Corona virus death rate exaggerated due to insufficient testing

The main problem with covid19 is not the mortality rate. In countries where they can control the rate of infection with good social/infection control/public health measures and the health systems are not overwhelmed, the death to confirmed case rate is quite low, around 0.7-0.8% or so. When you include all the asymptomatic undetected cases it is much lower.

The problem with covid19 is how infectious it is, some of which is from asymptomatic carriers. Each case infects about 2.5 other people, the number of cases increases exponentially and when it gets to a certain point, rises very, very rapidly. And there are 20% or so of confirmed cases that get very sick and need hospitalization and about 5% that need ICU. If the hospital system does not get overwhelmed, many of those cases would get supportive treatment and survive so again the mortality rate is pretty low. But when you keep adding exponentially more and more cases in a very short period of time, the health system gets overwhelmed and patients who normally would survive end up dying in very large numbers. Also patients who normally would survive from heart attacks, strokes, accidents, etc. die because they aren't getting the care they need when their doctors/nurses are looking after hundreds of Covid19 cases.

All the measures being put in place are trying to slow down the spread of the virus so that the case numbers will stay at a manageable level, health systems do not get overrun and patients do not end up dying unnecessarily.

 

At today's briefing by the NY Gov, something like 1000 folks were on ventilators for 20 or more days, I did not see someone ask the question, how many of those have been on the new therapy drug combination that started it trial Tuesday in NYC? Apparently many people respond in about 5 days, so it would be informative if we got the number of deaths of those getting the med for 5 or more days. Next Monday should tell the tail.

 

In our small city we have about 20 people hospitalized with it currently. What Gold Dragon said is true. It disrupts healthcare significantly, especially when there are a lot of people in your area with poor health. I was on facebook yesterday, and one of my friends had a ruptured ear drum from an ear infection, and she couldn't find a doctor who would see her.

 

Yes, how awful to have something else that needs to be treated and the unavailability and risk factor associated with it. Even if one needed stitches. I think I'd do the Rambo thing first...

 

On this we agree. That's where the real threat lies. NY hospitals are a mess right now. But I have faith in our leadership and scientist (federal, not in NY). We'll win.

 

Sounds awful. Would none even prescribe antibiotics for it?

 

She finally got a doctor online to at least prescribe medication, and found someone to pick it up for her. Horrible situation, and I'm sure there will be much worse. The healthcare in my area was already awful, so I cant imagine how bad things might get in the next few weeks.

 

Precisely.

So why did you say this, approximately 26 hours later (this morning):

 

Didn't the Influenza scare of 1918 that killed some 20 million actually burn itself out after 3 months, due to survivors and those resistant to it making entire population immune to it after a while?

 

In Italy the death rate was over 4%.

I think the death rate in 1918 was something like 80 million world wide, although there are other estimates. It seems that when it began it was considered a new type of pneumonia

It is not known if you can be reinfected, some seem to have been reinfected, Scientists are trying to work out if antibodies can stop infection, but they don't know if they will work because as it is a new virus, they don't know how it will develop.

 

Yeah, it's highly communicable, especially a problem in cramped cities. I think my area is going to get hit harder because practically everyone has a pre-existing condition and the population is older. People still arent taking things seriously, despite 20 hospitalized already in our little area.

People are in denial. I see more and more sickly and dry coughing people coming into the stores every day. Stay home if you have no reason to be out and about.

 

I have a co-worker in the Denver area - single, 36, and they wouldn't even test him for this. On Skype, he looked terrible and had all the symptoms for either this or the seasonal flu. But he was told in that area, the coronavid-18 tests were scarce, and that they'd save the testing for somebody older or with medical complications and prescribed him an inhaler to help with his breathing. No antibiotics, it's a virus, and he was told if his symptoms worsened, go straight to the ER for a test. Makes me wonder if NYC isn't hogging all the tests.

 

I've been wondering for a while if NY was using up all the resources in general across the nation. I'm looking at it two ways though. First, once they get them, and they might be hoarding and stock piling, it would probably be very difficult to get them back and the rest of the country could be at NY's mercy. Second, if NY is starting the call for massive supplies and over stating their needs, this would put a stronger focus on production and producing far too many supplies wouldn't necessarily be so bad a thing, not only could we help other across the world but it would create jobs and jump start manufacturing back in this country. That said, I think our great country is up to the task!

AS for tests, that is the one thing I was disappointed to hear from Trump - that he didn't want to test everyone in the country. I believe if we were to overkill anything that tests should be at the top of the list. Along with that Trump was talking about the percent of the death rate and basing that off of guessing the number of asymptomatic patients to arrive at a number under 1%. That is crap science, and this is my response on a youtube video on this subject:

NO FAKE NUMBERS! I would rather thoroughly test as many as possible and get real numbers than predict a death rate based on guessing how many asymptomatics might be out there.

The good news is that the FDA has just approved a quick test and they expect 5 million tests to be available very shortly. I hope they produce 100s of millions of test very quickly. I think they would be extremely helpful to isolate those who are infected and be even more productive in stopping the spread than general social distancing.

 

The death rate, from the virus, in our county has now gone up to 7 Staying indoors. I will get out and do some gardening when the weather permits. It has been unseasonbly war for about two weeks but raining almost every day and all day. Then we had nearly a week of dry but cold weather and te soil went from waterlogged to bone dry and hard in a week. yesterday and today it was unseasonbly cold and snowed briefly this morning.

When the weather is inclement I do some cooking. Been filling the freezer.

 

Concur. The testing needs to be made a bigger priority. It would be nice to have a good basis for where we currently stand.

 

There was very quickly developed and now just approved quick tests being produced at 50,000 a day, first arrival April 2nd.

 

Great news. This will be extremely helpful.

 

Some huge news tonight.


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