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Comment by datashow | Hacker News Reader

I have serious doubt on the death count.

According to the numbers I got from https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm now:

Death rate in Hubei province is 780/27100 = 2.88%

Death rate in all the other provinces combined is 32/10127 = 0.32%

So the death rate in Hubei is 9 times of other provinces. Is this really possible? ZheJiang province has 1075 confirmed cases now, but still 0 death count. Seriously? Hong Kong only has 26 confirmed cases, but already has 1 death count.

For SARS, China has a 6.6%, much lower than other countries. For example, Hong Kong has a death rate of 17%. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr... )

Do international researchers use China's officially reported count in their modeling?

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Just wanted to call out that I think calculating death rate as "deaths / infections" works for past infections but is wildly inaccurate today because the majority of infections have no resolution yet.

I'd say "deaths / recoveries" or maybe "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)" is probably better, with the caveat that it is likely much higher than the final number it's going to settle at as more people recover.

I've been using recovery numbers from https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h... .

Great work. But I don't see "deaths / recoveries" or "deaths / (deaths + recoveries)" on your webpage.

That's because most reputable sources don't have enough information to make a reasonable estimate of the case fatality rate. The JHU map only shows raw numbers.

If you're using deaths as a proportion of known outcomes, Hubei has come down to about 35%. Other provinces are reporting, at most, six deaths. I don't believe the numbers coming from China for one bit. Yes, Hubei is overwhelmed, but it really wouldn't take much to overwhelm most health care networks (in- or outside China).

Dutch wire service BNO News is reporting that a Japanese national who died in Wuhan was believed to be infected with the coronavirus but not included in the official coronavirus death count.

> Death rate in Hubei province is 780/27100 = 2.88% > Death rate in all the other provinces combined is 32/10127 = 0.32%

Please remember that the number of people to the right in your formula are not all recovered. They could still die. So the chances of dying from the virus _could_ be higher than the %s you have calculated.

> So the death rate in Hubei is 9 times of other provinces. Is this really possible?

The numbers suggest as much.

While I share your skepticism of the Chinese reported numbers - remember that the Hubei province is the epicenter and is currently locked down. It is resource strained. So I expect the rate of death there to be higher than elsewhere.

I also expect the Zhejiang numbers to trend in the other direction, as they have just announced it will be locked down too.

I agree that Hubei province is the epicenter so we would expect higher death rate. But don't know whether 9 times high is reasonable.

Also, the same reasoning would conclude that China's death count in SARS in definitely fake.

It's just impossible to have real life accurate numbers. The H1N1 pandemic had the original numbers revised to 10x higher

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/somethings-right-here-folks-l...

Or what kills people is the health care system being overwhelmed, lack of respirator, supplies, monitors, care. Which is in fact the biggest risk and why closing Wuhan was probably the right move... at a huge cost to the people there - it delays and staggers new infections and allows time to shore up resources.

I content that there is probably no healthcare system on the planet that could handle a sudden emergence of a new virus with R0 2-4 and weak initial symptoms meeting a population with zero preexisting immunity out of nowhere.

A bad flu or dengue season regularly puts beds into hospital corridors in many countries, even very advanced ones like Singapore. In fact, this year's flu season was vicious and is still ongoing.

So capacity, which is an almost static constant from many individual factors (people+consumables+space+tools)hard to scale (few countries can create new hospitals in 10 days) to keep serious cases alive become saturated at which point many additional critical cases become casualties.

There is probably delays and even some lies in the numbers, but a vastly increased casualty rate in a city out of treatment capacity is entirely believable of the rest of the country is not in a crunch (other provinces do not seem to have overwhelmed hospitals yet - the great firewall is not nearly sealed enough to hide such things)

It takes 3-4 weeks for most peoples immune systems to either beat the virus or loose to it. Many of the deaths that are happening now are of people infected earlier. Once countries outside china start showing how many people were cured we will find out how deathly the disease is. Another problem is that Wuhan doesn't have enough facilities for all the seriously infected other cities healthcare have not been overwhelmed and hopefully wont be because of the quarantine systems implemented. I read somewhere the current number of people sick enough to be an ICU in wuhan is currently 2500~3000 but I cant find that Chinese website again.

China has had a long history of local government, or local organizations hiding bad news from the central government. I'm not sure things have changed.

I'm not sure anybody wanted to be "that guy" who defy "that rule" and gets incarcerated or branded as "Liar" like those 8 other whistle blower doctors... history can always be nicely rewritten since ancient times in China

Maybe its cultural. Until all the old people with the old baggage die the population's behaviour doesn't change. I'm in singapore and last night i went to a few supermarkets. Toilet paper, instant noodles, bread, thermometers..are some of the things that are sold out. Singapore has 40 cases and people are reacting like its the zombie apocalypse despite the government saying there will be no "lock down" and supplies will be sufficient.. As many here have pointed out. Singapore is a police state. This is where contact tracing is going to work if ever. And singapore was the first country to deny entry to travellers from china, despite the economy's dependency on china. I mean. Why toilet paper? It comes from Indonesia right?

There's adverts on tv every couple of hours and posters everywhere telling people not to wear face masks if they're not feeling unwell. Government and employers are handing out face masks. Yet theyre all sold out everywhere.

Government has to slow down if not stop that kind of over reaction. Or worse. Sinophobia?

And the central government has a long history of blaming its incompetence on the local governments

I contend the actual death rate should be :

Deaths / ( deaths + recoveries )

Everything else is “in progress”, without a defined conclusion.

That would be (based on today’s numbers):

813 / ( 813 + 2,669 )

Which equals 23% (truncated).

I believe this to be more indicative of the potential threat of the virus, especially in the early stages. Well, at least it puts an upper bound on it.

OK. I just used the Deaths / ( deaths + recoveries ) formula:

Hubei province: 780/2219 = 35.1%

Other provinces combined: 32/1256 = 2.5%

So Hubei has 14 times of death rate as other provinces combined.

That may very well be possible. Keep calculating it each day and see how the graph of it looks.

You’re definitely onto something interesting here.

Resource constraints play a major factor in the death rate. People who are in critical condition with the virus can be saved in an ICU by being placed on artificial respiration.

In Hubei, the epicentre, there is an extreme shortage of hospital beds. Most people are sent away, even with severe symptoms. This is why the death rate is higher.

Chinese meds might be of similar quality to Chinese ebay batteries, or Chinese melamine milk.

Edit: After watching over twenty videos from Chinese temporary "hospitals" on Wechat I now understand whats going on - there are NO meds at all. They isolate people and feed them once per day thru small holes in the wall.

death rate in China ex-hubei: 0.3 percent.

Death rate outside of China: 0.3 percent.

What is being under counted is the number of infected in Hubei, not the number of deaths in China ex-Hubei

The death count outside of China is only 1. The 0.3 percent outside of China is not a robust number.

What if the death count were 0? Would it be even less robust?

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