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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

> “The findings suggest an alternative way of thinking about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our results suggest that the overwhelming effects of COVID-19 may have less to do with the virus’ lethality and more to do with how quickly it was able to spread through communities initially,” Silverman explained. “A lower fatality rate coupled with a higher prevalence of disease and rapid growth of regional epidemics provides an alternative explanation to the large number of deaths and overcrowding of hospitals we have seen in certain areas of the world.”

Isn't this exactly what the "flatten the curve" crowd has been saying?

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No, because the "flatten the curve" crowd believed that the virus was in early stages; the lockdown was to prevent uncontrolled spreading.

The virus looks super lethal when deaths are starting to pile up when only a tiny percentage of the country was believed to have been exposed. But in reality the virus had almost peaked by the time people started to panic, which made all those lockdown or flatten the curve measures pointless.

Got it thanks. This assumption is of course undermined by the fact that seroprevalence of antibodies is not that high even in countries like Sweden. At the same time I know a person who had minor symptoms, was then tested positive in PCR but negative in a later AB test. Combine this with studies on SARS1 and MERS where only half of all asymptomatic patients developed ABs and the assumption you presented seems suddenly quite possible.

If it’s true however, the pandemic should be over in a couple of weeks?

Your immune system protects against millions of diseases, but does it continuously produce antibodies for all of them? Of course not. This means that testing positive for covid19 antibodies is strong evidence that person has been infected with covid19, but the inverse is not true. That's why we don't do antibody tests for the seasonal flu: there's just no point.

Depends on what you mean by "over". Covid19 is trending down in the northern hemisphere and it will continue to trend down even after all countries stop with their ineffective lockdown measures, but the virus won't disappear completely. But life can go back to normal, except people should be a little more careful about washing their hands and not visit the elderly if they feel sick. But handwashing and consideration for the health of the vulnerable should be the default anyway, and we should do that regardless of covid.

These type of studies focus on a couple of data points, ignore all others and then come up with conclusions such as these. It's impossible that the infection rate was this much less lethal as if that was the case Lombardy could not sustain the numbers it had, it would have been over 100% infected months ago.

In the article they mention that New York had 9% infection rate at the end of March. With the doubling rate they specified (3 days), New York would be fully infected by April 10th.

I argue that in Lombardia (where I live) the virus found niches of vulnerable populations (nursing care homes, hospitals like Alzano Lombardo which weren't closed after infections were found) and then proceeded to cut them down.

yes, but the flatten the curve crowd assumes a higher lethality

Do they?

I think we have pretty ok lethality estimates somewhere in the ballpark of 0.2 to 0.5 percent.

The lethality rate without care is much higher than the lethality rate with care, and said care often needs to be exhaustive and for an extended period, which can easily fill the entire capacity of hospitals if enough people get infected at once.

Weren't doctors beginning to question whether intubation had any effect on recovery?

Not high lethality, high hospitalisation rate.

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