Hacker News Reader

Comment by ekidd | Hacker News Reader

> This suggests that COVID-19 very roughly contributes a year’s worth of risk.

Yes. If I get all the medical care I need, then I have only an 0.15% chance of dying. (Well, more than that, because I'm male, and our numbers are twice as bad.)

But I have a 4.9% chance of being hospitalized, which generally means supplemental oxygen and an IV. And if we let this disease just burn through the population, then my state would be looking at something like 13,000 hospitalizations for 700 beds. And the numbers get much worse for older people.

Personally, I could live with an 0.15% chance of death. But a 4.9% chance of getting stuck in a field triage hospital with inadequate care, struggling to breathe? Not so much. And what about my older relatives?

View on HN

> But I have a 4.9% chance of being hospitalized

You are not taking into account the asymptomatic rate, among other mistakes.

> You are not taking into account the asymptomatic rate

I'm using the Imperial College of London hospitalization numbers, from the table quoted in the article. These give a hospitalization rate that's about half that of earlier tables. So I'm guessing they probably include around 50% mostly asymptomatic cases, which is in line with heavily-tested populations like the Diamond Princess and South Korea.

The number comes from the column named "symptomatic cases requiring hospitalisation"

You're right, I was misreading the column header. If we assume 50% asymptomatic, then that would get me down to, say, a 2.5% chance of needing a hospital.

Which means, in the absence of drastic curve flattening measures, a 2.5% chance of half-drowning in my own lungs in a hospital corridor full of cots. Still sounds pretty awful.

The key number we're missing is how many people catch the virus, but who defeat it quickly enough that they never show up on an RNA test. We'll need antibody surveys to figure that out. The Diamond Princess had 712 positive out of 3,711, but some people were tested fairly late. So if we assume half the ship caught it, that could cut the numbers in half again.

> So if we assume half the ship caught it, that could cut the numbers in half again.

Actually by a factor of four if we assume that the virus managed to reach everyone it was going to reach on the cruise ship and doesn't spread better on land.

And if only those 712 caught it, that reduces your number by a factor of five. So we are already down from 4.9% to between 0.5% and 0.625-1.25%.

Agree with mathdev here.

Looking at the data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

It seems logical to state, at least within the US, the accuracy of deaths due to COVID-19 are more accurate than total cases of COVID-19. There are a lot of asymptomatic people out there. Even if someone has it with mild symptoms they are told to stay home and only reach the hospital if symptoms are severe. Deaths are more accurate as I assume a test can be performed posthumously for COVID-19.

So, even with this exaggerated ratio, the US has 5 deaths/1M pop. One can reasonably argue this might've been worse if no quarantine measures were in place. However if the true rate is less than 1%, I think the economic effects will be more impactful.

The above link also shows ~27k deaths worldwide due to COVID-19 at the moment. Italy had ~25k deaths due to the flu alone in 2016/2017.

That number is still rising exponentially though in Western countries due to lack of social distancing and mask wearing discipline. I fear we'll be approaching a million deaths worldwide in a matter of weeks.

Not a chance. When all is said and done it'll be less than 100k.

Preliminary stats from China/Italy/USA suggested a much higher hospitalization rate: 10-20%+ for 20+ year olds. https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21190033/coronavirus-covid-19-...

Or the ‘just a little cough’ rate or the ‘I probably have it, but I’ll just stay away from people until it goes away’ rate, which is probably pretty high.

My mom had had an upper respiratory problem for about a month and they still haven’t tested her. She was just given some antibiotics a week ago; but, even if she has a bacterial infection now, couldn’t it have started as a viral one to make her sick enough to get the bacterial one this bad?

We’ll have to do statistics analysis in the coming months and years to get some real numbers on this. As of now, we’re still missing lots of data.

You are right. According to the Robert-Koch-Institut, even in Germany, where there is a lot of testing being done, the number of actual cases is probably a lot higher than the number of confirmed cases. We are talking about 10x or higher.

Please cite your sources, preferably a paper pre-print

It was in a press conference with the German minister of health and the RKI. The British chief medical advisor estimated 20x in Britain. Of course nobody really knows at this point. In Germany, a large-scale study using antibody tests is starting next week to estimate the true numbers.

Asymptomatic rate was measured to be around 50% on diamond princess, so at best they are off by a factor of 2.

Just to provide some info, asymptomatic might include people who are infected but the infection is just on the incubation period. Mild coughing might start after two weeks or so after the plausible date of infection, and a week after that might be when fever and difficulty breathing kicks in.

> You are not taking into account the asymptomatic rate, among other mistakes.

Hospitalization is only required if you're having problems breathing, or experiencing ancillary health problems such as pneumonia.

> But a 4.9% chance of getting stuck in a field triage hospital with inadequate care, struggling to breathe?

You have forgotten about serious irreversible damage to your lungs which will probably shorten your life by a few years.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com