Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

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And also a similar study in Germany with similar results [1]. The result is of course to mechanically reduce the fatality rate to a number close to that of the flu (the problem for hospitals being not so much the fatality rate than the high number of infections), and well within the 0.1-1% range that US health authorities have been advertising for a while.

Regarding models, it seems 0.15% is the new basis [2].

Even on the optimistic end of the range (0.1% fatality), with 13k deaths, that's 20% of the UK population infected, a long way from achieving herd immunity.

The other thing is that I invite people on hackernews to better control their anxiety. It is not so long ago that pointing that case fatality ratios in jurisdictions that didn't do mass testing and where there seemed to be many unreported cases with mild symptom was overestimating the fatality rate would get you treated of conspirary theorist. South Korea had been measuring a fatality ratio in that range (~0.6%) over a month ago and that was probably already an upper bound (due to not testing 100% of the population).

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/124944656101010637...

[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/124902067755179622...

NYC population is 8.4 million. Their death rate is 6,589 (Apr 13). 0.1% of 8.4 million is 8400, that would mean almost everyone in NYC has been infected, I'm not sure that is feasible at the moment.

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...

It would only take a 0.25% fatality rate to imply 30% of the NY population to have been infected, which is plausible.

The people who were treating that hypothesis as an absurd conspiracy theory last month probably won’t own up to it, but I do hope they are reading.

That's not really what those people were saying.

It doesn't matter if the number is 5% with a low infection rate, or 0.5% with a very high infection rate: both will lead to very large numbers of dead people unless we take severe action early on.

And so far they've been right. Covid-19 is causing huge amounts of excess mortality, even when compared to a really bad flu year.

Source? Europe shows excess mortality spiking to a similar level as the 2017-2018 flu season: https://www.euromomo.eu/

And that’s with elective procedures being cancelled and everyone scared to go to the hospital for any reason. Here’s some new data indicating that half of the excess mortality in England might not be caused by COVID-19 itself: https://archive.is/2eKCW

South Korea’s fatality ratio at the time was obviously lagging, and has since gone above 1%. The true infection fatality rate might still be low but certainly the final case fatality rate won’t be, even with their mass testing.

As of April 9, according to Wikipedia, the CFR of covid-19 in South Korea reached 1.95%

The early pointing to South Korea’s CFR as low turned out to be misleading in the end due to I guess some issues relating to the data (probably because many cases were ongoing and the persons had neither died nor recovered).

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