Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Link to the actual paper:

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820...

Estimates are in the last column of Table 1 (page 5).

These seem roughly in line with CDC estimates for the US, see e.g. the first chart in this article from 6 days ago which compares flu mortality rates with COVID-19 per age bracket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-seasona...

To the (many) commenters here dismissive of the paper -- because in a "foolish" way it relies on "doubtful" "suspect" "junk" "Communist" Chinese data making it "not worth the paper it's written on" (all quotes from other comments here) -- the authors specifically address "adjusting for demography and under-ascertainment". The fact that they came to results similar to US data, as long as their methodology wasn't cherry-picked, would seem to be a good sign.

And remember -- The Lancet is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. They're not going to publish something "junk".

> And remember -- The Lancet is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. They're not going to publish something "junk".

Let's not resort to arguments of authority. They have, quite recently, published junk.

https://retractionwatch.com/2020/02/27/lancet-journal-retrac...

That appears to be a letter to the editor, not a paper though.

This isn't a peer reviewed paper. It's an extremely brief summary piece based upon a complete absence of evidence and then suppositions.

And to what the guy above said, the Lancet infamously published Wakefield's since debunked repeatedly claim that MMR vaccines cause autism. A paper that has literally led to many deaths.

That was a one-off that made international headlines because it was a rare event. You'd generally trust stuff published in the Lancet; it gets thoroughly checked.

This is work done by leading researchers in the field, in a top-class journal. I'm going to trust it over random allegations on HN.

It was an incredibly damaging one-off that has killed children. Clearly the vast majority of their work is worlds better than that, but I was replying to the appeal to authority that demands respect and belief for a work that itself purports to be nothing more than a very rough estimate.

Nonetheless, this piece isn't "thoroughly checked" because there is nothing to check. They took the deficient data from China and added suppositions to it. It's neat, I guess, but meaningless.

This paper is not being taken as authoritative anywhere. No one is making policy decisions on it. Zero ground-truth is changing because of it. Because it's a cursory, superficial guesstimate (that is literally the most accurate word) just to appease curiosity.

> They took the deficient data from China and added suppositions to it.

I have more confidence in the Chinese data than that. They have no motive to supply false data, and lots of reasons to make it accurate.

The data also seem to be consistent with the data emerging in the rest of the world as judged by the experts who wrote the paper.

> This paper is not being taken as authoritative anywhere. No one is making policy decisions on it.

I doubt that. Some of the authors of this paper are also authors of the Imperial study that has significantly influenced the UK government response.

"They have no motive to supply false data, and lots of reasons to make it accurate."

They are working with garbage data. They know this. They admit it. Then they rationalize that they can invent real data out of it. And as an exercise that is okay -- they state exactly what they are doing with very limited, poor data. They haven't claimed it was more than it is.

This is not the canonical statement on death rates, and compared to actual emerging data is completely irrelevant.

"are also authors of the Imperial study that has significantly influenced the UK government response"

The catastrophic and flippant UK response? The one that thought they would obtain some "herd immunity" by doing nothing, and then realizing cases were skyrocketing mimicked what other countries were doing? That UK?

This is not a compelling claim.

> The one that thought they would obtain some "herd immunity" by doing nothing, and then realizing cases were skyrocketing mimicked what other countries were doing?

Yes, that one. This was the study that convinced the UK government to change course from the original unrestrained herd immunity strategy.

"And remember -- The Lancet is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. They're not going to publish something "junk"."

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

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