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0 pointsdjsumdog6y ago0 comments

248k out of 50M is still a very impressive sample size; especially compared to most scientific papers coming out these days.

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easytiger6y ago· 1 in thread

There is a persistent assertion that "everyone" in SK is being tested. It's not true. There is a pretty high chance that a high % of the infected are almost asymptomatic. Fatigue might be the only thing some get. Others nothing. The problem is people asserting without statistical extrapolation a base fatality rate predicated on a division of [+ve tests/deaths]. It is exactly what WHO have done before in other epidemic like situations and it doesn't make sense.

Previous epidemics have seen these massive similar ratios promoted only to later be revised aggressively. I can offer examples if required

djsumdogOP6y ago

I am curious of those examples. The big outbreaks in the past the WHO has focused on include MERS, Ebola and H1N1. There's a really good Wendover video on the WHO Ebola response and it's pretty impressive.

That said, Ebola got people sick quickly (compared to SARS-cov2) and it started in areas that weren't as globally connected, limiting the spread.

Still, there was a lot of hype of H1N1 that never really panned out. Still this is a totally new virus, from a family of viruses that has historically never been bad (a quarter of colds are caused coronaviruses).

If it's May 1st and there are <50k dead in the US with the patient rates going down, I think people are going to start to seriously question anything the WHO says going into the future. The alternative is that by May we'll be hearing news reports of how 90% of hospital in <insert big city .. London, Brussels, Atlanta> are at capacity with people being shipped to suburbs and individual 3D printing ventilator parts.

Honestly, I will be surprised either way.

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