The adjusted mortality rate he calculates is totally different from what we saw in a serious paper a couple of days ago, and seems completely off:
“ Adjusting for delay from confirmation-to-death, we estimated case and infection fatality ratios (CFR, IFR) for COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess ship as 2.3% (0.75%-5.3%) and 1.2% (0.38-2.7%). Comparing deaths onboard with expected deaths based on naive CFR estimates using China data, we estimate IFR and CFR in China to be 0.5% (95% CI: 0.2-1.2%) and 1.1% (95% CI: 0.3-2.4%) respectively.”
Also, this contrarian take seems to assume that the experts aren’t aware of the limits of the mortality statistics and aren’t already taking them into account.
Grocery store employees deserve hazard pay and medals. Looks like an absolute zoo in stores across America. No way they’re getting paid enough to be on the frontline of this mess.
The WHO did report the naive rate of 3.4% as their headline estimate just two weeks ago.
It’s also a little troubling time rely on “the experts” to be the only ones who understand the statistics. Politicians are ultimately the ones who are going to decide how to respond. Statisticians have always understood the true risk of terrorism, but we still have the TSA.
Yeah I was talking to the Costco cashier about this when I went on Monday. At that point they weren’t even letting the employees buy the stuff THEY needed from the store they work at, but I know at least some buildings have set aside some worker shopping hours since then.
I’ve been saying from day 1 that numbers like 3.4% are almost certainly too high and if my uninformed self can figure that out I’m pretty sure the people who study this for a living are very aware of the limitations of these studies.
Well I can’t disagree there, but it’s hardly the experts’ fault that the people in charge of policy are an incontinent halfwit gameshow host and some creationist from Indiana. We should vote for people who will listen to the experts and do a better job with public education, that is my TED talk, thanks for listening.
I think the earlier estimate corrected for lag in deaths somehow. But that paper is ~10 days old and no one else has died, so it makes intuitive sense that the old number needs to be revised down now.
I’m not sure how the age correction concept even works though? No one under 70 died on the Diamond Princess, so what do you base the fatality rate on for the under-70 group? Zero is clearly wrong, but there’s no other unbiased data to estimate from.
Are you excluding WHO from the category of “experts” here? The flaws in the 3.4% estimate are obvious to scientists and intelligent laypeople, but 3.4% is still the headline rate that the experts are reporting. I’m more skeptical that there’s some underground expert ring that is filtering out the bad science and making sure that the policy makers (at least, those who pay any attention to science in the first place) are looking at the right figures. Ultimately, scientists can’t weigh six months of disruption to the economy against 10k or 100k or a million excess deaths. It’s a political question that needs to be worked through by the people and by politicians.
