New York City has a 0.6% death rate from confirmed COVID-19 cases.

"South Korea has tested more than 140,000 people for the new coronavirus and confirmed more than 6,000 cases. Its fatality rate is around 0.6%".

The new study from New York City matches Korea's death rate of 0.6%.

This is the moral dilemma. Should we open up schools and stores if 0.6% will die?

What is the number that you are "comfortable" with?

Won’t those people die anyway? I mean you can’t hide forever, eventually nearly 100% will be exposed. I get slowing it for healthcare systems to catch up but beyond that what else can you do? Just stay home forever? It’s not feasible.

Someone doesn’t know what “confirmed” means.

Have the hospital admission rates been affected by this?

Still seems like a lot of people getting sick and dying even with the massive shut down efforts.

You and Allen53 must have "graduated" from the same school of "facts".

Didn’t someone post it was 1.4% or something yesterday. Stay in school. Do they have schools for Russian trolls?

You skipped the probable deaths, as determined by the doctors. That's 1/3rd of the deaths. If that 21% is accurate for the population as a whole, that'd be 0.85% case fatality rate. In reality, the 21% is likely high because the it's testing people walking around and not people sheltering.

Arguing about the exact percentage is ridiculous. It's obvious this virus is an efficient killing machine. 15,411 deaths in NYC alone.

facts and reason wrote:

"South Korea has tested more than 140,000 people for the new coronavirus and confirmed more than 6,000 cases. Its fatality rate is around 0.6%".

The new study from New York City matches Korea's death rate of 0.6%.

This is the moral dilemma. Should we open up schools and stores if 0.6% will die?

What is the number that you are "comfortable" with?

There shouldn't be a percentage number people are "comfortable" with, if the hospital capacity issue is resolved. If hospital capacity is there, it doesn't matter what the mortality rate is, whether it's .001%, .1%, .6%, 1% or even 5%. If the hospital capacity is there, we are in the exact place we were before we ever heard of Covid, and you go about your business taking whatever precautions you subjectively feel are necessary to keep yourself well, knowing that dangerous diseases exist no matter what.

If you arbitrarily pick a number you are "comfortable" with, like .4%, and Covid is above it at .6%, we would never end this lockdown. That was NOT the intended purpose.

I'm really amazed at how many people don't understand the basic premises that we are operating on - social distancing was to slow down rapid spread of a new disease that clearly would have overwhelmed hospitals. Social distancing is not a cure for the disease, it won't chance the characteristics of the disease, and once the hospital capacity issue is resolved, social distancing is pretty much irrelevant in terms of preventing deaths over the long term. And OBVIOUSLY social distancing restrictions have MASSIVE other costs to society.

I'll agree with a lot of what you said, in that we eventually need to open more things up but there are fundamental things that need to be addressed.

1) Universal Health care not contingent on employment.

2) Low paid/entry level workers with no choice but to work in a dangerous/potentially fatal environment (pay needs to be rethought and safety measures implemented)

3) Paid sick leave - Workers otherwise forced to take huge financial hit to avoid spreading

4) Live music, large scale sports aren't really practical without an effective treatment or vaccine. People attending those events aren't just risking their safety, anybody who interacts with them for the next 2-4 weeks could unknowingly be affected.

5) Testing for active disease and anti-bodies needs to be readily available and accurate.

The thing about herd immunity is the R0 value of an infectious disease isn't a constant. If people severely limit their interactions, it lowers the R0 which means 'herd immunity' can be achieved with fewer people infected, but that only stays true while those precautions are in place. If some basic precautions like stopping gatherings of 50+ people can lower the R0 from 2.5 to 2.0, that means only 50% would need to be infected vs 60% to reach herd immunity. That could save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives. My hope is that people are really thinking about how to operate in a way that treats people fairly and maximizes safety rather than parading around with guns and confederate flags and yelling about 'freedom.'

Watch out for the views of both of the above posters.

We have had as many as 800,000 hospitalizations for the flu in one year in the last few years(10x the amount of covid-19), yet we were told that patients would be left without treatment due to an explosion of covid--9 The predictions of government medical experts were horribly wrong.

The government healthcare experts told us peasants to avoid masks. The masks wouldn't help us but we should reserve them for healthcare workers. Don't feel bad if this made no sense to you as did the predictions of dying patients being denied ventilators.

It is still likely that the flu will kill more Americans in the last 12 months than covid-19 despite both illnesses being subject to the same mitigation measures.

Countries, states and provinces that took a more conservative approach via shielding the most at risk and wearing masks without a shutdown have actually done as well as the USA respect to death rates. Search Sweden, North Korea and 8 American states.

Antibody testing in LA, Santa Clara County and NYC show that the death rate for those who have actually contracted the virus is about one in a thousand.

Oh yeah, we need these government morons running our medical care.

NYC study again shows IFR of ~1% (using excess death modelling -- i.e. how flu deaths are modelled. I.e. 10X worse than seasonal flu. I.e. Matches stimates all along.

Remember the initial 2.2 million death toll worst-case model everyone trashes basically ran off these numbers: R0=3, IFR = 1%. The model was more complex but nothing about the underlying assumptions has been shown to be false (despite a month of rage from the mathematically illiterate on this board).

NYC study shows we are undercounting cases by 10-15X, again reasonable.

And this -

stats on stats wrote:

Someone doesn’t know what “confirmed” means.

"suggested a death rate of about 0.5% of those infected because about 15,500 New Yorkers have died of confirmed COVID-19 cases."

This article says 0.5% instead of 0.6%.

Harambe wrote:

NYC study again shows IFR of ~1% (using excess death modelling -- i.e. how flu deaths are modelled. I.e. 10X worse than seasonal flu. I.e. Matches stimates all along.

"However, as we explain here, the total number of cases of COVID-19 is not known. That’s partly because not everyone with COVID-19 is tested. We may be able to estimate the total number of cases and use it to calculate the IFR – and researchers do this. But the total number of cases is not known, so the IFR cannot be accurately calculated."

The infection fatality rate is estimated to be about 0.5%. Anything more is speculation.

WHO scientists were wrong with a 3.4% figure. You cannot flip the tables and start saying scientists were "right all along".

There's more than one way to calculate case fatality rate, and in any case it will be different for different populations.

Looking at Taiwan data, they caught almost every case as they happened, boarding planes in January to test people. The absence of community spread meant that they kept schools and shops going, and they have zero to single digit new cases per day. They did have 27 the other day from a Navy ship... and the defense minister apologized and offered to resign.

They have a total of 6 deaths, and 427 cases and 184 active cases. Thus the case fatality rate for Taiwan for closed cases (243) is 6/243 or 2.5%.

Keep doing what YOU want to do Americans. Millions will die! Blood is on your hands. The data is very clear on this.

reason >>facts wrote:

Keep doing what YOU want to do Americans. Millions will die! Blood is on your hands. The data is very clear on this.

Where's your data?

Some states are less densely populated with a lot of space naturally between houses. They have a lower infection rate than people in New York City or Los Angeles.

facts and reason wrote:

The infection fatality rate is estimated to be about 0.5%. Anything more is speculation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/who-says-coronavirus-death-rate-is-3point4percent-globally-higher-than-previously-thought.html

WHO scientists were wrong with a 3.4% figure. You cannot flip the tables and start saying scientists were "right all along".

If you use excess death models (like we do for the flu) NYC excess deaths are 17000 vs est 1.7 million infections (21% infected against 8.4M population) gives 1% IFR.

Confirmed COVID deaths as per NYC only gives 0.6%.

Outside NYC IFR likely lower.

Unclear why I am arguing with someone who doesn't understand difference between CFR and IFR though -- that CNBC article is confirm covid cases -> deaths. Very different metric.

~1% IFR has been pretty standard estimate for months+. It's even ~what they used to get the infamous 2.2million US deaths prediction.

1% IFR is bad at least 10X flu numbers.

Just trying to keep the deniers in check. I think many places have controlled spread to point where we can experiment with opening things back up.

turnips wrote:

There's more than one way to calculate case fatality rate, and in any case it will be different for different populations.

Looking at Taiwan data, they caught almost every case as they happened, boarding planes in January to test people. The absence of community spread meant that they kept schools and shops going, and they have zero to single digit new cases per day. They did have 27 the other day from a Navy ship... and the defense minister apologized and offered to resign.

They have a total of 6 deaths, and 427 cases and 184 active cases. Thus the case fatality rate for Taiwan for closed cases (243) is 6/243 or 2.5%.

By the way, you'll be able to do similar case fatality rate calculations where you do know the denominator for situations like the air craft carrier and Marion prison because they tested everyone. Just need to wait a month or so for all the cased to resolve, then count the dead.