
Coronavirus Mortality Rate - rgbrgb
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/
======
mrtksn
Okay, I have been following this closely as I follow JS libraries and this is
the headline: The virus seems to require intensive care to some subset of the
infected people and deaths occur when that care is not given in timely manner.
That means it's mortality rate increases dramatically when your patient care
infrastructure gets saturated.

~~~
beamatronic
Eloquently put. Agree 100%. The logical conclusion then is to ramp up your
patient care infrastructure proactively: identity and clear the bottlenecks.

~~~
sgift
This leads to situations a society has to be willing to accept without crying
how much money is wasted - namely: You _will_ have empty beds/hospital
wings/hospitals most of the time. And people _will_ sit around doing 'nothing'
aka training for the day when they are needed.

I'm not convinced that the current political climate in either Europe or
America is prepared to do that.

~~~
occamrazor
> And people will sit around doing 'nothing' aka training for the day when
> they are needed.

This is already an accurate description of most fire departments and
militaries around the world. It shouldn’t be too hard to accept that a similar
necessity of spare capacity occurs for healthcare.

~~~
donavanm
You are woefully underestimating the size of healthcare compares to emergency
services. Neither emergency services nor the military are slack. They are both
scaled for sustained operations; peak utilization is made up by volunteers or
allied forces/departments.

BLS says there are 334K at firefighters at $49k/yr.

There are 240k NPs at $113k/ye, 3M RNs at $71k/yr, 728K licensed nurses at
$46k/yr, 300K lab techs at $52k/yr, and 1.5M NAs at $28k/yr. Go ahead and
double that coat when you include MDs and Admin.

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not_a_moth
Watching this closely based in Singapore, the true mortality rate is probably
an order of magnitude lower

a) The stats coming from Hubei are adverse selected; they are from patients
who already had severe enough illness to go to the hospital

b) A vast amount of mild cases are not diagnosed or tested, this is for
reasons related to self reporting and minimal screening efforts globally

c) The virus spreads rapidly (R0 of 4 in some estimates) and has had 3 months
to sweep through Wuhan ; there appears to be a lot of death in Wuhan but that
may be because most of the 11 million population was exposed

Maybe I'm confirming a bias, but I believe its true profile is something like
a more rapidly moving seasonal flu

~~~
lazyasciiart
They're also selected for people who made it to a hospital. The most frail
types, or those who got sick after hospitals were filling up, could have died
without ever getting to a hospital, and not even be counted yet.

~~~
not_a_moth
Agreed but even if you think the real Wuhan death count is 10x the official
(ie. ~10K deaths in Wuhan), there's still an order of magnitude lower
mortality rate assuming there's been widespread exposure in the 3 months

~~~
cameldrv
We don’t know the actual death toll in Wuhan. The number we get is people who
were diagnosed and then were determined to have died of the disease. What we’d
really like to know is simply how many people have died of any cause, and then
subtract a base rate. The total deaths figure is not being provided.

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wyattpeak
A lot of discussion seems to highlight the problem of unreported cases, but
surely this is a problem for all diseases, not just novel ones.

Are there any epidemiologists here to answer how we account for unreported
cases of e.g. flu in mortality rates? And if we don't, is it reasonable to
ignore unreported cases of coronavirus as well, to compare like with like, or
is there some factor I'm missing?

~~~
Maxion
That is correct, though I'm not an epidemiologist. The number is estimated
using statistical models, such as SEIR and others.
[http://www.public.asu.edu/~hnesse/classes/seir.html](http://www.public.asu.edu/~hnesse/classes/seir.html)

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mirimir
The more I read about this, the more I wonder about the reliability of
mortality rates generally. Or at least, for diseases where diagnosis depends
on DNA-based testing.

I mean, it seems likely that pretty much everyone who dies will be tested.
Except for victims of auto accidents or whatever.

But it also seems likely that many with minimal symptoms won't be tested.
Perhaps because hospitals are so busy that people can't be bothered. Or maybe
because people are afraid of hospitals, because they're full of sick people.
Or simply because there's inadequate testing capability.

So isn't it likely that mortality will always be overestimated for such
specific diseases? As opposed to, for example, auto accidents or falls.

~~~
swsieber
From what I've read it's highly unlikely the dead will be tested. Just cremate
them and move on.

At least, that's what it seems like with all the tales of death certificates
with cause of death as "Unknown viral pneumonia"

~~~
lostlogin
> From what I've read it's highly unlikely the dead will be tested.

Not only that, but are the Chinese authorities going to accurately report that
numbers?

~~~
n0rbwah
At this point, I'm not sure to see any reason for them to lie about it except
for the force of habit.

~~~
DuskStar
Another reason would be that on a day-to-day basis it's easier to say "yeah we
had 100 deaths yesterday" than it is to say "we've been lying, there were
1,000 deaths yesterday and 10,000 so far with 500,000 infected in Wuhan by our
estimates". Which would probably also cause a wee bit of panic, too.

If that's actually the case, of course.

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christkv
The ongoing nightmare of the cruise ship in japan will provide a worst case
unbiased example not tainted by the reliability of Chinese reporting. I just
hope that most of them will escape what looks to me like my personal
nightmare.

~~~
koheripbal
Agreed. The quarantined cruise ship is, sadly, an excellent inadvertent
experiment for us.

It won't help much with the R0 calculation, but it will give us a good idea
for mortality, though it might take 3 weeks to get that number.

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jpizagno
Does this website not look a little suspicious ?

It is hard to find an actual name of a person behind this site. When I go to
faq -> "Who .." there is another company called "Dadax" listed, but no link.
odd

I am asking because people have sent me other suspicious sites over the last
few weeks (wuflu.live).

I am not denying the virus, just questioning things on the internet.

~~~
koheripbal
I am loath to use my real name on absolutely anything I put online. ...and
frankly, I do not understand people that do.

There are crazy people on the internet, and many of them love to hold a
grudge.

------
blackrock
The initial death rates were shocking. The reproduction R0 number seemed high.
This was a very contagious virus. The world went into a panic. And rumors,
conspiracy theories, and bad science didn’t help (the German and Indian
papers).

But what was really behind the numbers. Was it old people that were dying? Was
it middle aged and young people? Was this some kind of stealthy virus that
creeps up on you, and then just kills you?

It’s possible that it was a lack of medical facilities and equipment, that
contributed to the crisis, and thus, contributed to the high initial death
rates.

For example, when people started getting sick. The first batch went to the
ICU, and took up available beds and medical facilities. These people had the
highest chance of surviving. But then, the next wave came in and created the
beginning of the crisis, and swamped the system. Then, the third wave came in
and totally overwhelmed the system, that the hospitals couldn’t help them at
all. They were turned away, and left to fend for themselves. These people
started dying in their homes.

The system suffered such a massive denial of service attack, that it was
impossible to help and provide service to everyone. Thus this created the
shockingly high mortality rate during the initial days of the crisis.

If we are lucky, then this might remain true. So in other parts of the world
with more medical facilities, knowing this might save people, and give them a
higher chance of surviving this virus.

Stay strong, Wuhan!

Wuhan, Jaiyou!

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fxj
For "realtime" numbers there is a chinese web-page which shows the mortality
rate is of the order 2% and the new infections in Hubei are decreasing.
(Google translate is your friend.)

[https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia](https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia)

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WheelsAtLarge
I'm not an expert by any means but I suspect that the Mortality rate is lower
than what they have said.

We've been told that the majority of people will get very mild symptoms if
they have it. So the actual number of people that have been infected is way
higher since many will never even think of going to a doctor.

So the 2-3% case fatality rate is higher than the actual number. If the number
of deaths is correct or close to correct.

The scary part is that the virus is so easily spread between humans so the
number of deaths will skyrocket when compared to other epidemics. Let's hope
they bring it under control soon and there's a vaccine in the near future.

~~~
narrator
The scary part is "acute cardiac injury" being a frequent complication. The
virus causes heart attacks!

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)30183-5/fulltext)

"Complications included acute respiratory distress syndrome (12 [29%]),
RNAaemia (six [15%]), acute cardiac injury (five [12%]) and secondary
infection (four [10%]). 13 (32%) patients were admitted to an ICU and six
(15%) died."

~~~
kayoone
(from the article) 80% of people who died were over 60 years old and 75% had
underlying health conditions including cardiovascular problems, so the fact
that the virus caused fatal cardiovascular events in some of those cases is
not unexpected.

~~~
lazyasciiart
About 80% of Americans over 60 have cardiovascular problems, compared to a
third of elderly Chinese people. That stat indicates that fatality rates could
be higher in the US (and other western countries, although I don't have those
numbers immediately) than China.

[https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-
public/@wcm/@sop/@smd...](https://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-
public/@wcm/@sop/@smd/documents/downloadable/ucm_483970.pdf)

[https://www.jwatch.org/na48562/2019/03/05/china-
cardiovascul...](https://www.jwatch.org/na48562/2019/03/05/china-
cardiovascular-epidemic-warning-bell)

------
tylerjwilk00
The TL;DR;

Initial estimates of mortality rate are all over the place due to uncertainty
in the data sets.

That said, the best estimate at the moment is around 2-3% and is subject to
change as more data comes in.

~~~
anonsivalley652
Yes. By comparison:

\--- Mortality rate ---

1918 Spanish Flu: 10-20%

2020 Coronavirus: 2-3% est.

1968 Hong Kong Flu: 0.5%

\--------

The realization that China censors heavily makes both accurate, timely and
complete reporting of facts much more difficult. Intermediaries are used to
exfil data to Western journalists, but this is haphazard, slow and incomplete.
A journalist who has contacts on the ground described the situation, including
that a few bodies on the streets and in crashed vehicles (people who were too
sick who failed to make it to a hospital) in central Wuhan were not being
collected:
[https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/7/laurie_garrett_china_c...](https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/7/laurie_garrett_china_coronavirus_response)
We may never know the exact numbers because it's likely face-saving deception
will be used for geopolitical and local political concerns.

~~~
themagician
I was looking up the current flu season in the US here:
[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm)

It says the mortality rate is 7.1%. Does that make the current flu in the US
much worse than the Coronavirus?

~~~
ce4
That's not the mortality rate but the ratio against overall deaths. it says:
"The percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza is 7.1%, below
the epidemic threshold of 7.2%."

~~~
sdenton4
Ha, right. The completely standard and obvious threshold of 7.2% to declare an
epidemic...

Seems like the number is chosen so that you can say an epidemic is anything
worse than the flu?

~~~
ce4
I was just quoting, but also wondered about that seemingly random threshold.
Looks like a crude measure

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fctorial
The mortality rate, as calculated by trivial formula, has stayed close to 2%
for a couple of weeks now.

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anonsivalley652
It's interesting that MERS was about twice as deadly as the Spanish Flu. I
guess because it happened in a certain part of the world, the Western media
just decided it wasn't worthy of wall-to-wall Snowpocalypse yellow journalism.

~~~
occamrazor
MERS had apparently a low infectivity, making it a low level threat to the
rest of the world.

~~~
anonsivalley652
It's difficult to say that because it was still transmitted to people more
easily than Ebola. And the data and research show MERS isn't going away; bats
maybe its natural reservoir. Pretending it doesn't exist or not doing anything
about is playing Russian roulette with public health. If the US Army Corps of
Engineers can eliminate malaria from the southern US, maybe a vaccine can be
developed for the natural host and domesticated animals to prevent the risk to
humans.

