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Forums - General Discussion - Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

JRPGfan on 22 March 2020
trunkswd said:
NightlyPoe said:

It's been interesting to see how the mortality rate has played out.  Of the countries with over 5,000 confirmed cases, Germany's death rate is the least harmful at only 0.4%.  Meanwhile, Italy's is way up at 9%.  The United States is at 1.2%

Italy does have an older population, which I am guessing is the main reason for the higher death rate? 

Time is also a factor.

You dont die instantly to this, you lose a battle of contrition to the virus.
That means a like week or two on a ventilator.

Spread wasnt very serious in America a week or two back.
So mortality rates should be lower in america, than say in italy, where the outbreak has been for longer.

However I think maybe mortality rates will be lower in US, compaired lateron.
Why? treatments will have improved by then, and medicine might play a factor.

Last edited by JRPGfan - on 22 March 2020

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jason1637 on 22 March 2020
trunkswd said:
jason1637 said:

Over 14k cases in the State.

That isn't a surprise. As more people get tested there will be more confirmed cases. What I want to know is what percent of people tested are tested positive.

1 in every 9 people.  Governor said yesterday 90k people were tested and we had over 10k cases yesterday.



Angelus on 22 March 2020
trunkswd said:
NightlyPoe said:

It's been interesting to see how the mortality rate has played out.  Of the countries with over 5,000 confirmed cases, Germany's death rate is the least harmful at only 0.4%.  Meanwhile, Italy's is way up at 9%.  The United States is at 1.2%

Italy does have an older population, which I am guessing is the main reason for the higher death rate? 

If I'm not mistaken, Germany actually has a slightly older population than Italy. 



SvennoJ on 22 March 2020
NightlyPoe said:
SvennoJ said:

It looks like this discussion is going nowhere, facts vs feelings is what this feels like to me.

No.  Absolutely not.  You don't get to play that game.  I've been arguing facts this whole time.  If anyone's been arguing feelings, it's been you.

Anyway sure, China bad, us good.

No.  China bad can exist on its own.  You are the one bringing up others in order to justify it.  That's the emotionalism here.

I'm still in the dark where you are going with this.

I'm not going anywhere.  I made a simple statement that China's numbers are probably bogus.

Yes, China downplayed the numbers in the beginning

And now you're even agreeing with me.  So where are you going with this?

If they're downplaying the numbers at one point in time, why are their numbers three weeks later beyond scrutiny?

I don't see it spreading very differently here than in China, there's nothing in the data that backs that up. Actually the other way around, everything suggests it has a better chance of spreading faster here once it's loose in the general population.

The main variable we are speaking of is time.  We've already established that it was present to the point of detection at a much earlier point than anywhere else.

Well one more thing, this was based on early data from China
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316

The key factors being a mean incubation time of 5.2 days and an R0 of 2.2, that translates to a daily growth factor of 1.16
The average global growth factor is between 1.17 and 1.18 in the past week. Europe ranges from 1.03 to 1.26.

So no, I don't think China's numbers are bogus.

Taking the growth factor from that article into account and given a daily amount of new cases of 3884 on Februari 4th, it would have taken 102 days of steady 1.16x growth to get to that number bringing us back to October 25th 2019.

I don't know what else to say, the math simply fits.

(Btw even the highest observed growth rate in Europe atm 1.26, still puts patient zero back to the end of November for China)

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 22 March 2020

Angelus on 22 March 2020
trunkswd said:
Angelus said:

If I'm not mistaken, Germany actually has a slightly older population than Italy. 

According to Wikipedia you are right. Median age of Germany is 47.1, while for Italy it is 45.5.

Italy's situation is likely more directly correlated to how tight their family units are than anything. A tragedy, really. What is otherwise an admirable way of life, and an enviable closeness, is now effectively weaponized against them.



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SvennoJ on 22 March 2020
Angelus said:
trunkswd said:

Italy does have an older population, which I am guessing is the main reason for the higher death rate? 

If I'm not mistaken, Germany actually has a slightly older population than Italy. 

Yep, but it also depends on where it spreads. Italy has many more grand parents live in with their children. Also when the school closures started happening the grand parents stepped in to watch the kids while the parents kept working.

It also started differently.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/guymartin/2020/03/20/with-its-covid-19-caseload-spiking-to-14000-heres-why-germanys-mortality-rate-is-002-or-4000-times-lower-than-italys/#72aa46b777ad

There is one major difference between Germany's Covid-19 demographic and that of the pan-European hot zone of Italy. The first is that the onslaught of Covid-19 arrived in the teeth of Europe's ski season, so that many Germans who initially contracted the virus did so in Italy, which is why—for the moment—70% of all reported cases in Germany remain among the young, or more broadly, among the not-elderly, between the ages of 20 and 50.

The corollaries to extrapolate are that most (not all) people who ski are of average or above-average fitness, regardless of age, and that, in order to go skiing safely, there is a decided, natural fitness barrier that does exist as the skiers get older. Muscularly and in basic orthopedic terms, it's just not possible for every 70-to-90-year-old to ski. Put another way, this initial group of self-selected, relatively fit patients in Germany were in generally decent shape, and have to a large extent survived Covid-19. Obviously, the native, elderly non-skiing demographic strata of Italy were exposed early and often, along with everybody else in the hot zones of the northern tier of that country.



JRPGfan on 22 March 2020
trunkswd said:
JRPGfan said:

Time is also a factor.

You dont die instantly to this, you lose a battle of contrition to the virus.
That means a like week or two on a ventilator.

Spread wasnt very serious in America a week or two back.
So mortality rates should be lower in america, than say in italy, where the outbreak has been for longer.

However I think maybe mortality rates will be lower in US, compaired lateron.
Why? treatments will have improved by then, and medicine might play a factor.

True that it is has taken a bit longer for the outbreak to occur in the US.
It takes what a week or more for symptoms to start showing for most people?

Yes the avg. incubation time is 12 days  (before you show symptoms).


Also I remember you asked about testing vs infection, and % of such.

Yesterday? (I think) it was mentioned there had been done almost 200k tests in america (like ~195k? or something), and 44k? in new york.

Now it takes about 3-5 days for most to get test results back.

So 3-5 days from now, you can compaire the amount of "confirmed infected" cases in the USA / New York, with then shown infected cases.
That should answear your question.

Last edited by JRPGfan - on 22 March 2020

Barozi on 22 March 2020

Chancellor Merkel now under quarantinue due to her doctor being tested Corona positive. Thank god I'm not working there anymore

Last edited by Barozi - on 22 March 2020

SvennoJ on 22 March 2020

Some good news, Italy is finally reporting less new daily cases than the day before. Hopefully it's not an outlier, instead finally caught up with testing and running out of new suspected cases. The death toll is also slightly down but that doesn't mean anything yet at this stage.

  • 5560 new cases and 651 new deaths in Italy: 15% decline in new cases and 18% decline in new deaths with respect to yesterday [source]  [source]
    • Among the deaths: a 34-year-old man in Rome with no existing health conditions according to reports [source]
    • "We expect to see the first effects of the stringent lockdown measures adopted on March 11 after 2-3 weeks, so the coming week will be absolutely critical in this sense: we expect to finally see a  sign of trend reversal," said Franco Locatelli, President of the Health Council [source]


jason1637 on 22 March 2020


3rd person in Congress to test positive.