Coronavirus Outbreak

[jirskyr]

I’m not even sure if I’m looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

Frankly none of those numbers matter to your average person. They are the numbers that governments and health authorities look at.

What difference does it make to a singular person if the mortality rate is 3.58% or 7.52%? They are just averages. And the thing about early statistics is that they are all over the place, because the data is immature. So almost certainly the mortality rate and transmission rate will vary rapidly in different populations as the virus moves through those population. Maybe in 2-5 years the statistics will even out, mostly on account of the volume of data rather than an actual plateauing of individual results.

If you are sick and concerned, see a doctor or go to hospital, especially if you are in a risk category like elderly, child or immunocompromised. At that time, the "mortality rate" is just a number that may or may not give you hope or concern. But again, unless we are talking figures like 30-90% mortality, odds are very good that you will be ok. Especially in Australia, with the level of healthcare we enjoy.

 

[innsaneink]

Flu vaccine isn't available for a fortnight or so.... I think we will see many many more people taking this up this season.
Would consider getting it now if it were available e though its effectiveness apparently will lessen by June & August... We leave in two weeks and my partner is starting to worry... Flu vac not available until after then

 

[earl]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

My take is that you are being way way way overly pessimistic. Yes it appears to be a stronger virus than the common flu but it doesn't appear to be that bad. The statistics will probably be erring on the side of stating it is significantly worse than what it is because a lot of people won't get tested to confirm if they have it or not. The mortality rate in South Korea is for instance less than 1%. The mortality rate in Washington state is something like 14%. I think the figure in Washington State is clearly wrong.

The virus appears to be significantly weaker than for instance the SARS virus.

I guess my question is how do you calculate mortality rate?

Is including active cases helpful in determining mortality rate if we don't know whether these people will recover or die?

Korea is a good example of why I'm asking these questions because if you include total cases (closed cases + those people currently sick), we only get a mortality rate of 0.65%, however if we only look at closed cases, i.e. did the person either recover or die from the virus, then it jumps to a 24.15% mortality rate.

One statistic shows no cause for concern, yet the other is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

My take is that you are jumping on data and overreacting. It's the wrong way to read the data. It's way too early to be taking such an extremist viewpoint which is what you are doing.

I think the mortality rate may end up something like less than 1% which is more than the flu but it's not that bad. It also tend to kill older people.

 

[Tiger5150]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

There is a fair bit of logic in what you are saying but I dont think it matters to a large extent. I saw an interview with an epidimiologist yesterday and he said that the final mortality rate will be about 1/10th of what they are reporting. The reason for this is basically they are only recording people who turn up for treatment. People who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms dont bother. He stated many previous examples and said that these new strains ALWAYS have a high mortality rate and it always scale downward because of more extensive data.

 

[weststigers]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.


There is a fair bit of logic in what you are saying but I dont think it matters to a large extent. I saw an interview with an epidimiologist yesterday and he said that the final mortality rate will be about 1/10th of what they are reporting. The reason for this is basically they are only recording people who turn up for treatment. People who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms dont bother. He stated many previous examples and said that these new strains ALWAYS have a high mortality rate and it always scale downward because of more extensive data.

This makes sense. Thanks.

@Earl - I wasn't being alarmist, just looking at data and asking a bunch of questions of the data that other people are quoting. I don't hold any opinions on what is right or wrong.

@jirskyr - I'm not in a risk group, nor am I concerned I have the virus. The numbers don't matter until we have 2-5 years of data. Got it.

 

[twentyforty]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

My take is that you are being way way way overly pessimistic. Yes it appears to be a stronger virus than the common flu but it doesn't appear to be that bad. The statistics will probably be erring on the side of stating it is significantly worse than what it is because a lot of people won't get tested to confirm if they have it or not. The mortality rate in South Korea is for instance less than 1%. The mortality rate in Washington state is something like 14%. I think the figure in Washington State is clearly wrong.

The virus appears to be significantly weaker than for instance the SARS virus.

I guess my question is how do you calculate mortality rate?

Is including active cases helpful in determining mortality rate if we don't know whether these people will recover or die?

Korea is a good example of why I'm asking these questions because if you include total cases (closed cases + those people currently sick), we only get a mortality rate of 0.65%, however if we only look at closed cases, i.e. did the person either recover or die from the virus, then it jumps to a 24.15% mortality rate.

One statistic shows no cause for concern, yet the other is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

My take is that you are jumping on data and overreacting. It's the wrong way to read the data. It's way too early to be taking such an extremist viewpoint which is what you are doing.

I think the mortality rate may end up something like less than 1% which is more than the flu but it's not that bad. It also tend to kill older people.

Couple of days ago, I listened to a behavioural economist from an accounting firm discuss their economic modelling And predictable coved-19 impact. They’re predicting world wide deaths of 39m with the number in Australia at 38k. I didn’t quite catch the time frame mentioned but thought he said by the end of 2021?

 

[twentyforty]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.


There is a fair bit of logic in what you are saying but I dont think it matters to a large extent. I saw an interview with an epidimiologist yesterday and he said that the final mortality rate will be about 1/10th of what they are reporting. The reason for this is basically they are only recording people who turn up for treatment. People who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms dont bother. He stated many previous examples and said that these new strains ALWAYS have a high mortality rate and it always scale downward because of more extensive data.

Australia’s overall mortality rate has been dropping. I think it stands at around 0.65%. This is death from all causes.

 

[Tiger5150]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.


There is a fair bit of logic in what you are saying but I dont think it matters to a large extent. I saw an interview with an epidimiologist yesterday and he said that the final mortality rate will be about 1/10th of what they are reporting. The reason for this is basically they are only recording people who turn up for treatment. People who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms dont bother. He stated many previous examples and said that these new strains ALWAYS have a high mortality rate and it always scale downward because of more extensive data.


Australia’s overall mortality rate has been dropping. I think it stands at around 0.65%. This is death from all causes.

Im not sure where you are getting your stats from, but I thought the mortality rate in Australia for "death from all causes" was 100%?

 

[twentyforty]

Been saying it since day one. Incredibly overhyped by media and others - if I didn’t know better I would think their are ulterior motives at play here. Statistical likelihood of dying from CV vs Influenza is ridiculously low. But hey let’s not let facts get in the way of hysteriCal hand wringing and nonsense

Dazza the chance of dying from your typical flu is about .01% ....coronavirus is around 6%


Um yeah nah. Not getting into an argument on something almost as emotive as the NRL ad :grinning: however Influenza is 0.1% (NOT 0.01) and latest research has COVID around 3 to 3.4% not 6% (the probable reason for the COVID being currently at 3% vs Flu is it being "novel" and the whole science around adaptive immunity ).

Influenza in Australia only last year killed 255 people of all ages and all levels of "wellness" currently COVID seems to be deadly to elderly and/or people with respiratory or cardiac insufficiencies and excluding the outlier of the the young baby in SA, children seem almost immune to CCOVID's (for some reason)

All my point was that in comparison and asking any genuinely knowledgeable medical/scientific person, COVID is not "worse" than influenza - As I mentioned above, the initial and still some concern was around it being "novel" therefore there some some uncertainty about how or whether the virus would mutate quickly once it has "escaped" from China into something more deadly like SARS or MERS.

So I'm quite interested in this, mainly because I'm self employed and can't afford to spend time off work, but I was looking through some of the data and came across this.

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

Essentially, it's a list of reported cases (active and closed) worldwide, which can also be broken down by country.

So the 3.4% figure seems to come from total deaths divided by total cases (both active and closed).

Now my question is, wouldn't you look at death rate in terms of closed cases? As in, who recovered and who died? Reason being that, of the active cases, we do not know how many people will recover or die?

If you do this calculation it shows 59,569 closed cases worldwide for 3,461 deaths (3,461/59,569 = 5.81% death rate).

Second question is....Do you fully trust the numbers the Chinese government are reporting? Some are saying that the true number could be up to 10x what is being reported. The same is being said of Iran. Given the majority of the statistics are made up of Chinese cases - reported by the Chinese government, this can easily skew the true statistics.

The reason I ask is that, if we dig a little deeper and view by country, there is large discrepancy between closed case death rates of, say China, South Korea and Italy, where:


* China's closed case death rate is: 56,971 closed cases (3,042 deaths + 53,929) = 5.34%

* Italy's closed case death rate is: 720 closed cases (197 deaths + 523 recovered) = 27.36%

* South Korea's closed case death rate is: 178 closed cases(43 deaths + 135 recovered) = 24.15%

USA and France have rates in the 40's, however I've excluded them as total cases are relatively low in comparison, so maybe there isn't a large enough sample size just yet. I've also excluded Iran as data is reported to be untrustworthy.

Everyone keeps comparing the death rate to the common flu, saying the flu kills more people each year and the flu death rate is 0.1% or whatever it is, however isn't that 0.1% calculated from closed cases? I may be wrong, but if so, shouldn't we calculate the death rate of this virus in the same way?

I'm not even sure if I'm looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.


There is a fair bit of logic in what you are saying but I dont think it matters to a large extent. I saw an interview with an epidimiologist yesterday and he said that the final mortality rate will be about 1/10th of what they are reporting. The reason for this is basically they are only recording people who turn up for treatment. People who are asymptomatic or mild symptoms dont bother. He stated many previous examples and said that these new strains ALWAYS have a high mortality rate and it always scale downward because of more extensive data.


Australia’s overall mortality rate has been dropping. I think it stands at around 0.65%. This is death from all causes.


Im not sure where you are getting your stats from, but I thought the mortality rate in Australia for "death from all causes" was 100%?

???
If it were 100% we’ld have a totally new population every year, wouldn’t we? Sure, we’re all going to die, but out of 1,000 of us, how many will die this year? I say roughly 6 or 7?

 

[happy_tiger]

I think there are probably a lot more cases worldwide than we know. Just seeing how slow to react some major public institutions in Australia are, and yet overall we are probably doing ok. I've been to Dorothy Henderson Lodge a number of times for work, would be surprised if we don't see quite a few more cases.

The worldometer site is good but it clearly shows the issue with numbers. When Iran were denying an issue their death rate was very high, probably because mild cases were being ignored. Now their infection numbers are sky high and deaths barely moving. Suss.

I can't imagine what coroners they have in Iran are too concerned about deaths in the elderly or how it happened

 

[happy_tiger]

I guess the other question is this ...will it be possible to catch the virus twice ...or does the body build its own immunity

 

[happy_tiger]

I’m not even sure if I’m looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

Frankly none of those numbers matter to your average person. They are the numbers that governments and health authorities look at.

What difference does it make to a singular person if the mortality rate is 3.58% or 7.52%? They are just averages. And the thing about early statistics is that they are all over the place, because the data is immature. So almost certainly the mortality rate and transmission rate will vary rapidly in different populations as the virus moves through those population. Maybe in 2-5 years the statistics will even out, mostly on account of the volume of data rather than an actual plateauing of individual results.

If you are sick and concerned, see a doctor or go to hospital, especially if you are in a risk category like elderly, child or immunocompromised. At that time, the "mortality rate" is just a number that may or may not give you hope or concern. But again, unless we are talking figures like 30-90% mortality, odds are very good that you will be ok. Especially in Australia, with the level of healthcare we enjoy.

If you are going to give advice I think the right advice might be advisable

If you think you may have Coronavirus you should CALL AHEAD to let them know so they can prepare a total isolation area for you

Just showing could put many other people at risk who wouldn't / shouldn't need to be put at risk

 

[twentyforty]

I think there are probably a lot more cases worldwide than we know. Just seeing how slow to react some major public institutions in Australia are, and yet overall we are probably doing ok. I've been to Dorothy Henderson Lodge a number of times for work, would be surprised if we don't see quite a few more cases.

The worldometer site is good but it clearly shows the issue with numbers. When Iran were denying an issue their death rate was very high, probably because mild cases were being ignored. Now their infection numbers are sky high and deaths barely moving. Suss.

I can't imagine what coroners they have in Iran are too concerned about deaths in the elderly or how it happened

Some death certificates in Australia carry a debatable cause of death. A person may have battled an extremely aggressive cancer when his heart gives up. The DC will show cause as heart failure. I would imagine if we are facing a possible pandemic It may be different, but in a country where one of the biggest killers is hypertension some things may get overlooked?

 

[twentyforty]

I’m not even sure if I’m looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

Frankly none of those numbers matter to your average person. They are the numbers that governments and health authorities look at.

What difference does it make to a singular person if the mortality rate is 3.58% or 7.52%? They are just averages...

However, if those numbers, applied to indigenous Australians they would matter. I think I get it ??

 

[happy_tiger]

I think there are probably a lot more cases worldwide than we know. Just seeing how slow to react some major public institutions in Australia are, and yet overall we are probably doing ok. I've been to Dorothy Henderson Lodge a number of times for work, would be surprised if we don't see quite a few more cases.

The worldometer site is good but it clearly shows the issue with numbers. When Iran were denying an issue their death rate was very high, probably because mild cases were being ignored. Now their infection numbers are sky high and deaths barely moving. Suss.

I can't imagine what coroners they have in Iran are too concerned about deaths in the elderly or how it happened


Some death certificates in Australia carry a debatable cause of death. A person may have battled an extremely aggressive cancer when his heart gives up. The DC will show cause as heart failure. I would imagine if we are facing a possible pandemic It may be different, but in a country where one of the biggest killers is hypertension some things may get overlooked?

Totally agree ...many drug overdoses are listed as heart failure ..renal failure etc

 

[happy_tiger]

I’m not even sure if I’m looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

Frankly none of those numbers matter to your average person. They are the numbers that governments and health authorities look at.

What difference does it make to a singular person if the mortality rate is 3.58% or 7.52%? They are just averages...



However, if those numbers, applied to indigenous Australians they would matter. I think I get it ??

Yes I'm sure the Native North Americans , South Americans , Aborigines , Pacific Islanders and certain parts of Africa would have argued those exact points onwards from the 1500's

 

[dazza65]

For all discussing the statistics let me say the following :

At this stage the stats are indicative only as there are significant issues with the reliability of initial data from China and now Iran in particular. Consider all stats at the moment to be more general than definitive but there are many more reasons to be positive than negative or alarmist.

There seems to be a significant number of patients globally who haven’t been counted as they have nil or mild symptoms - this significantly skews any data on transmission rates and death rates. the most recent journal articles from reputable medical journals are now citing the global death rate is trending down and should continue to do so. A couple are suggesting that in all likelihood the rate will settle in the general area of influenza. But as with any stat, the more data collected the more accurate the end result, so we will see.

As mentioned, statistics are great for management and health economic planning and for sensationalist media reporting but not necessarily important for the individual. Remember the saying , "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The post above about the “economist” prediction has been eviscerated by many sources as unnecessarily alarmist and wildly inaccurate. They back tracked very quickly after the furore.

 

[happy_tiger]

For all discussing the statistics let me say the following :

At this stage the stats are indicative only as there are significant issues with the reliability of initial data from China and now Iran in particular. Consider all stats at the moment to be more general than definitive but there are many more reasons to be positive than negative or alarmist.

There seems to be a significant number of patients globally who haven’t been counted as they have nil or mild symptoms - this significantly skews any data on transmission rates and death rates. the most recent journal articles from reputable medical journals are now citing the global death rate is trending down and should continue to do so. A couple are suggesting that in all likelihood the rate will settle in the general area of influenza. But as with any stat, the more data collected the more accurate the end result, so we will see.

As mentioned, statistics are great for management and health economic planning and for sensationalist media reporting but not necessarily important for the individual. Remember the saying , "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The post above about the “economist” prediction has been eviscerated by many sources as unnecessarily alarmist and wildly inaccurate. They back tracked very quickly after the furore.

A lot of people are comparing 1st and 3rd world countries in all of this (not aiming this at you Daz )

Just remember if this gets ugly that many Doctors in 1st world countries have never had to deal with sort of true pandemic situations and our hospitals are already overloaded and struggling to deal with "normal" conditions

I personally (despite our medical advances over many other countries ) don't see us coping if Coronavirus gets into overdrive in this country

Add to the damage it causes to the economy and personal finances of the many who live around the poverty line already ...it will get ugly

And you can call me an alarmist all you like ...but look at how bad /hard it is for many without having no supermarkets ...fast food ....possibly electricity do to power shedding for possibly 6 hours a day ......water restrictions or having to treat water ...extremely limited medical care (bar emergencies )

 

[Tim Sheens]

I’m not even sure if I’m looking at it in the right way, so I wanted to put it to people on this forum that know more than me on how to analyse the numbers when it comes to these things.

Frankly none of those numbers matter to your average person. They are the numbers that governments and health authorities look at.

What difference does it make to a singular person if the mortality rate is 3.58% or 7.52%? They are just averages...



However, if those numbers, applied to indigenous Australians they would matter. I think I get it ??

Edit; @twentyforty, I truly want to understand where such comments come from, so I ask what was your motivation/line of thinking that had you bringing up that particular part of our community?

I also hope that one day you and others will "get it". That being, that your post and similar is a major reason why the NRL, along with so many other institutions, promote inclusiveness with the hope that one day, the culminative result of such education will eventually sink in.

 

[twentyforty]

For all discussing the statistics let me say the following :

At this stage the stats are indicative only as there are significant issues with the reliability of initial data from China and now Iran in particular. Consider all stats at the moment to be more general than definitive but there are many more reasons to be positive than negative or alarmist.

There seems to be a significant number of patients globally who haven’t been counted as they have nil or mild symptoms - this significantly skews any data on transmission rates and death rates. the most recent journal articles from reputable medical journals are now citing the global death rate is trending down and should continue to do so. A couple are suggesting that in all likelihood the rate will settle in the general area of influenza. But as with any stat, the more data collected the more accurate the end result, so we will see.

As mentioned, statistics are great for management and health economic planning and for sensationalist media reporting but not necessarily important for the individual. Remember the saying , "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The post above about the “economist” prediction has been eviscerated by many sources as unnecessarily alarmist and wildly inaccurate. They back tracked very quickly after the furore.

Yeh, I think we all realise the value of statistics and the general circumstances of their application. For that reason I thought those stats I posted coming from the diamond princess may have been more useful to analysts, given they also could possibly have some access to the passenger list? Ages etc.
don’t mean to sound so cold about it, but numbers don’t have feelings.