Maybe, as in suggesting that covid in countries with negative excess deaths makes people healthier. Mortality rates need to be divided into population groups like age to become meaningful.
There is very little flu this year thanks to the travel and pandemic restrictions. So it's not hard for a country to have negative excess deaths even despite some COVID-19 deaths. (Some have also pointed out the reduced traffic during lockdowns, implying fewer traffic deaths, though this has actually been roughly balanced out by riskier driving behavior leading to more deadly accidents, at least in the US and Canada.)
Sure, if we are interested in one person or age group's specific risk, or want to understand effect of a different population pyramid like we did for Italy. Otherwise, if we want to know how severe the virus is in terms of how many deaths we might expect if a whole country is hard-hit, where in practice no particular age group can be well protected, then the weighted average over all ages is a useful measure. You likewise pointed out early on that the IFR matters in this sense:
Since the pandemic began I worked with the assumption that it is about 1% (or with some fuzziness depending on uncertainties and social factors: 0.5 to 2%), based on the reported CFRs in specific outbreaks and knowing roughly the fraction of asymptomatic cases. Then the antibody studies in New York supported that (not less than 0.5%). Now we can simply do excess deaths / total population, which is necessarily an underestimate because of incompleteness and because not everyone has been infected. So I didn't need to wait until now to believe this figure, but my confidence in it has only grown stronger as we have more data and lines of evidence.What are your thoughts about the mortality rate? I think this is a big issue. If it's low, towards that of regular flu, it seems clear that what the world is really facing is a panic epidemic spread by media. If the mortality is above 5% as some data might suggest, then clearly the world must not simply flatten the curve, but stop it.
That figure varies significantly between countries. The differences could be real (due to healthcare, lifestyles, genes, population distribution, etc), or the methods for estimating could differ, or a combination. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has published a risk assessment with the following mortality rates by age:Since the pandemic began I worked with the assumption that it is about 1% (or with some fuzziness depending on uncertainties and social factors: 0.5 to 2%), based on the reported CFRs in specific outbreaks and knowing roughly the fraction of asymptomatic cases. Then the antibody studies in New York supported that (not less than 0.5%).
it seems to me that everything is situational. There must be a sensible approach to vaccination. If a person is extremely weak, then how can one additionally load his body with the introduction of a vaccine?Maybe, as in suggesting that covid in countries with negative excess deaths makes people healthier. Mortality rates need to be divided into population groups like age to become meaningful.
Vaccination of the 75+ age groups is now complete over here, and just now they made the recommendation that very frail people (i.e. basically dying people) not be vaccinated, as it was concluded that amongst people who died shortly after getting the vaccine, the vaccine had sped up the death process in 10% of the cases. A recommendation a bit too late. But it doesn't seem to have influenced the excess death statistics. Still negative.
I don't think what delays action is so much fear of panic, but lack of data. The aid of hindsight makes this kind of criticism somewhat unfair. And how most governments have dealt with this pandemic doesn't really strike me as secrecy and inaction. Have they misled people? Possibly, but themselves as well, and no less in a way in order to rally by incorrectly saying that we will strike down the viruses rather than saying that we have to live with them and this is how.
I do think a delay in action out of fear of causing panic played a role. There are numerous examples of this being a part of decision making directly from leaders at multiple levels of government. It even played a role in the hesitancy to educate or even accept the role of airborne transmission (more on that in a moment.) It is also believed so widely by both leadership and media that I feel it's an important topic to think very critically about. But to blame a lack of data, the important question then is which data were lacking?
Wat, how did the 1918 flu pandemic end? Was that with vaccinations or was some other method employed?An estimate (by three different methods using excess mortality data) suggests the actual death toll from COVID-19 in India is between 3 and 5 million (versus the official figure of 400,000). Many deaths occurred in a spread out fashion last year due to the pandemic restrictions (which indeed flattened the curve but at an extremely high level). The second wave this spring was also far more deadly than the official figures indicated, and was much more visible.
https://www.cgdev.org/publication/three-new-estimates-indias-all-cause-excess-mortality-during-covid-19-pandemic
Meanwhile in the US we're now seeing the same trajectory as so many other countries with delta. The delta variant is so infectious that it continues to spread -- easily and rapidly -- across the unvaccinated. With the relaxed measures, we observe an effective R value higher than at any time since spring 2020 before the lockdowns. The R0 value is likely between 5 and 8, which is insane. A more infectious disease also pushes the target for herd immunity higher. The original R0 of about 3 meant herd immunity would happen at around 66%. If R0 is 5, then we need 80%. If R0 is 8, then we need 87%. All of these numbers also don't account for how variants may evade prior immune response. If the virus develops enough ability to evade in a short enough time, then a true herd immunity never exists.
The way I see it, either we're going to take some much more dramatic action, or this is going to overwhelm our hospitals once again (in some places it's already happening), and result in many more preventable deaths and who knows what more variants. Allowing about a quarter of the population to be infected within a few months is not an acceptable strategy.
No, there was no vaccine developed for it. They instead used many of the same measures we still use today: social distancing, limits on gatherings, and in some places wearing masks. These measures did not stop the pandemic, but slowed it down considerably and broke it up into waves -- much like with COVID-19. The worst of that pandemic lasted for about about two years and hit in four distinct waves (though at different times in different regions, again much like with COVID-19). The second wave was the most deadly.
Thanks Wat- something else I wondered about- when children are born do they inherit antibodies/immunity from their parents who had gotten sick from it? Because as the older population is being replaced by the younger, there has to be a mechanism to protect those people who had never been exposed to it? I wonder what kind of secrets lie within our genome to protect us from what our ancestors had to experience, it seems it would be as intriguing as analyzing a fossil record to see the history of geological events the earth has experienced......No, there was no vaccine developed for it. They instead used many of the same measures we still use today: social distancing, limits on gatherings, and in some places wearing masks. These measures did not stop the pandemic, but slowed it down considerably and broke it up into waves -- much like with COVID-19. The worst of that pandemic lasted for about about two years and hit in four distinct waves (though at different times in different regions, again much like with COVID-19). The second wave was the most deadly.
How did it end? In about the same way as most pandemics in history. Once enough of the population has been infected (or recovered), the virus has a harder time jumping to new hosts, so the rate of new infections declines exponentially. How many must be infected before that happens depends on how easily the virus spreads (the R number), and the measures taken to slow it down. With Spanish Flu, that seems to have happened after about 1/3 of the population was infected (according to most estimates, though perhaps more had truly been infected, maybe even half or two thirds.)
Like, how long various restrictions would be required (i.e. the effect on the spread and how exactly the pandemic would play out unchecked), and how much harm the restrictions would cause, for the economy and people's health (mental, reallocated resources, long term effects). These things were not well known in March 2020. I'm looking forward to unpolitical research on this topic. One interesting case study could be Norway vs Sweden whose demographic differences aren't greater than what can be corrected for. Pretty different strategies were chosen.
I'm not an expert but my understanding is that newborns have some protection due to antibodies shared through the placenta and then the breast milk. So this protection is quite limited, lasting only for the most critical time. The baby needs to build its own immune system through exposure to germs and viruses, which takes time. This is the main reason why child mortality is nearly 50% in undeveloped societies. No protection is inherited from the father apart from genetic risk factors.
Yes and no. It's more complicated.