This year we kill it: Corona Virus Thread Mark II

[Chen]

So what? It's not a big deal because it only kills old people? That's despicable.

It is also neither "an overwhelming" majority nor, given excess mortality, is the common flu anywhere near the death toll of Covid. Your assertions in this respect continue to be provably false.

GW

I’m confused by these assertions that the statements are probably false. Nowhere did they say COVID is the same level of deadliness as the flu. They stated that people who die to COVID are the same “kind” of people who die to the flu. Which is true. The elderly and those with comorbidities. The death toll from COVID is FAR worse due to how easily it’s transmitted and that’s easily born out in the numbers.

As for overwhelming majority of deaths being over 80 I suppose in the US that may not be true. Here in Quebec it’s 73.1% of deaths are those above 80. It jumps to 91.4% if you look at people over 70. The government here stated that 80% of hospitalizations are also due to those over 70.

There is no value judgement in any of this. These are simply facts.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I’m confused by these assertions that the statements are probably false.

I didn't say probably. I said provably. And I stand by it.

They stated that people who die to COVID are the same “kind” of people who die to the flu. Which is true. The elderly and those with comorbidities. The death toll from COVID is FAR worse due to how easily it’s transmitted and that’s easily born out in the numbers.

If the death toll is worse, then it is not the same kind. 0.1% is not the same kind of chance of death as 2%.

ETA: for diseases which are different but of the same kind, look no further than the common cold. That's at least a dozen different viruses, all of which are close enough in symptoms, death rate, etc. that they can be accurately described as "much the same". This is not true, however, for covid and the flu.

As for overwhelming majority of deaths being over 80 I suppose in the US that may not be true. Here in Quebec it’s 73.1% of deaths are those above 80. It jumps to 91.4% if you look at people over 70. The government here stated that 80% of hospitalizations are also due to those over 70.

There is no value judgement in any of this. These are simply facts.

And I'm looking at world facts, and since 70+ are a tiny percentage, the reality is that out of 2 million deaths so far, about half are not 70+. As to comorbidities, I find that to be practically a weasel word when employed in this context, since, as per my link, the excess deaths show that covid is killing people that would otherwise be alive. And if the general statement is "it only kills old people and fat people that would have died of something else anyway" is provably false: it kills people in every group. Some groups are hit far more than others, but that doesn't in any way minimise the issue. If anything, it makes it significantly worse, since people in other groups seem to take this as proof of immunity, causing them to engage in unsafe activities and spread the disease further - see young people partying.

Grey Wolf

[Keltest]

Is this the part where we drag people away from the conversation by the collar again? because this seems like its about to begin retreading on posts that got red-texted to death.

[sihnfahl]

I suppose in the US that may not be true.

The issue comparing data is that the US CDC starts with 65, not 70.

Per the last US CDC report (last updated 8 days ago), 70,230 in the 65-74 range, 90,744 in the 75-84 range and 105,673 of 85+

329,593 deaths at the time (so gives you an idea of how fast things go since we're around 406k right now...). So about 32.1% are 85+, 59.6% are 75+, 80.9% are 65+.

[Chen]

I didn't say probably. I said provably. And I stand by it.

Apologies that was a typo I was intending to write provably not probably (was echoing back the statement).

If the death toll is worse, then it is not the same kind. 0.1% is not the same kind of chance of death as 2%.

I think we’re misunderstanding each other. COVID and the flu are NOT the same (or same kind) but that wasn’t what was being aserted. The assertion was the demographic (at least how I understood “kind of people”) that are dying from COVID and the flu are similar.

For my region it definitely overwhelmingly killed old people. This is not to say its not bad because it mainly affects them, but rather efforts should be focusing on that. And they are; vaccines are going to those demographics first, visits to old folks homes are more restricted than other things etc. If 80% of our hospitalizations are for people aged 70 or older it implies once you’ve sufficiently immunized that demographic the societal risk (health system being overwhelmed) are significantly reduced.

[sihnfahl]

If 80% of our hospitalizations are for people aged 70 or older it implies once you’ve sufficiently immunized that demographic the societal risk (health system being overwhelmed) are significantly reduced.

Keep in mind we're only looking at deaths, we're not looking at hospitalizations by age group. Sure, the older you are, the more likely you are to die from it, but that's not taking into account the number of people under 70 who require medical intervention.

The US CDC tracks hospitalization in 100 counties as part of a COVID-NET program. 118701 total for one period, with 53630 in the 65+ age group. That means a slight majority of the hospitalizations in that timeframe (54.8%) were under the age of 65.

And it doesn't talk about average length of hospitalization. Okay, sure, someone 85 is more likely to die from COVID than someone 55, but if that 85 year old dies in under a week, but the 55 year old takes almost a month in the hospital to recover, then which one bogs up hospital treatment options more?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Another point to consider is that we're still in early days of understanding COVID, because the only number we consider is raw deaths. Give it another five years, because by 2025 we should have a much better grasp of how badly the systemic damage it leaves behind affects people and their life expectancy and quality of life.

[akma]

That, and I get the feeling they had a distribution plan ready to go before there was even something to distribute in the first place.

There is a good infrastructure of lots of small medical centers with capable nurses, so that part might not have been hard.

Finally, the country needs to want to do this - the US being the most prominent counterexample, with significant percentage of the population outright refusing to take the vaccine (40%, I read recently? Take with a large pinch of salt, it was just one survey). When you put all things together, Israel seems to be the only country rich enough, unified enough and not filled with denialists.

If you would have asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said that there is a significant amount of denialists and anti vaccinators. I guess they are just much louder than numerous. With the money and societal infrastructure I simply agree.
Two factors that probably also help are the high population density (around 92% of the population lives in cities) and the small size.
Maybe it just felt weird to me because of general ignorance of other countries health care systems.

[Chen]

Keep in mind we're only looking at deaths, we're not looking at hospitalizations by age group. Sure, the older you are, the more likely you are to die from it, but that's not taking into account the number of people under 70 who require medical intervention.

The 80% number was what the Quebec government disclosed about a week ago for my province. I am certain this number will vary dramatically in different areas. And in fact that variation needs to be accounted for when looking at what societal interventions should be implemented.

[sihnfahl]

The 80% number was what the Quebec government disclosed about a week ago for my province. I am certain this number will vary dramatically in different areas. And in fact that variation needs to be accounted for when looking at what societal interventions should be implemented.

Can you provide a link to that? I can't seem to find one that breaks down hospitalizations by age, merely cases and deaths.

There is a good infrastructure of lots of small medical centers with capable nurses, so that part might not have been hard.

It's not just that... it's also planning how to get the vaccines there in the first place. Since Israel is using the Pfizer vaccine, that requires a bit more planning due to the nature of its transportation requirements.

And yeah, the US has a horrid mix of locations set up for injection. Between overworked hospitals, small medical centers that might not have the right facilities for the Pfizer vaccine, using grocery stores...

[Rogar Demonblud]

And Starbucks, and arenas, and school gyms, and basically anyplace you can install a popup kiosk. I'm still waiting to hear about shots being offered in an ice fishing shack somewhere out here.

[sihnfahl]

And Starbucks, and arenas, and school gyms, and basically anyplace you can install a popup kiosk. I'm still waiting to hear about shots being offered in an ice fishing shack somewhere out here.

Or, around here, a Gentleman's Club.

[Chen]

Can you provide a link to that? I can't seem to find one that breaks down hospitalizations by age, merely cases and deaths.

Don’t have the data it was during one of the premiers daily briefings. I do have a link to the CBC article that reported on it. Note re-reading its 65+ not 70+ that I mentioned earlier. Guess I misremembered.

http://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5868570

[Justanotherhero]

It probably doesn't cover 100% of the responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions unless those actions are 100% in alignment with those of every other member of the society. If say 90% are acting carefully and 10% act in a way that puts others at risk, the 10% only pay 10% of the cost of their decision and not 100%. Also, if someone dies, then the cost of that death (rather than the attempt to keep them alive) is borne primarily by that person and their friends and family. The $15k guess I made wasn't based just on the medical care, but also the idea in things like health and safety regulations of putting a particular finite value on how much a company or organization must spend to prevent a preventable death - generally the number that gets quoted there is about $10 million. So if say 10% of people have Covid and you have a 1% increased chance of killing someone because you act one way rather than another if you happen to have Covid, then $10 million becomes $10000.

A interesting approach effectively testing the limits of corrective justice in an unknown setting using known variables. The questions that would arise from such an approach are many. It would probably make a good academic appear in its own right. But I think I would be leading this thread even more off topic. ;-)

[Forum Explorer]

Statistic is not an exact science and IMO it's easily mispresented if a conflict of interest arise.




To say that would require exact knowledge of the future and perfect knowledge of causality relations. But I'll not call it "falsehood" because I accept that people may have divergent opinions without being liars or morally despicable. Agree to disagree.

Statistics is very exact. It is however, confusing. It is very easy to play with the definitions and numbers to make a result sound different than it really is. It's something I caught my local news site doing a couple times with COVID, as they kept claiming that we had a new record breaking number of cases. Which was true; when you were looking at total cases in our area.

But with proper knowledge of statistics you can actually navigate the jargon and actually understand what they are saying.


No, it just requires knowledge of statistics, knowledge of past years of mortality, and observation of current events. Yes, it is theoretically possible that all of the people who died of COVID would have somehow died in 2020 regardless. However, that's vanishingly unlikely. Some of them? Sure. We can get a rough estimate of how many people we expect to die in each age group by looking at past history. And the number is vastly higher than normal.

I mean, you compared COVID to the flu a couple posts back. But the flu really doesn't kill that many people per year. Look it up, approximately 34 000 people died from the flu in 2018-2019 in the US. A large number, sure. But it's less than a tenth of the people who died of COVID in 2020.

[sihnfahl]

Don’t have the data it was during one of the premiers daily briefings. I do have a link to the CBC article that reported on it. Note re-reading its 65+ not 70+ that I mentioned earlier. Guess I misremembered.

According to Quebec's Health... the data starts at 60 for mortality data.

In which case, it makes 97.8% or so of COVID deaths above the age of 60, and 92.2% over the age of 70.

Now, another reasons why I dislike hospitalization rate is triage, capacity and supply. When you're running over capacity and/or running low on supplies, you turn away the people who are more likely to survive without medical intervention so those who NEED hospitalization receive it and have the supplies available in case of a negative turn.

[monomer]

In my country the average lifespan is 80.8 years. It would be good if it was 90 but it isn't. If I must do the math this means a loss of less than a year that, although tragic, is overshaded by the damage the quarantine is doing to economy.
Entrepreneurs are committing suicide in Italy. Countless business are failing. I fear for the future.

When you see average lifespan, that is referring to life expectancy at birth, and assuming that people over 80 only have 0.8 years to live since the average lifespan is 80.8 is specious. If you refer to actuarial tables, the average remaining life expectancy for someone 80-years old is 8 years for a male and 10 years for a female. For a 90-year old it is 4-5 years. These are not all people that were going to die right around the corner, and many would likely have lived significantly longer than the expected remaining life, let alone your estimated "less than a year".

[sihnfahl]

In a promising sign, Israel's r0 for C19 has gone below 1 before they've even inoculated half the population.

And they're using the Pfizer vaccine, which has a lower efficacy after the first dose than the moderna.

Locally - vaccination demand and vaccine supply has gotten to the point where Governor DeSantis has put out an executive order that limits vaccinations in Florida to permanent Florida residents. Vacationers and snowbirds have to go home to get theirs.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Larry King has died from the COVID. I'll be honest and say I kind of forgot he hadn't died years ago.

[pendell]

Some other news, in addition to Sinfahl's note of Isreal's r0.

Moderna reports their vaccine is effective against UK and South African Variants

And California lifts its stay-at-home order. Says "we are turning a critical corner. "

I would like the delivery of the first vaccines in December to Normandy 1944, or perhaps El Alamein in 1943: It is not the end of the war, there is plenty of hard fighting ahead, but things are gradually looking better. Unless you're fighting for the Axis, in which case, of course, things look worse . Although I don't think there's an Axis in this war.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[sihnfahl]

Although I don't think there's an Axis in this war.

Antivaxxers who'll yell from Mount Herd Immunity?

[georgie_leech]

Antivaxxers who'll yell from Mount Herd Immunity?

I mean, if we do this right they'll till get their herd immunity, just not how they want to

[sihnfahl]

I mean, if we do this right they'll till get their herd immunity, just not how they want to

Repeating what antivaxxers said trying to explain how they're not the same withheld to maintain sanity.

[georgie_leech]

Repeating what antivaxxers said trying to explain how they're not the same withheld to maintain sanity.

Oh, you mean the time that one antivaxxer went so strongly antivaxx that they looped back around and accidentally invented vaccines?

[Rogar Demonblud]

El Alamein was in late 1942 (same time frame as Stalingrad and the Torch landings).

In better news, the third iteration of the vaccine is finishing trials and moving into pre-approval.

[sihnfahl]

Additional news - Merck has withdrawn their COVID vaccine trials. Results showed the triggered immune response was inferior to other vaccines already released, not to mention below what one would expect from immunity triggered by having COVID in the first place, making it a poor candidate for vaccination drives.

[snowblizz]

And California lifts its stay-at-home order. Says "we are turning a critical corner. "

There is one naggigng thing with the "turning corners". People's actions and attitudes react faster than the infection vectors. In Europe we have tried the corner turning several times last year, every single time someone manages to total the car.

Or put another way, you don't relax restrictions when you are turning the corner you relax them five blocks down when you are really clear of it. People are too eager to get things back to normal. The corner in this case is an Indy 500 racing course.

[akma]

Or put another way, you don't relax restrictions when you are turning the corner you relax them five blocks down when you are really clear of it. People are too eager to get things back to normal. The corner in this case is an Indy 500 racing course.

Reminds me of how people were so eager to meet friends in the weekend before one of the shutdowns.

[snowblizz]

Reminds me of how people were so eager to meet friends in the weekend before one of the shutdowns.

That's an equally smart move.

[sktarq]

There is one naggigng thing with the "turning corners". People's actions and attitudes react faster than the infection vectors. In Europe we have tried the corner turning several times last year, every single time someone manages to total the car.

Or put another way, you don't relax restrictions when you are turning the corner you relax them five blocks down when you are really clear of it. People are too eager to get things back to normal. The corner in this case is an Indy 500 racing course.

If you are only using the infection level as your basis you'd be correct.

However that is probably not the only consideration...though I can't get into why. Plus those lockdown restrictions were linked to certain criteria...and now that those criteria have been met not undoing the restrictions and going back to Nov levels of restrictions would be highly inconsistent as that is what was stated at the time they were put in place.