Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic

[Pies4shaw]

^ Well, yes and no - there have been enough cases for us to have a good handle on the infection mortality rate. You can then use that rate to perform a reverse calculation from the number of deaths in a particular country or community and you will have a reasonable handle on the extent to which there is under-reporting (except, possibly, for China - which is either doing a magnificent job or its authorities are lying through their teeth). So, when a country is reporting 10% of the number of "confirmed cases" as deaths, you know they haven't counted their cases correctly (unless the pandemic's hold in that country is in its embryonic stages and the statistical sample is trivial).

The reason doing that reverse calculation can be helpful is it can tell you, on a large scale, whether Australia's 5,000+ confirmed cases is anywhere near the mark or not. It plainly is - and, although K has identified issues about the efficacy of testing, statistically those don't matter because we can assess mortality rates by reference to confirmed case rates with reasonable confidence.

Thus, eg, working with the .0066 factor that has been recently published, Australia "should" have experienced about 35 deaths from its 5,224 cases. Some of them are, of course, newly confirmed, so you would expect the actual deaths from those cases (at the moment) to be less than the 35. They are 25. Put another way, if Australia had 150 deaths from 5,224 cases, I'd be saying there was a dramatic under-enumeration in our "confirmation" process. I don't really think that's the case at the moment. If there are more cases that haven't been picked up by testing, we don't seem to be missing too many clinically significant cases.

By contrast, on the figures published right now, the US plainly has a massive under-reporting problem in their confirmed cases - the death rate is ostensibly 2.4%. That is just not going to be correct - it is much more likely that there are around 800,000 to 1,000,000 cases than that the US is experiencing death rates up to 4 times higher than the death rates have been recorded in totally unprepared third-world countries.

Statistics isn't an exact science, it is an art - after any calculation is performed, one has to be able to assess the reliability of the answer by reference to check calculations. Obviously our knowledge changes over time and we can perform more sophisticated checking, so our answers are more precise. But, even so, I am very confident that there isn't much clinically significant under-assessment of cases in Australia at the moment and I am every bit as confident that the US is only picking up (to date) about 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 clinically significant infections. That, put simply, is why the US spread rates are out of control and Australia's are being pulled back.

[K]

[Pies4shaw]

Maybe - but you are making a point (if any point is to be made) that is completely irrelevant to assessing the progress of the pandemic in Australia. That is - if infections were 5 times the number reported, all that tells us - given that the mortality rate is presently within the predicted range based on the worldwide infection mortality rate - is that the mortality calculation should be .0066/5.

Test your own figures against the reported deaths here.

[K]

The number of deaths in Australia so far is low. I worry more about tracking the number of infections, including the number of community-transmitted infections, which is hard to know. (For starters, it's these numbers that'll show whether we should ease the lockdown, not the number of deaths.)

The infection mortality rate is something we really do not know and is country-specific anyway.


When I look at the claimed raw killing power (contagiousness, lethality) of COVID-19, it does not seem to be anywhere near some of the others (check out ebola). I think one of the main problems with COVID-19 is the spread through undetected asymptomatic carriers in the community.

[swoop42]

The US has a population approximately 12.75 times larger than Australia but have 210 times more deaths as of 03.04.20

27.03.20 100x
20.03.20 31x

Germany has a population approximately 3.25 times larger than Australia but have 39.5 times more deaths as of 03.04.20

27.03.20 20.5x
20.03.20 6x

The UK has a population approximately 2.65 times times larger than Australia but have 104 times more deaths as of 03.04.20

27.03.20 44.5x
20.03.20 20x

[K]

And remember the UK NHS death numbers are only hospital deaths ( https://magpies.net/nick/bb/viewtopic.php?p=1957166#1957166 ).

[Pies4shaw]

25: A man in his 80s died in hospital in Victoria.

26: A 74-year-old woman from Albury died overnight.

[Pies4shaw]

By comparison, there are now 6,075 deaths in the US and I think they’re under-reporting total infections by at least 650,000 cases (round numbers). The situation there is really very dire, indeed.

[stui magpie]

And the NT News goes Bang.

[Pies4shaw]

I'm sure you'll all be pleased to read that DRW Entertainment has just emailed me to let me know that Helmet's tour has been rescheduled for November this year. The 5 November show at the Croxton Park is sold out but there may still be tickets for 6 November.

Personally, my priorities don't include paying for anything 7 months in advance, just now.

[stui magpie]

This almost belongs in the what made you laugh thread.

[Bruce Gonsalves]

I know the message is stay at home, but the missus and I take our mad crazy dog to a semi deserted beach around 70 minutes away every weekend. We enjoy the 2-3 hour walk and fossick whilst our mad crazy dog gets the exercise she needs. It's very easy to keep a very safe distance from other people down there.

Is this type of activity still allowed?

[What'sinaname]

[Bruce Gonsalves]

[What'sinaname]