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Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

I think your post is intended to be reassuring to the presumable majority younger demographic on HN.

But it strikes me as very insensitive. Ignoring the validity of the source of those numbers, even if they hold up. We all know people over 40. We all know people with existing illness that put them in higher risk brackets. And we all know people in other regions of the world with poorer healthcare systems where the fatality rate may go up.

The parent’s fatality rate was broadly correct. You can’t just select out a big portion of the population to give a better survival rate. Then compare your hacked fatality rate to the unhacked seasonal flu rate. “Just a bad flu” that is up to 20x worse than the regular flu is a big big deal. The near wartime like response in China is not “just a bad flu.” This is affecting a lot of people in very serious and real world ways.

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To me, his last paragraph was the most important part. We've seen that the case rate increases dramatically as more tests are administered.

This is implying a very strong selection bias in the past testing towards the most severe cases. The mortality rates are certainly much lower than these estimates.

>We've seen that the case rate increases dramatically as more tests are administered

Is that really true though?

The UK has administered some of the most tests at over 7,119 but only 13 confirmed cases. US has done a measly 445 tests, yet 60 cases? Might be things are just starting to ramp up, and yet we're behind on testing...

>US has done a measly 445 tests, yet 60 cases?

I think the US tests were much more targeted to those most likely to have contracted it. Like US citizens returning from Wuhan/Hubei.

Yeah that makes sense, although that would be a selection bias towards most likely cases, not necessarily most severe. Although China's data is most likely to be biased towards most severe...

Its very possible that I was incorrect. I now realize that my statement was based on something someone told me, and I can't find original sources.

I do continue to believe that the real cases are much higher than the reported cases, though, and many of these unreported cases are the ones with the mildest symptoms. This will continue to skew statistics for some period of time.

There's also reports that if somebody is dead then they won't treat them due to limited resources, they'll just ship them to the crematorium. Because of this I'd expect the 3% rate to hold at the very least, if not slightly increase.

> it strikes me as very insensitive

It's a physical fact that older people's bodies aren't as able to fight off diseases, and they are likelier to have mortality rates.

If no one's allowed to actually explain the physical facts of how the physical universe works, because it's "insensitive" to mention that older people are more likely to die when they're sick, how is our society supposed to come to correct [1] answers when it comes to medical science and health policy?

[1] By "correct," I mean minimizing the incidence and severity of illness within relevant resource constraints.

Agreed. Statements in contexts like this should be evaluated as either correct or incorrect. Worrying about sensitivities in science is typically counterproductive.

I think most people are blowing it out of proportion. It's just a bad flu

This isn’t science, it’s someone’s opinion on how concerned other people should be based on their interpretation of some very incomplete data.

> I think most people are blowing it out of proportion. It's just a bad flu

It isn’t just conveying information, its downplaying the severity of the situation.

It's not that those people groups don't matter, it's just that if it wasn't COVID-19, it could have been one of a dozen of other common ailments with elevated CFRs for those populations. My Nana beat cancer multiple times, but ultimately succumbed to a minor cough that turned into pneumonia.

Eventually time gets the better of us all. I don't think that's an insensitive statement, just pragmatic/realistic.

So what in your opinion would present a public health danger worth worrying about? A 6 percent mortality rate? 10 percent? Or is there no mortality rate worth fretting about if it only affects people 50-years-and-older?

> But it strikes me as very insensitive.

And here I am pondering if the generational time bomb's been defused. Parent's downright warm'n'fuzzy.

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