not wise.
To be clear, it seems like a 2.5% mortality rate is quite possibly high. It seems that the overwhelming majority of people who get tested are people who are seriously ill with COVID-19. There are certainly tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of undiagnosed cases. But, on the other hand, there are probably a significant number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in people who have not been diagnosed.
Even with all of those qualifications, the idea that "this is not a big deal" is uninformed and dangerous.
As you point out yourself, the 2.5% mortality rate is ridiculous. Every supposed public health “expert,” including those preaching that we should stay locked down indefinitely, agrees that there are likely hundreds of thousands to millions who have been infected by the virus but experienced mild symptoms, or none at all. Those people don’t get tested. Because of this, a mortality rate based solely on the number of deaths vs. positive tests isn’t close to being accurate.
Another problem is the fact that anyone who tests positive and then dies is listed as a virus death, even though the virus might not have been their actual cause of death. As we all know, a substantial percentage of those who’ve died had other significant health problems.
The estimate of 1,000,000 deaths is also wildly high and has been largely abandoned. We just below 10,000 now. It would take about 3,666 deaths per day, for the rest of the year, to get to that number. It’s not happening.
The estimate of 1,000,000 deaths is also wildly high and has been largely abandoned.
That's because of the social-distancing efforts that we have taken, not because the virus turned out to be less lethal than expected.
1,000,000 deaths were predicted by some “experts” just a couple of weeks ago and the estimate took into account social distancing.
I'll call your bluff. Do you have a source that predicts seven-figure toll with social distancing?
http://www.healthdata.org/covid/updates
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Some models may have estimated one millions deaths in the USA, total in the next 1.5 years, very early in the socail distancing data collection.
point is, the idiot you're talking to doesn't understand that that 1 million was likely the top range of the error estimated up to to a 95% confidence interval and was very early in the cycle.
On 3/12, Andy Slavitt, who was a high ranking health official in the Obama administration, breathlessly announced in a Twitter string that there would be 1,000,000 Covid deaths, minimum, because social distancing did not begin soon enough. He made this announcement after conferring with so-called experts. As part of this string, he linked to a document called “Notes from UCSF Expert Panel.” The document, not surprisingly, is no longer available. His Twitter is @ASlavitt.
Here is Andy Slavitt's twitter statement on 3/12.
"Currently experts expect over 1 million deaths in the U.S. since the virus was not contained & we cannot even test for it."
"Experts expect" is far different from "breathlessly announcing" a million COVID deaths "minimum."
Also, at the time of his tweet on 3/12, not a single State had enacted "shelter in place" orders and we were heading in a very bad direction without it. A week later (3/19) California was the first State to implement a Statewide order.
For context, Trump said on 3/10:
"“And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."
I'd say Slavitt is far closer to the truth than Trump. It's not just going away without serious action.
At the time, Slavitt said that a million deaths were coming, no matter what steps were taken from that point on. In the end, he won’t have been anywhere near the truth.
I think you're reading much more into Slavitt's statement than what he wrote and intended. Serious shutdown orders finally began a week after his tweet. Without those orders, the estimates were indeed 1 million plus with virtually no Federal steps (the Chinese travel ban was less than a half-measure) to contain it.
Check back with me in 2.5 years when COVID-19 has run its course and vaccines are available to everyone. This will be a long slog unfortunately.
The original study written by Imperial College of London showed no scenario that didn't overwhelm the hospital system even with major social distancing. They quickly walked the original projection down saying the hospital system was fine and would not be overwhelmed.
That's a big difference - from all hospitals being massively overwhelmed to no hospitals being overwhelmed in two weeks time: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-9-impact-of-npis-on-covid-19/
All the models I'm seeing are being adjusted massively downwards. This one on Friday (4/3) showed Colorado being two weeks away from peak deaths with 85 deaths projected for 4/18. This morning when I checked the model, it was revised to Colorado being two days PAST the peak death day with 22 deaths - the highest single day count we've had was 16 deaths on 3/26 and we've averaged about 5 a day for the past week.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
I suspect this one will be further revised downward if we continue to get 3-5 deaths a day over this week.
My point was to point out a logical inconsistency in the post I was responding to. The post juxtaposed mortality data about the flu with current data about COVID-19, apparently to suggest that COVID was (so far) less lethal than the flu. But if you extrapolate from the poster's own numbers, COVID would be far more lethal than the flu.
I wasn't suggesting that there would be 1 million deaths. I was saying that the poster's own data showed that COVID is a big problem, even though the post purported to downplay COVID.
I can only imagine where you get your information. You know everyone who knows you thinks your an idiot.
You don't understand numbers - not as they inform probabilities, possibilities, and outcomes.
Why do people neg a post of factual data? Are you people too far gone in hysteria? Wake up and live life. Stop cowering in your closet.
I'm sorry (not really), but you can not be seriously trying to downplay this still? Look at the data. First, the flu numbers are under 'normal' social conditions. Corona is under EXTREME social shutdown.
Second, the flu numbers are over a six month period. Corona has only took hold starting in March (6-8 weeks)
Third, the Corona infectious rate was doubling ~3 DAYS.
Mar 1 - 98 cases
Mar 4 - 217 cases
Mar 7 - 518 cases
Mar 10 - 1.3K
Mar 13 - 2.7K
Mar 16 - 6.4K
Mar 18 - 13.7K
Mar 20 - 25.5K
Mar 23 - 53.7K
Mar 26 - 101.7K
Mar 31 - 213K
April 5 - 337K******
****** Please note the past 2 weeks the rate of doubling has started to slow. Imagine that, the social distancing is starting to work......
Given your notion that we all should have just gone about our normal lives, we would have been sitting on in the neighborhood of 800K cases today (Mar 29 - 200K; April1 - 400K; April 4 - 800K) with the numbers continuing to escalate from there.
Fourth, the mortality rate of the flu - ~0.01%
Most recent mortality rate of COVID19**
Worldwide - 5.45%
US - 2.85%
Michigan 3.93%
**Based upon John Hopkins COVID data map....https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
That is 30 - 50 times higher.
Finally, in case no one has mentioned it a billion times already. THERE IS NO CURE FOR THIS VIRUS.....
Stop freaking out about jobs and the economy. The jobs will still be there, society will not self implode because we have to manage this properly. But it would not be a pretty sight if we did nothing and let this virus double uncontrollably for another 4-6 weeks (8 more doubles from 800K would be 205 million....)..... 3-5% mortality rate of 205 million......6-10 million.....
Unfortunately, we have no idea if your data is correct because of lack of testing. Had we had 1,000,000 tests available on day 1, the numbers likely would have been much higher and maybe the rate of growth much lower. As we increased our testing capacity, our number of positives grew as well.
Also, there's evidence this has been around since January, not March. I'm not defending the flu comparison, just point out the data we have is incomplete.
A lot of counties are publishing COVID-19 data. Washtenaw has a very detailed breakdown. They haven't updated yet today, but some details:
Out of 501 total cases there have been 128 hospitalizations (25.5% of cases). That's a fairly high rate.
Only 13% of confirmed COVID cases are over the age of 70, which seems very low (although I don't know what proportion of the county population is over 70). 38% are under 40 years old. These are people whose symptoms were severe enough to warrant a test.
However, among the hospitalized cohort (128 people), nearly half (63) are over 65, and 42 others are in the 50-64 age group. Still there were 23 younger than 50 who were hospitalized.
Also: 51% of hospitalized patients are African American. This has been a pattern in Southeast Michigan.
The hospitalization rate is high because they still aren't testing people (in most cases) they are in bad shape. The mortality rate is really high for the same reason. The most disappointing thing I heard in the last week was that there were/are 500,000 unused tests available. According to Dr Birx, it was likely (in part) due to people not wanting to switch to a new testing approach/platform. Hopefully that changes soon.
One thing to keep in mind - it will be a loooong time before EVERYONE is tested. There's just too many people (250,000,000) to test everyone. Especially with people getting follow-up tests before being deemed recovered...
The policy of only testing sick people is true in most (all?) of the U.S. though. A hospitalization rate of 25.5% is high by that standard. National data isn't available on this but from New York it seems to generally be in the 17-20% range. Now, it may just be a function of the smallish sample.
Washtenaw has had only eight deaths so far, so that's not too bad.
I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think the hospitalization of African Americans in WAshtenaw may be skewed by transfers that the AA hospitals are taking from Detroit and Wayne county. I know the transfers are happening, not sure how they’re being counted wrt individual counties.
I don't think they are counted in these statistics. I'm pretty sure this is only data on county residents - especially since the numbers are trending downward (while Wayne's are going up rapidly).
Ypsilanti's two zip codes are home to almost half of the hospitalized patients, which correlates with the racial data.
Why do people go to the hospital with this at all? Have you ever been to the doctor's office with the flu? They shrug at you and ask if you want a prescription for Robitussin. 97% of the people who end up in ICU with this end up dead. Hospitals are managing the situation in NYC by telling people with the virus to go home because they can't do anything for them, which is true! The whole flatten the curve argument for the sake of not overwhelming the health care system is stupid. The health care system isn't doing anything anyway. Old people stay home. The rest of us buy a nebulizer and get on with life. There, I just saved this country $2 trillion and 26M unemployed people.
Old people stay home. The rest of us buy a nebulizer and get on with life.
Tell that to the young (30- and 40-something) people (health care workers in some cases) in ICUs.
Have any more neat binary sorts for us?
I hope you die
Have another glass of wine and a valium Nancy. This sort of cold, masculine, rational thinking is what's gotten Western society to where we are today through WWII, the Great Depression, measles, smallpox, WWI, the flu season of 1957, etc. Your emotional reactions don't count for shit and only cloud the situation. So many more people will agree with me in 8 weeks, watch.
calmer than you are
While I don't fully agree with your approach and sentiment- I am at least with you on a shorter/more aggressive timeline. So- I guess we bask in our negs at the same time.
Name checks out.
One third of the hospitalized people in Washtenaw County are between 50-64 years old. Should they stay home, too?
Yes. 50+ stay home. The rest of us build herd immunity on behalf of the nation.
I don't get it. I see a picture of two Lions fans.
I thought we don't wear those until November though.
On a semi-related note, I was told that Michigan is actually doing very well as far as social distancing in relation to the general population. Hopefully that will bring about some good results in the coming days for stats.
BTW, do people understand that, so long as you're not standing a few feet in front of somebody who is sneezing, coughing, or spitting while talking at you, your need for a mask should be relatively low?
Masks (non-n95) aren't really about protecting you from other people. They're more about protecting others from your own germs.
How exactly does one assess the probability that a stranger at a grocery store will spit while talking within the three hours before their arrival? Also, this is not true. We all likely put particles in the air while speaking and certainly while breathing, hence the new guidance re masks or a face covering of some sort.
If everyone is wearing their own mask to prevent others from getting sick, then it's kinda impossible to spread germs around
A mask best use is so YOU don't touch YOUR face
...or spew droplet/airborne particles into the surrounding environment
Face masks have help Asian countries like South Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore quickly contain COVID-19. You can reach your own conclusion, but experts in those countries will tell you masks are a big part of it. Both infected and non-infected should wear them.
Look for things to open back up in Michigan between April 24th and May 4th at the latest.
Glad to see these folks taking all precautions to help their states get there more quickly
Don't expect it before June.
Italy's been locked down nearly four weeks now and while their curve of new cases is clearly flattening, the total number of hospitalized people isn't yet going down.
Michigan has been in lockdown for 2-3 weeks as well now.
Michigan's stay at home order started on March 24 and it's a softer policy than Italy's, which is closer to a true lockdown - they have far fewer "essential businesses" open and you can be arrested for being outside for a non-official reason.
Definitely not April or early May.
I'm expecting things to start opening up between June and July
If the peak is indeed April 10th as expected- then what is a reasonable period afterwards to begin opening things?
What I am thinking about is: when is the peak expected and observed? What is the incubation period of this? How long is the typical hospital stay of those patients that require inpatient treatment? When does the daily new case number begin to approach and fall below that equivalent number X days in the past based on the prior question?
All of this to get to a point where net patient outflow is achieved, rather than the growing inflow we have now. I think that can happen within this time period based on what I have read. If I see or learn of something to adjust that time period I will.
What else should we be looking for to make a decision on?
Look at Italy and watch what they're doing.
"Flattening the curve" doesn't mean having a sudden peak and then a collapse, it means a gradual increase followed by a plateau, followed by a gradual decrease. It lengthens the whole process, but also saves lives.
If you reopen things right after your peak, the curve will blow up again. You have to have the curve of hospitalized people down pretty far before you reopen. Michigan (not the whole U.S.) should peak relatively soon but the actual downward trend won't happen for awhile later, probably not until May.
I agree with that, and the beginning of May is 3-3.5 weeks from the peak (as of now). And that would be a 3 week downtrend. Is that enough? I don't know. Will it be 'steep' enough? I don't know. I am looking for more of that info as well. But a three week down trend at any angle is likely to be very meaningful. I am looking at this IHME data and site, and much of it is jiving with what I am suggesting.
The only way your "model" might work (and granted, this is an over-simplification on my part) would be some combination of rapidly increasing herd immunity, proof that serum treatment mitigates the illness and more importantly that enough serum donors step up AND serum treatment facilities are quickly and widely opened, and that we almost immediately have virtually 100% buy-in on total self-isolation and social distancing.
Even if all of the above were to happen, however, I have my doubts.