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Why COVID-19 rates are difficult to compute

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Among other things:

To summarize, we have (a) people who get COVID-19 and have reported; (b) people who get the SARS-CoV-2 virus and have reported, and who may not necessarily develop COVID-19 (although they are counted as if they have done so); (c) people who report because they fear they have the virus, but who test negative (so we assume they have not had the virus); (d) people who have the virus but do not report (meaning we can only estimate how many such people there are); and (e) people who have other conditions that could be mistaken for the virus and who do not report (meaning that counting them would skew our already uncertain estimate of virus cases that have gone unreported).

Trying to figure out an accurate fatality rate depends on how we count these different categories. It is a tricky business, rife with uncertainty. Yet it’s what must be done in order to grasp whether we are dealing with something that is just marginally worse than flu, or rather is significantly worse, even exponentially worse. Things appear deceptively dire if we calculate death rate solely by reference to reported COVID-19 cases; but the picture is deceptively benign if we measure deaths against an inflated conjecture about the non-reporting population.

I suspect that this explains the ostensible contradiction between Dr. Fauci’s two comments on the fatality rate.

Andrew C. McCarthy, “More Thoughts on Computing the COVID-19 Fatality Rate” at National Review
Comments
If I am right about when the outbreak occurred and it did happen 2 flu seasons ago, then we should start to see a drop in cases as the flu season comes to an end. 2 years ago, the UK noticed similar things as Dr. Li did in Wuhan, but wrote it off to a problem with the vaccine. Gangs don't care about social distancing, since they don't care about rules of any kind. Every city with a gang problem has seen gang related shootings continue. Everything people are told to do to help limit exposure are not being done by gang members. If the cases fall with the end of the flu season, we will know quarantine and social distancing had no impact. We are dealing with inner-cities having large populations in a confined area. There are a lot of people of various ages living in the same buildings as gang members, which means there will be contact of some kind made.BobRyan
April 1, 2020
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Look at what a tiny, 'stupid' virus can do. There is no 'intelligence' in 'nature' of course. :) A 2-year old could create a vaccine in 2 minutes.Truthfreedom
March 31, 2020
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