Anyone have Coronavirus on the boards? If so fill us in on severity.

A Hungry, Violent Mob wrote:

Myself, and a number of my coworkers, and it turns out, a number of people on LRC battled an virus which was tested negative as flu in January. I firmly believe millions more have had this thing and because nobody could or would test for it, the fatality rate is incredibly inflated. Your friend should be counted and lower the fatality rate (hopefully). If he's not tested how can anyone stand behind the numbers being put out?

Even with 30,000 cases in Italy, the hospitals are overcrowded. That's a straight fact.

So if millions were infected in January, why weren't the hospitals overcrowded back then? Did every at risk person just magically avoid it?

Always nice when conspiracy theorists out themselves with their stupidity. You're the same as the people buying 50 rolls of TP. Wrap that around your head.

Depends what we mean here by "death rate". A death rate of 6% if it's primarily the seriously ill who are getting tested isn't that insane. Chances are though there are at least 10x people who aren't tested for everyone who is.

Now, if you have access to the data, you can probably do some extrapolating. How many of those tests were 'random'. If you have some random data, you can then extrapolate to how many people probably have it, and then take your figures from that, for a proper 'death rate' (for those who have it, rather than those who have tested who have it).

But, in reality, stats and percentages are somewhat meaningless when applied to a whole.

For example lets take the 1% death rate (of those who get it) figure, I think that's too high, but lets go with it. Lets also say that there's a 5% death rate for > 70 years. That doesn't mean that person A who is 70 years old is 5x more likely to die, it does on average, but that fit 70 year old, is probably 100x more likely to survive than that 70 old who has a lung condition who is 80% likely to die.

Stats are deceptive, and you also need to account for the figure of those who would die from something else. For example, cut out lung cancer from stopping smoking, and deaths from heart disease rise. It's not that more people are doing anything worse, it's just that we have to die from something.

So you need to factor a lot of stuff in there, including offsetting the typical deaths from Coronavirus vs other conditions like flu. You may well find deaths by flu drops, because CV already got them.

Stats are useful for seeing trends. We can see cases go up, so we can decide to act, but just be a bit careful of the conclusions we all make out there is all I'm saying! It's complicated :).

Right now, I am healthy, thank goodness, and still working. I can't work from home and I work in the transportation industry. We work with grocery suppliers, drug stores, medical supply companies, among other industries, so we can't just close up. My company has announced that if you test positive for the coronavirus they will pay you an extra two weeks sick time. But the state I live in has said if you are otherwise healthy and not in an at-risk category, if you come down with the symptoms, do not get tested, just go home and self quarantine. In other words, let the hospitals deal with those at risk groups.

But then I was thinking, if I start to develop symptoms and just self quarantine, I wouldn't get the extra two weeks of sick time. So it kind of puts us in a difficult position of deciding to get tested or not. Hopefully I won't have to make that decision..

Walking around coughing. Not laying in bed coughing.

Well...... wrote:

I don't think I've read one post on this board oddly enough, suggesting people shouldn't work from home, limit contact etc,.

This has been implicit or explicit in many posts on this thread alone (not to mention other threads on letsrun), and these posts are dangerous and irresponsible.

The eighth post in this thread was:

"Sorry you didn't seem to realize my sarcasm. I don't think this is a big deal at all. I think the infection rate is in the millions and nobody is dying, putting the death rate at a fraction of a fraction of the flu. It's no big deal."

implying that no non-standard precautions are necessary.

Another quote from another post: "It is a non-issue except for very old and very infirm." (FYI 40% of coronavirus hospitalizations in NYC as of today are people under 55).

The list could go on and on. Every post (and there are many) that minimizes the threat posed by this virus or describes people's concerns as hysteria and overblown is dangerous. Tons of people are still not following even the low-cost mitigation strategies.

JesseIsGarbage wrote:

Stay home, rest, rest, rest, sleep, get better. Thank you for your post. Best to you and yours.

Go away JessIsa**hat. Best public service you can provide is to disappear into permanent self quarantine.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Harambe wrote:

The fatalities curve lags the infection case curve because most of the news. The other day you used Belgium as an example of 'only' 0.4% case fatality rate and said it would go down. I said it would go up. Right now it is at 14 deaths for 1,486 cases (1%).

Stop cherry picking! You admit it's "an" example, not "the" example, so did you bother to check every other country I mentioned? No, you picked just one, and the one you picked happens to have few enough cases that a small variation in number of deaths can still produce a significant swing in "death rate."

Norway is still holding steady at 0.4%, Denmark at 0.37%, and Germany has a huge sample size now of 12,300 with only 28 deaths for 0.22%, lower than it was when I posted about it before.

Updated case fatality rates only 12 hours later: Norway 0.40%, Denmark 0.52%, Germany 0.30%

Hardloper wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

Stop cherry picking! You admit it's "an" example, not "the" example, so did you bother to check every other country I mentioned? No, you picked just one, and the one you picked happens to have few enough cases that a small variation in number of deaths can still produce a significant swing in "death rate."

Norway is still holding steady at 0.4%, Denmark at 0.37%, and Germany has a huge sample size now of 12,300 with only 28 deaths for 0.22%, lower than it was when I posted about it before.

Updated case fatality rates only 12 hours later: Norway 0.40%, Denmark 0.52%, Germany 0.30%

Early and widespread testing is the only thing that makes sense here. I think we'd expect numbers that low or lower from a random sample as well.

wejo wrote:

However, now instead of killing .2% of people infected let's say we were looking at this wrong because a person who tests positive on day 1 who is going to die won't die until 13 days later. So what looked like a .2% death rate really isn't.

Is my math wrong?

Questions like this reiterate my belief that we need more discussion of this.

You are looking at "lag" all wrong. A person that died on day D13 and was tested on D1 gives a skewed death rate because the actual number of cases (untested) on D1 what probably 20 times what the number of confirmed (by test) on D1.

The final week of February I had the probably the worst flu I've ever had. As bad, or even worse, than food poisoning -- without both ends going wild.

It started with a persistent dry cough for a few days. No sinus issues. No sore throat. Then one day I just didn't feel very well. Suddenly, five hours later I collapsed and fell asleep in a grocery store parking lot for five hours, waking up disoriented and confused. The next three full days of sleeping 22 hours a day and barely knowing what time or day it was. My entire body ached and I had next to zero strength to do anything. I had to summon super-human strength in order to roll over in bed, or sit up, or stand. Walking was next to impossible. Tiny, baby steps and hanging onto tables, chairs and walls just to make it to the bathroom. My bladder leaked droplets of urine as I shuffled to the head.

I broke the fever after three days then spent the next two days relieved, but still exhausted, and sleeping at least 18 hours a day.

Five days without eating and not feeling hungry at all. Highly unlikely it was the coronvirus, but my experience was worse than 95% of the coronavirus patients, who generally experience mild to moderate symptoms.

Like the flu, Coronvirus has a ~5 day incubation period, during which the virus rapidly multiplies and the infected is highly contagious. The key here is that they are infectious when they don't even know it, all the while stealthfully shedding viruses on everyone they contact.. Once the infected is overwhelmed by the virus, the body's immune response goes into overdrive to play catch-up. Takes another 5 days for your body to beat it, and almost immediately you aren't contagious anymore. The 14 day quarantine number is a guesstimate for how long 3 StDev of the patients will be non-contagious.

Next year I'm getting a flu shot. Even if it's only 30% effective, it will be worthwhile.

If you're state is discouraging getting tested for mild symptoms, they will have no clue how many people are infected.

Seriously mate? wrote:

90% of infected people won't even realize they got infected. Which of course poses a problem because you can still spread it to other people.

It also potentially means the death or severity rates are way less than we think.

This year we have had 22K Flu deaths, yet no one is concerned.

Take a look at the curves at the link and tell me how confident you are about Corona.

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

Anyone who thinks the death rate is less than 1% is kidding themselves. The case fatality rate as it stands right now is approximately 10%. Of the ~95000 cases that have been resolved, 85000 have recovered and 10000 have died. You can't calculate the mortality rate until AFTER the epidemic has ended. Since most cases are unresolved right now, it is still too early to say, however common sense tells me that China wouldn't have welded people into their houses for something as benign as the flu.

The number one cause of death in Italy this week has been coronavirus. Anyone who thinks this is a hoax is a *****.

Bob schul country wrote:

Just wondering how bad it is.