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[misko27]

The issues of deaths only found in hindsight to be COVID-19 makes me want to throw up my hands at the whole thing. But... if you don't have data, how can you know? God I'm glad for perhaps the first time ever that I'm not a public policy decision maker right now. It's just unknowns and best-guesses as far as the eye can see, with lives on the line.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not - if it had been Bernie in 2016, we'd literally be nationalizing industries on a daily basis right now and slowing the spread over the excuse.

[martinuzz]

... assumes that hospitals are able to care for the roughly 20% who require hospitalization.

How do you get to that 20%?
Out of 1400 hospital workers tested positive here last week, only 3% needed hospitalization, and of that 3% about 10% needed ICU care. The 97% that did not need hospitalization got better after 1 or a few days of the sniffles / mild flu-like symptoms.
Now these hospital workers were all below 67 (retirement age), so I can believe that the hospitalization rate rises when you add the elderly into the mix, but that won't get it up to 20%

[Quarque]

Your numbers on the other

Out of 1400 hospital workers tested positive here last week, only 3% needed hospitalization, and of that 3% about 10% needed ICU care.

Source? Your numbers are a lot lower than what I am reading. For example:

The model then uses the best current estimates of how long someone is infectious (14 days); how many new cases each infected person causes (called the effective reproduction number, it’s about 2.5); the percentage of Covid-19 patients who need to be hospitalized (5%, reflecting the fact that most people have only mild or moderate illness); the percentage who need to be in an ICU (2%) or on a ventilator (1%); and the length of stay for each of these three.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/coronavirus-model-shows-hospitals-what-to-expect/

.. oh wait, you are talking about hospital workers, who were healthy middle-to-low-age people to begin with. That explains it.

[ChairmanPoo]

IIRC the numbers from Wuhan were around that...  around 10% requiring inpatient care,  around 5-6% requiring ICU.  Not sure if categories were mutually inclusive. It doesnt matter much either :/

And problems are age related too. You look at the stats, and fatality rate begins to increase slowly with age, dramatically so. The really big jump is in 80+ people. So one reason that was thought could have something to do with the differences in fatalities in Asia and Europe was how it has infested nursing homes in the West.

Of course, with a test shortage and only testing severe cases you're skewering mortality results and making it look more lethal than it is. This would likely be true anyway... I mean we *know*  there are lots of asymptomatic carriers. Maybe as many as 5-10 for each symptomatic one. Its more frequent in the young, but it also happens in the elderly, so any affable granny could be a plague vector.

The problem with all this is still the same: healthcare collapse. Many interventions, surgeries and consults are being cancelled due to covid19. I don't doubt that people will die from the effects on the healthcare system

[Inarius]

Hence (at least, one of the main explanation) the number of death in Italy. One of the oldest country in the world.

[ChairmanPoo]

I think the main reason is that they havent gor enough tests for everyone. Let alone the ones qith mild symptoms

[Jimmy]

The problem with all this is still the same: healthcare collapse. Many interventions, surgeries and consults are being cancelled due to covid19. I don't doubt that people will die from the effects on the healthcare system

To be fair, people were already dying from the failures of the healthcare system, just not so quickly or visibly. I have nothing but my deepest sympathies to offer my elderly clients in this time, since I can't get supply of anything more effective.

[McTraveller]

When this is all said and done, I will be interested to see if this shows up in the total M&M* statistics for each country for a year. I am really curious if this is a total add to M&M, or just a severe time-shift.

This is the only metric that will include all the effects such as the impact of having an ICU full with COVID-19 cases so it pushes out other uses, etc.  It will also include, interestingly, tertiary effects from reductions in pollution, travel, and other diseases also having their impacts affected by the social distancing and lockdown measures.



*Morbidity & Mortality

[martinuzz]

Boris Johnson has tested positive for corona.
If his condition worsens, minister of foreign afairs Dominic Raab will take on the prime minister job.
Johnson's pregnant girlfriend has also been placed in isolation.

[Il Palazzo]

*Morbidity & Mortality

Spoiler: I've always wondered what it stands for (click to show/hide)

[andrea]

By the way, local administrators and researchers in the Bergamo area are warning that deaths may be vastly undereported.
Basically, they checked graphs for the number of deaths and overlaid the coronavirus reported deaths. Coronavirus was already a big spike over the baseline... but exactly on top of it, total deaths reached peaks of 4-10 times (depending on location) more than reported coronavirus deaths. How many of those are virus related and how many healthcare collapse related is anyone's guess, but that is a lot of extra deaths.

[misko27]

Incidentally my mother commented that if she happens to die of complications from the stuff growing in her intestines that was scheduled to be removed during a colonoscopy a week ago or two weeks ago (cancelled due to Corona), that she wants me to write an Op-ed calling her part of the toll of COVID-19. I think it was only partly a joke.

[martinuzz]

The NRA is argueing to reopen the weapons stores, they claim guns are an 'essential' service.

[TD1]

Flip I read that as IRA.