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Comment by raducu | Hacker News Reader

I'm so sick of people comparing this to the flu.

It's nothing like the flu -- coronavirus death rates are 2%, flu 0.01 -- it's 200 times as deadly and it can spread before any symptoms.

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We don't know the death rate of nCov-2019, because we don't know how many people are infected, and we don't know how many people are dying.

Do we really know how many people are infected with the flu? I'm sure only the more severe cases get tested for both.

I’m totally out of my element here but I’d wager that because the flu is much more pervasive we’re able to extract more reliable statistics, even if it’s from a relatively small sample set.

I'm no statistics expert, but given they can predict election outcomes from samples of a couple thousand people for tens of milions of voters, 40k+ infected with coronavirus is enough to have a very good idea about death rates.

The table on Wikipedia Influenza page gives <0.1% for fatality rate of seasonal influenza.

So perhaps just 20x as deadly as the seasonal flu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

you are comparing 2019-nCoV Case Fatality Rate with Influenza mortality rate? why?

Wikipedia states:

Asian (1956–58) flu ~ 0.1% [44] Hong Kong (1968–69) flu ~ 0.1% [44] Influenza A, typical pandemics < 0.1% [44]

So 2% would be roughly 20x Asian or HK flu, or in terms of of a typical Influenza A pandemic at the very least 20x harder...

I'm not sure he is comparing Case Fatality Rate with Influenza mortality rate. I thought 1-2% was a reasonable estimate of the % of people who catch coronavirus who'll die. The CFR seems higher.

because it’s a severe illness we are all familiar with.

read my comment more closely, why are we comparing a voltage with a current?

CFR Case Fatality Rate: fraction of people diagnosed with an affliction that eventually died.

For example if the Sniffles has a CFR of 1%, then 99% of people diagnosed with Sniffles will survive.

Mortality rate: fraction of all deaths in a group, that are attributed to a specific affliction.

For example if mortality rate of Sniffles in Belgium is 4%, then 96% of deaths in Belgium are attributed to other afflictions.

For a comparison check out the following lists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...

Interesting distinction, but I don't think anyone was talking about mortality rate over all people. All the discussion I've seen is the mortality rate of people with the disease.

so people are discussing CFR's but calling it mortality rates

consider how mortality rates are extensive quantities i.e. proportional to the number of people infected while CFR's are intensive quantities i.e. independent of the number of people infected

I agree, 2% is terrifying, try an online rng and see if you survive. Then try it for close friends/family. Its russian roullete with a few more chambers.

The 2% figure is across all groups. For older people, diabetics it would be much higher. And that 2% assumes a scenario where there are infinite medical resources. The

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