Coronavirus 4 - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[What'sinaname]

That’s just a crude measure of the proportion of the population that has been killed, so far, by the disease. It isn’t a “death rate”.

Then should we just stay in Lockdown permanently until the Pandamic is over?

Why not. I reckon it would be fun. Shut everything down. No powerplants, no water, no farming, no food, no petrol.

[stui magpie]

Not my idea of fun, thanks.

[What'sinaname]

Not my idea of fun, thanks.

Works is Xi'an and everyone's loving it.

[Pies4shaw]

I don't care what policy response you propose - I just want you to stop lying about the numbers.

[eddiesmith]

In Victoria, the death rate (deaths / cases) is now 0.28%.

It was
0.83% on 1 January 2022
1.09% on 1 December 2021
3.96% on 1 July 2021
4.02% on 1 January 2021

When you consider that the vast majority of deaths occur in the elderly and people with comorbidities, this is why we don't need to lock down millions of healthy people.

Given no one can get tested the rate is probably even lower with tens of thousands of unreported cases.

[Pies4shaw]

Except that the purported percentages in that are just unmitigated drivel. Divide a number by some other number on a completely spurious basis and report the result, entirely devoid of any basis in rational thought.

[eddiesmith]

Well to most people CFR is relevant, if it’s very low then it’s not going to worry most people. Hell you can get Covid then make a test century a week later!!!

My grandmother won’t get vaccinated so I don’t visit, not going to be responsible for her. But I have zero fears of catching Covid myself.

[Pies4shaw]

Maybe - but that isn’t what those numbers measure. I’m not arguing about what the data means - just proposing that people use actual data, rather than meaningless drivel they make up. A moment’s thought about dividing the number of deaths on a given day by the number of cases that happen to be reported on the same day must tell you it isn't measuring anything of meaning.

[eddiesmith]

But the figure is the CFR for the entire pandemic. It’s Victoria’s 590,000 cases divided by the 1680 deaths.

[Pies4shaw]

^ There's no "but" - that isn't a "CFR". It's just a nonsense calculation. There is always a significant lag between infection and death - and when the total number of cases has trebled in the last fortnight, the calculation is not just wholly invalid - it's quite misleading.

[What'sinaname]

Maybe - but that isn’t what those numbers measure. I’m not arguing about what the data means - just proposing that people use actual data, rather than meaningless drivel they make up. A moment’s thought about dividing the number of deaths on a given day by the number of cases that happen to be reported on the same day must tell you it isn't measuring anything of meaning.

The measure of mortality rate is used by the expert medical profession.

[Pies4shaw]

Nothing is meaningfully identified by a spot division of the number of deaths reported on a given day by the number of cases that also happen to be reported that day, in circumstances where:

(a) none (or almost none) of the deaths that day are referable to the cases that day; and

(b) the number of cases is rapidly escalating.

On 15 January, Australia had reported approximately1,640,000 cases from the start of the pandemic. In the previous 14 days, that total number of reported cases just about quadrupled (from about 431,000 cases reported to 1 January). The deaths reported yesterday are of people who got the disease historically, not of people who caught it yesterday and died yesterday. That wouldn't matter if the deaths were derived from a pool of cases of similar size to the pool of cases reported on a given day - but we know that's wrong for Australia's experience of the last 14 days, so the calculation is a classic example of "garbage in, garbage out".

What we do know at the moment is that Omicron generally causes a lower proportion of serious infections than earlier significant variants but also causes a vastly greater number of infections because it is so much more transmissible. The combination of those two factors is leading to record numbers of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID in Australia on a daily basis. No amount of singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me", however loudly, can get around that.

[What'sinaname]

You want to use absolute numbers as a measure and then want to claim my numbers are spurious.

Why is Ebola so scary. Because of its mortality rate of around 50%, not the 11,000 deaths that occur from Ebola.

[Pies4shaw]

I don't "claim" anything. I merely point out from time to time the pointless irrelevance of the calcuations you're performing.

Ebola is extraordinarily scary, if you get it - but almost no-one gets it, which is why the total deaths all-time from Ebola (which has existed for decades) are a trivial fraction of the deaths caused by COVID.

[Dave The Man]

I don't "claim" anything. I merely point out from time to time the pointless irrelevance of the calcuations you're performing.

Ebola is extraordinarily scary, if you get it - but almost no-one gets it, which is why the total deaths all-time from Ebola (which has existed for decades) are a trivial fraction of the deaths caused by COVID.

Hears about the Same as People Die of Cold/Flu