Lies, damned lies & statistics

@sonhouse said
@wolfgang59
Sure, in a relatively small population but did you hear about Madi Gras? No stay at home order so Madi Gras took place. Take a guess who has the WORLD record now for spreading C19.

I'm not discussing spreading the virus, just observing that
the mortality may not be as bad as first thought. And yes,
it is a small sample, but not that small to be totally dismissed.

@wolfgang59 said
I'm not discussing spreading the virus, just observing that
the mortality may not be as bad as first thought. And yes,
it is a small sample, but not that small to be totally dismissed.

This is generalising from what is known from viral epidemics, but it is consistently found that the majority of people who have developed immunity had no symptoms and never knew the virus had been in their body. Others had had viral symptoms without developing the full picture of the typical illness attributed to that virus. So in a country like the U.K. where there is no testing unless you are ill enough to reach hospitalisation (or famous sports person or celeb seemingly) there can be no serious data on number of cases, the prevalence or the mortality and that will probably only be estimated with hindsight, maybe by testing for immunity. Right now the important point is the number of people needing hospitalisation which of course is the reason people must limit the spread if they want a health care system to still be available to themselves or others when they might need it.

I am in a household of 3. Although only one of us has the typical persistent dry cough the other two have had sore throats and aches and pains for longer than it should normally take their immune system to deal with those sort of URTI symptoms. From communication with others that I know this is not unique so I suspect a lot of people are hidden from stats and going through this too. I should add that in our house we are 19 days into this and seem to be through the worst of the headaches and soreness and my head no longer feels full of cotton wool. The positive thought for me is that with every day that passes this situation is less new to our immune systems. I am sure others reading this are in the same boat and I would strongly encourage them to think in the same way. Whilst this may even turn out to have been an entirely different virus that way of thinking doesn't work for me but knowing that with every new day of viral symptoms your body is getting safer by developing immunity seems quite effective.

I suspect that any viral infection that coincides with this pandemic, is sufficiently contagious to get the whole household so quickly you cant figure out who had it first and takes unusually long for your immune system to defeat will turn out to be coronavirus so the prevalence will be high making the overall % mortality lower. I just hope people can use that as reassurance if they get it, whilst also realising this still requires us to take every action to protect the health system. The point is that this is very contagious and we really have to act to protect the health system for those who need it.

@sonhouse said
@wolfgang59
Sure, in a relatively small population but did you hear about Madi Gras? No stay at home order so Madi Gras took place. Take a guess who has the WORLD record now for spreading C19.

Louisiana, same thing. Madi gras. Now they lead the US in COVID-19. Brazil is screwed. Hope they enjoyed their Madi Gras