Corona Virus

[nullnor]

what alarms me is they say the gene that encodes the receptor ACE2, which the novel coronavirus uses to infect cells, is more active in smokers than nonsmokers.

[madducks]

China expels U.S. journalists.

[pitbull]

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/124...268323842?s=09

This is why I stopped watching FOX news years ago. It is biased, inaccurate, irresponsible and dangerous news reporting.

[Moonlight J]

read this series of tweets -- https://twitter.com/jeremycyoung/sta...75682643357696

based off this report -- https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imp...16-03-2020.pdf

If that doesn't make you piss your pants about what we have ahead of us, and get you raging upset at the time we wasted talking about this as a hoax, nothing will.

[madducks]

[Ken]

Asking because I'm ignorant, but I'm confused on the mortality rates I've been seeing over the last few months. I've always seen 3% or less.

However, the information I've seen shows 82,902 people have recovered, 8,272 have died. To me that's a 9% mortality rate.

What am I missing? Why would mortality rate be a percentage of those who currently have it and are recovering rather than those who have already recovered? Because to me unless you have already recovered, you are still in the unknown category.

[Sour Masher]

Asking because I'm ignorant, but I'm confused on the mortality rates I've been seeing over the last few months. I've always seen 3% or less.

However, the information I've seen shows 82,902 people have recovered, 8,272 have died. To me that's a 9% mortality rate.

What am I missing? Why would mortality rate be a percentage of those who currently have it and are recovering rather than those who have already recovered? Because to me unless you have already recovered, you are still in the unknown category.

I've been confused by the same thing, but yeah, the math is much closer if you include all cases, not just recovered cases. Maybe they are doing that to quell fears? Or maybe they just think it is closer to the truth, because deaths happen faster than the 14 day resolution period, so not including unresolved cases skews things in the other direction. Then there is also the fact that without adequate testing, there are far more cases than those reported, and the vast majority of those resolve without death. Basically, I think it is really hard for us to know what the actual mortality rate is at this point.

Interestingly, related to this, the same sort of confusing math happens with the mortality rate of the 1918 influenza outbreak. You read 50 to 100 million deaths, with 500 million infected, and yet those same sources put the mortality rate at 2.5%, rather than 5-10%. Very confusing. Perhaps that are including all those who died for other treatable reasons that did not get proper care because of the pandemic? And, of course with WWI going on, that could include millions.

[TranaGreg]

I believe it's related to how to estimate the total number of infected people; typically the numbers reported are those who have tested positive, but it can be assumed that there are a whole lot of people that are infected but not tested ... there are different models on how to calculate that, but the underlying msg is that there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic who have contracted the virus ... and that those numbers need to be considered in calculating mortality rates

[Ken]

I believe it's related to how to estimate the total number of infected people; typically the numbers reported are those who have tested positive, but it can be assumed that there are a whole lot of people that are infected but not tested ... there are different models on how to calculate that, but the underlying msg is that there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic who have contracted the virus ... and that those numbers need to be considered in calculating mortality rates

I disagree - the numbers I'm referring to always come with the caveat of not knowing how many are unreported. That's a different issue.

I'm just talking about the mortality rate that is actually being discussed using total with the virus vs total who have died, and that makes no sense. It's the recovered number that matters.

[The Feral Slasher]

Does not answer Kens question, but has updated data daily. Northern Europe is much different from South. Not sure if is just a time lag or demographics, health care quality or what.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/coronavirus-map-tracking-spread-us-world/story?id=69415591

[TranaGreg]

I disagree - the numbers I'm referring to always come with the caveat of not knowing how many are unreported. That's a different issue.

I'm just talking about the mortality rate that is actually being discussed using total with the virus vs total who have died, and that makes no sense. It's the recovered number that matters.

“The quoted mortality rate of 3.4% is taken from confirmed deaths over total reported cases. This is likely an overestimate, as a number of countries, such as the United States (112 confirmed, 10 deaths) and Iran (2,336 cases, 77 deaths), have had limited testing. Hence, few of the mild cases have been picked up, and [the total number of cases] we are observing is the tip of the iceberg.”

In fact, the overestimation could be 10 times higher than the reality, notes Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, U.K.

“[I]f a significant number of mild cases have been missed or not reported, then this [3.4%] estimate is too high.”

link.

[Ken]

link.

You aren't understanding what I'm saying. I get the underreporting issue and its implications. Putting that aside, this is a separate discussion of why use total cases rather than total recovered + deaths in the denominator.

[TranaGreg]

You aren't understanding what I'm saying. I get the underreporting issue and its implications. Putting that aside, this is a separate discussion of why use total cases rather than total recovered + deaths in the denominator.

but how would you come up with the total recovered number without knowing (or estimating) how many have been infected?

[Ken]

but how would you come up with the total recovered number without knowing (or estimating) how many have been infected?

You are always going to have unknowns. We have ackowledged that. I'm saying put that to the side, that's not even what I'm talking about. All the numbers that come out have unknowns.

I'm talking about the numbers based on the known data. They are using a formula to come up with it. I'm saying that formula makes no sense to me.

Bringing the unknowns back into the conversation doesn't make the formula based on the knowns make any more sense.

[In the Corn]

It's getting crazy at my work. We have had 12 new referrals for Meals on Wheels service in the last 24 hours. We normally get 2-3 referrals each week.

I've never had so much crisis management communication in my life. It changes day-by-day.