Investor20

So you're saying that the shutdown caused exponential growth of deaths? Like, your expectation would be if you isolate people into groups of 4 and never let them have any sort of contact with any other group, your death rate from COVID-19 would be higher than allowing everyone to intermix to their heart's content? Huh. That's kind of a strange theory, but OK. Yeah, I included those in there because I thought you wanted an explanation of when deaths should be decreasing, not to discredit your "quarantining causes order-of-magnitude spikes in COVID-19 deaths" theory. My mistake. I dont have any theory. I dont think there is enough information to make a theoretical model. Empirically the theory YOU proposed doesnt match the data at hand. In India the exponential growth started after lockdown. Thats not a theory. Thats data. Also, the deaths all of South East Asia are low where there were no lockdowns till now. Thats not a theory.. Not a model. Thats data. That sure sounds like a logical cry you are making - Yes that is DATA. In itself it is useless, and has to be interpreted in some manner within a context. You keep talking about South East Asia - What countries are you counting in those? Eventhough not separate country, Hongkong, and then Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore. There were a bunch of articles about Taiwan how well they managed. And they didnt have shutdown.

So you're saying that the shutdown caused exponential growth of deaths? Like, your expectation would be if you isolate people into groups of 4 and never let them have any sort of contact with any other group, your death rate from COVID-19 would be higher than allowing everyone to intermix to their heart's content? Huh. That's kind of a strange theory, but OK. Yeah, I included those in there because I thought you wanted an explanation of when deaths should be decreasing, not to discredit your "quarantining causes order-of-magnitude spikes in COVID-19 deaths" theory. My mistake. I dont have any theory. I dont think there is enough information to make a theoretical model. Empirically the theory YOU proposed doesnt match the data at hand. In India the exponential growth started after lockdown. Thats not a theory. Thats data. Also, the deaths all of South East Asia are low where there were no lockdowns till now. Thats not a theory.. Not a model. Thats data.

The things you don't understand are items 2, 3, 4, and 5. When you put in the lockdown, it seems like it's about 2 weeks until cases fall (assuming similar testing criteria, which seems to rarely be true.) Once someone is symptomatic, it seems to take somewhere in the range of 2-3 weeks for them to die. Hospital resources, and in particular the ICU, fill up and the death rate increases as this happens. So, if your ICU isn't filled, you'd expect to see deaths decline between 4 and 5 weeks after lockdown. If the ICU reaches capacity, you'd expect deaths to decline even later than that, since the percentage of people dying because they can't get access to ICU treatments will increase. 1) There was no exponential growth in India before shutdown. Hardly 1-2 deaths a day till March 22nd. In fact on March 21st its ZERO deaths. The exponential growth came after shutdown - I didn't know that is the purpose of shutdown. "When you put in the lockdown, it seems like it's about 2 weeks until cases fall" -2.5 weeks later zero deaths on March 21st came to about 24 deaths on April 07th 3, 4, 5 are irrelavant to India as the absolute cases are small for a country of billion+ people.

As opposed to? As opposed to before March 22nd. Isnt the shutdown supposed to reduce cases and deaths, at least after 2 weeks? That will make sense if the same amount of testing exists before and after. The shut down (one you are questioning) is supposed to flatten the curve and that will take time as testing ramps up. Not sure how aware are you about India. The country could be literally decimated if this shut down was not placed. It is one third the size of U.S. with 4x+ the population. It would have taken decades to recover. India paid a huge price for swine flu a few years ago. These are tough choices, not a menu of great choices to be exact. It is easy to shout in a forum that the know nothing epidemiologists are basically nerds with models, its another thing to be one where for years you are trained to make these choices from a menu of fking hard options. Deaths are usually tested correctly. Deaths also went up after 2 weeks of shutdown. How long is it supposed to take for this flatening to happen and why? You just summarized the gist of this whole damn thread. I will let you ponder over that one. So its sure millions will loose jobs. Not sure why and when this flattening will occur with a shutdown. While many countries in South East Asia went atleast till now without shutdown managing low deaths. The option is not clear?

As opposed to? As opposed to before March 22nd. Isnt the shutdown supposed to reduce cases and deaths, at least after 2 weeks? That will make sense if the same amount of testing exists before and after. The shut down (one you are questioning) is supposed to flatten the curve and that will take time as testing ramps up. Not sure how aware are you about India. The country could be literally decimated if this shut down was not placed. It is one third the size of U.S. with 4x+ the population. It would have taken decades to recover. India paid a huge price for swine flu a few years ago. These are tough choices, not a menu of great choices to be exact. It is easy to shout in a forum that the know nothing epidemiologists are basically nerds with models, its another thing to be one where for years you are trained to make these choices from a menu of fking hard options. Deaths are usually tested correctly. Deaths also went up after 2 weeks of shutdown from 2 on March 22nd to 24 now. How long is it supposed to take for this flatening to happen and why?

Perhaps bowing spreads the virus at a slower pace than kissing cheeks. Yes and kissing lips too with some closer relatives. But masks may be one difference. Most S East asian countries recommended masks from beginning.

As opposed to? As opposed to before March 22nd. Isnt the shutdown supposed to reduce cases and deaths, at least after 2 weeks?

Singapore is locked down as of yesterday. 'Dead city': Singapore enters month-long lockdown https://www.nst.com.my/world/world/2020/04/582116/dead-city-singapore-enters-month-long-lockdown And now Tokyo (Japan) about to enter the fray: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2020/04/1737f92bfccd-coronavirus-list-of-shops-to-close-in-tokyo-due-to-emergency-declaration.html May be Japan and Singapore will start shutdown. India started shutdown on March 22nd. See the numbers since March 22nd. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ If Singapore and Tokyo start shutdowns, we need to see how their numbers progress. For me the masks work. Safe distance works. Washing hands works. These are things we can do in a sustainable manner without big cost to society.

I think most people would also rather have a few difficult months than lose their parents/uncles/friends/coworkers/etc. It's not just the old, but those with other health issues, which includes obesity, diabetes, heart problems, compromised immune system, etc, and a lot of things that affect people of all ages. Some people act like "underlying health condition" means "not a real person who deserved to die anyway" when it's pointed out that a victim had some other illness... I guess people tend to see it all as statistics rather than think about their mom or favorite mentor. What proof actually is there that shutdowns work? Most of South East Asia countries (Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, etc) never had any shutdown and their numbers are low. Italy had lot of shutdown and their numbers are high. Empirically what proof exists that shutdowns work? What we know is we are working with imperfect and missing data. There is a ton we don't know. But many here do not have the intellectual humility to admit that. They are experts and they know their models are bulletproof. So don't rock the boat - or you too will be ridiculed endlessly. Anyone who has looked at what places like Taiwan and Singapore (and South-Korea) have done knows that they've done about 100x more than most other places and were prepared and had epidemiologists running the show from early on, with strict quanratines (they call you and the police comes to your door if your phone runs out of battery while on quarantine), contact tracing, massive testing early on, face masks, clear communications from leaders and population understood what was going on and bought in, etc. Italy is an example of what not to do. May have been a cultural thing, but population didn't respect social distancing for a long time in the early weeks, it was widely believed it wasn't a big deal, just the flu. Then they shut down small areas (red zones) and announced it in advance, so people fled from there to not get stuck and went to infect the rest of the country. Then they shut down a wider area, and things repeated. And then by the time they did the whole thing, it was too late and they had one of the worst situations in the world. Kind of like what the US has done... But if we're starting to peak in some places now, it's because these places have been shutdown for about 3 weeks, which is how long it takes because of the inertia built in the system with the incubation period. It's not rocket science that if people were still going out, infections and deaths would be much higher. "massive testing" For sure Japan did not do massive testing or shutdowns. Their deaths till now are 94. But italy did shutdowns with 17,000 deaths (adjusted to Japan population approximately double of 34,000)? Is there a choice?

I dont know what that means. But is that your best answer why millions should loose their jobs? Also I am hearing yesterday briefing. They are declaring everyone irrespective of other clinical history as Covid death if they test positive for Covid. To have fair comparison, one should also test every dead person for flu and check how many die with flu. Seriously, it is known many cadavers when checked, one can find many cancers, but no one does that and declares death due to cancer. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4485977/ The High Prevalence of Undiagnosed Prostate Cancer at Autopsy: Among men aged 70-79, tumor was found in 36% of Caucasians and 51% of African-Americans. Will Dr. Fauci with straight face can say about 40% americans die of prostate cancer? So is that the best answer you can give to justify why so many millions need to loose jobs?

I think most people would also rather have a few difficult months than lose their parents/uncles/friends/coworkers/etc. It's not just the old, but those with other health issues, which includes obesity, diabetes, heart problems, compromised immune system, etc, and a lot of things that affect people of all ages. Some people act like "underlying health condition" means "not a real person who deserved to die anyway" when it's pointed out that a victim had some other illness... I guess people tend to see it all as statistics rather than think about their mom or favorite mentor. What proof actually is there that shutdowns work? Most of South East Asia countries (Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, etc) never had any shutdown and their numbers are low. Italy had lot of shutdown and their numbers are high. Empirically what proof exists that shutdowns work?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-05/taiwan-s-advance-on-who-in-covid-19-shows-its-place-in-world "Forced to develop its own health vigilance systems, Taiwan, with a population of 23 million, took a separate approach to handling the virus. When the WHO recommended against restrictions on travelers from China, officials in Taiwan implemented bans from the original affected areas and later widened them. As the WHO advised that masks weren’t necessary, Taiwan ramped up production and issued them to citizens. As the pandemic spreads around the world, Taiwan has recorded just 339 cases and 5 deaths, compared to official figures of more than 82,000 cases in China and more than 10 times that number globally. The vast majority of Taiwan’s cases are of citizens returning from Europe or the Americas."

Here in Iceland there have been tests made by random sampling of the population. Based on random sampling, around 0.3% of the population tests positive. Obviously, this is not representative for other countries or populations. In Iceland most of the effort has gone to tracing infections and quarantining people who have been in contact with infected people. By now, over 50% of people who test positive are already in quarantine when tested. https://www.covid.is/data Yeah, Iceland seems to be doing well, but a small country with a concentrated population in a small area (like Singapore) would be much easier to manage w something like this. The random sampling showing only 0.3% infected obliterates the "this disease has been widespread for a long time" thesis. Makes you realize how impossible achieving herd immunity will be (without having large magnitude of deaths/healthcare overload). That's excellent. From Iceland link: Confirmed infections: 1417 Total samples: 23640 (1417/23640) * 100 = 5.99%. How are you getting 0.3%? Assuming your random sampling comment is correct, 6% of Iceland being infected with a swab test that does not even tell people who are already infected, nonsymptomatic and cleared of virus in a country we dont consider to have Covid outbreak is pretty high. The Iceland data is really interesting for testing (understand the virus and compare testing strategies globally). There are two vectors for testing: one is targeted and looks similar to many countries, the other is "random" although the methodology does not reach the pure random definition. At first, for the 'random' part, people self-selected and more recently people can accept to be tested after a random call. In the 'random' group, the positive rate has recently been reported at 0.9% and it may be around 1.0% now but is unlikely to be too far from the 'true' number related to the prevalence in the population. There are limitations: sensitivity and specificity of the test, a negative test today does not mean a negative test tomorrow. Although they report a large number (about 50%) of asymptomatic people in the 'random' group, they may catch the disease before the onset of symptoms. However, this (and the age group profile they show) suggests that most people who get CV have mild or no symptoms, especially if young. The 'random' sampling is done by a genomic sequence entity and the analysis is revealing potentially very potent analytical aspects: -the virus mutates to a degree so that it becomes different from other CV virus elsewhere once it has reached a country or a region -the genetic makeup (and possibly previous exposures to other or more benign forms of CV) of the individual appears to be a key independent variable vs risk of becoming really sick -the virus mutates relatively slowly (good) but it's spreading quite effectively (bad) which makes it quite 'unique', in a way. Thanks Cigarbutt. Thats actually pretty helpful. Can you please provide the reference for 1.0% of random sample is infected? If its 1% infected and its true representative of Iceland population with Iceland population of 350K gives 3500 infected in Iceland. The four deaths in Iceland gives (4/3500)*100 = 0.1% fatality rate About same as flu.

Here in Iceland there have been tests made by random sampling of the population. Based on random sampling, around 0.3% of the population tests positive. Obviously, this is not representative for other countries or populations. In Iceland most of the effort has gone to tracing infections and quarantining people who have been in contact with infected people. By now, over 50% of people who test positive are already in quarantine when tested. https://www.covid.is/data Yeah, Iceland seems to be doing well, but a small country with a concentrated population in a small area (like Singapore) would be much easier to manage w something like this. The random sampling showing only 0.3% infected obliterates the "this disease has been widespread for a long time" thesis. Makes you realize how impossible achieving herd immunity will be (without having large magnitude of deaths/healthcare overload). That's excellent. From Iceland link: Confirmed infections: 1417 Total samples: 23640 (1417/23640) * 100 = 5.99%. How are you getting 0.3%? Assuming your random sampling comment is correct, 6% of Iceland being infected with a swab test that does not even tell people who are already infected, nonsymptomatic and cleared of virus in a country we dont consider to have Covid outbreak is pretty high.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/eci.13222 Coronavirus disease 2019: the harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures John P.A. Ioannidis Departments of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Exaggerated case fatality rate (CFR): .................CFR may be much lower than 1% in the general population; probably higher than seasonal flu (CFR=0.1%), but not much so. Observed crude CFR in South Korea and in Germany8, the countries with most extensive testing, is 0.7% and 0.2%, respectively. Even in these countries, many cases probably remain undiagnosed. Therefore, CFR may be even lower. Exaggerated exponential community spread: At face value, the epidemic curve of new cases outside China since late February is compatible with exponential community spread. However, reading this curve is very difficult. Part of the growth of documented cases could reflect rapid increases in numbers of coronavirus tests performed. The number of tests done depends on how many test-kits are available and how many patients seek testing. Even if bottlenecks in test availability are eventually removed, the epidemic curve may still reflect primarily population sensitization and willingness for testing rather than true epidemic growth. China data are more compatible with close contact rather than wide community spread being the main mode of transmission.

Spot on. The lack of basic understanding shown in early stages of this is beyond belief. I still believe they are downplaying the true possible numbers here. Two more weeks and we will know, by tomorrow US will likely have 200K+ infections. Yes our "experts" showed great lack of understanding in early stages by their own admission. Dr. Fauci said "The American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It's a very, very low risk to the United States," Dr. Fauci said. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/479939-government-health-agency-official-corona-virus-isnt-something-the' January 26 Director Redfield agreed with Dr. Fauci's assessment, saying that at that time in January the information coming out of China suggested "they were pretty certain that this was not transmitted human to human." https://radio.foxnews.com/2020/03/27/cdc-director-reacts-to-resurfaced-tape-of-dr-anthony-fauci-downplaying-virus-threat/ I will ask you one thing and its very simple. On February 5th as they are voting for impeachment, did you spend one second of time on Covid, even though already China had lockdown and US had travel restrictions on January 31st? Fauci downplayed the threat mid January, but by late January/early Feb the threat was taken seriously and you have evidence of that from congress members dumping shares and Trump putting in place a travel ban to China (and not following any of that up w other measures/FDA & CDC stopping a Seattle ID doc from testing people). WH gets things called intelligence briefings and one might say it’s the executive branch's job to anticipate and prepare for threats like these, but clearly some of us just hold the Presidency to a different standard than others... What’s even more interesting is WH defenders were quick to attack China’s “slow response” and now defend this administration which had multi month head start to prepare and did not. The irony is not apparent to them... I don't want to spend too much time on this. But January 31st travel resitrictions were not supported either by the executive branch advisors or by press. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/30/21115357/coronavirus-outbreak-global-public-emergency-world-health-organization Jan 30: Despite the emergency declaration, the WHO is not recommending any restrictions on travel or trade at this time. Countries should implement evidence-based public health policies, combat misinformation, share data, and work together to stop the spread of the virus, Adhanom said. https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/19/neither-biden-nor-sanders-would-have-saved-american-lives-with-travel-bans-like-trump-did/ A contentious exchange during the March 11 House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the coronavirus response revealed this reality. During the hearing, acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli explained he had advised the president to ban travel from China even though “the academic model suggested not to do that.” Cuccinelli further stressed that “the president was well aware” that the existing models recommended against a China travel ban but that Trump nonetheless instituted the ban. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/coronavirus-quaratine-travel-110750 Feb 04th Coronavirus quarantine, travel ban could backfire, experts fear Even as recently as March 1st week, Mayor Blasio recommended movies be watched by NYC residents: March 3rd, Mayor Blasio :....get out of town despite coronavirus..." I want to move on understand the presentation situation, if other members do the same favor

Spot on. The lack of basic understanding shown in early stages of this is beyond belief. I still believe they are downplaying the true possible numbers here. Two more weeks and we will know, by tomorrow US will likely have 200K+ infections. Yes our "experts" showed great lack of understanding in early stages by their own admission. Dr. Fauci said "The American people should not be worried or frightened by this. It's a very, very low risk to the United States," Dr. Fauci said. https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/479939-government-health-agency-official-corona-virus-isnt-something-the' January 26 Director Redfield agreed with Dr. Fauci's assessment, saying that at that time in January the information coming out of China suggested "they were pretty certain that this was not transmitted human to human." https://radio.foxnews.com/2020/03/27/cdc-director-reacts-to-resurfaced-tape-of-dr-anthony-fauci-downplaying-virus-threat/ I will ask you one thing and its very simple. On February 5th as they are voting for impeachment, did you spend one second of time on Covid, even though already China had lockdown and US had travel restrictions on January 31st?

I mean could we ever really know if the bullet killed the man, or if he happened to die from complications of hypertension just as the bullet entered his skull? Causation can be tricky after all, and we should study it further before deciding conclusively! M. Why would anyone assume the hole in the head was caused by the gun going off? People are always jumping to conclusions. The liberal media has brainwashed everyone. The real question that everyone is waiting for, did this person has covid-19? If he did, he obviously died from it. False comparison. A bullet through head will kill 100% of time, immediately. Covid-19 doesnt kill 99%+ and definitely not immediately. So you cannot assign a 80 year cancer patient to Covid automatically. At least they should check for lungs and breathing problems etc. My understanding is a whole lot of times old and sick die of "infections" but is reported to be dead of cancer/stroke, and resultant complications. Not infection (flu, bacteria etc).

Nobody was disagreeing with that. Let me clarify: This is what I should have highlighted as being misleading. Couldnt they have used XRay or atleast breathing problems as a criteria? A 80 year old heart attack patient with clear lungs needs to be counted as Covid 19 death because of a positive PCR test?

The mean age of the patient subsample was 79.5 years (standard deviation [sD], 8.1), of whom, only 601 (30.0%) were women. Of all patients who died, 117 (30%) had ischemic heart disease, 126 (35.5%) had diabetes, 72 (20.3%) had cancer, 87(24.5%) had atrial fibrillation, 24 (6.8%) had dementia, and 34 (9.6%) had had a stroke. The mean number of comorbidities was 2.7 (standard deviation, 1.6). Only 3 patients (0.8%) had no underlying diseases, 89 (25.1%) had one, 91 (25.6%) had two, and 172 (48.5%) had three or more. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/italian-doctors-note-high-covid-19-death-rate-urge-action The patients were sicker than I thought before. They had 2.7 comorbidities on average including comorbidities like cancer and stroke. Only 0.8% with no underlying disease. The underlying scientific article says following: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763667 Definition of COVID-19–Related Deaths A second possible explanation for the high Italian case-fatality rate may be how COVID-19–related deaths are identified in Italy. Case-fatality statistics in Italy are based on defining COVID-19–related deaths as those occurring in patients who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 via RT-PCR, independently from preexisting diseases that may have caused death. This method was selected because clear criteria for the definition of COVID-19–related deaths is not available. ....... Electing to define death from COVID-19 in this way may have resulted in an overestimation of the case-fatality rate. ......... The presence of these comorbidities might have increased the risk of mortality independent of COVID-19 infection.

Granted this is an opinion piece but this has been my position all along. Will be interesting to see what the end result of this. Glad to see this was published in WSJ. "that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%" WHO said 3.4%. Then they said 1.0% Then Germany they said 0.4% Now 0.01% That is a 340 fold difference. They should really test with antibody to get the denominator correct. WHO says Covid transmits less than regular Flu If Covid also has less mortality rate than Flu, then this is less than Flu.

Yeah, but there are new cases in Japan. Just few. So they have virus inside the island. And with very little testing going on it should be superspread. Unless they somehow are really lucky to get every single person early on. I spent 2 weeks in Japan in the middle of February. I think their numbers are almost certainly artificially low for lack of testing... but it's way different than it was here. While they didn't cut off flights from china, here are some factors i think contribute to there being a slower rate of spread there: 1) Government preparedness Every building in Tokyo and Kyoto that i visited had gallons and gallons of alcohol hand sanitizer. Everywhere I went they warned of the Coronavirus and to take precautions. The warning about the virus were everywhere from on the trains to the metro, to the airport. Schools closed much earlier than here. For employees who could work at home, that started earlier than here. they had screening at the airport, when I returned to JFK we did not. 2) Cultural Differences. it seems that in Taiwan and Japan, the spread of the common flu was already declining -- leading one to think people are already aware of not spreading their germs. People, generally speaking, seem more willing to sacrifice for the whole... and seem to accept recommendations from the government. masks - while they may not keep from getting the virus, if a big % of the population is wearing them, those who are sick are likely to spread it to less people. Also, I think when your friend mentioned people taking off masks and touching their face, etc. i noticed that a lot too... but i think that's due to our paranoia... and being very aware of who's doing what! Whatever they did, for sure they are reducing virus transmission rates https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-sees-silver-lining-to-coronavirus-as-flu-cases-drop-11583073526 "If there is a positive impact of the coronavirus epidemic, look for it in Japan, where people are observing better hygiene and the number of influenza cases is far below a typical year.'

You think? Just want to point out it's a deal we rarely ever make in any other circumstance. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing.html Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic. Dr. Katz is president of True Health Initiative and the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. Yale Griffin Prevention is funded by CDC. I posted earlier an article by Prof. John Ioannidis, Professor of both disease prevention and statistics at Stanford with similar thinking. Economy is also important. Lots of people can go without food without jobs.

If he is right that 50 people have it for every 1 we know about, then 22 people have died out of 180,000 infected in NYC. You have to take into account time it takes for the virus to run its course, though. Daily exponential growth means the vast majority of infections are early stage and haven’t had time to create complications. Do we also upwardly adjust the 180,000 number to add back the number of people who were once infected but no longer are? Really we need to look at this data at a cohort level, which as far as I know does not exist publicly. Without it we need to look at places like China where it's mostly run its course - otherwise we'll be comparing apples and oranges. The Chinese data tells us that 3.4% of the cases they identified died. But it doesn't tell us the % of infected that were identified. The Diamond Princess is the best population that I've heard of yet. 1% of infected died -- relatively old people go on cruises. So if we were to take the number of people who died in NYC yesterday, and if we can estimate when they contracted it, then perhaps we could estimate the number of infected people in NYC at that time. If we then estimate the rate of spread, we can take a stab at how many are infected in NYC today. This was done by John Ioannidis at Stanford whose profile is given here https://profiles.stanford.edu/john-ioannidis The article here: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ He estimates that when Diamond Princess is extrapolated to American demographics: "The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher. Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). " I posted the link before, but did not explain the rationale.

This is correct IMO. The rate of spread ought to be higher amongst the young as well (think malls, night clubs, and party party party). So it stands to reason there are simply far more cases amongst the young because of rate of spread. CDC on clinical criteria for testing... https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-criteria.html This testing recommendation from CDC effectively biases those who get tests to older folks or people with preexisting medical problems (again, more likely to be older folks). Furthermore, it also depends on symptom severity and generally we know younger folks (based on data from China) show mild/no symptoms hence they are unlikely to get approved for a test in the United States. The older folks are more likely to throw a fever and develop shortness of breath. This leads one to conclude that the younger people who test positive for this illness must be the sicker younger folks who have this (because they were not denied a test) and we are excluding younger people with mild/no symptoms (who are denied testing). So the overall mortality/ICU stay skews higher since we are only looking at younger patients who are sicker to begin with. Again, for the 100th time explains the downside of being limited on testing. The U.S., being among the last developed nation to get this outbreak is among the most unprepared. A travesty of leadership. "The U.S., being among the last developed nation to get this outbreak is among the most unprepared." US has lot of travel both to Europe and China. Why do you think they are last in getting this outbreak? May be the policies are better that US held it off longer than any one else? May be everyone start date (outside China) is same. Why would Europe or Korea have earlier exposer than US? If you check deaths, they are lowest for US of most developed countries on per capita basis (worldometer numbers). For example US has 170 vs Korea with 90 for total deaths. But US population is 6.7 times more, making it much, much better. Korea adjusted for population to US would be 603 deaths. Even for "New Deaths", US has 21 vs S. Korea 7. That makes adjusted for population, S. Korea 46, well above US 21. Sweden with population of 10 million has total deaths of 11, adjusted to US population, it is 374. Norway with population of 5.4 million has total deaths of 7, adjusted to US population, it is 476. IMO all countries outside China got exposed around same time. If anything US having so much trade with China, probably has lot more travel with China and had more exposer. Yet in deaths, after four months (first case in Nov), US is doing better than any other nation in west or S Korea. Now, if you really want to follow, it is Japan. They controlled it pretty well. Japan with population of 127 million has total deaths of 32 and new deaths of 3, adjusted for US population, total deaths of 86 and new deaths of 8, better than US. But Japan didn't test much or have lock downs....now figure that out! It is clear from every global tracking system that U.S. was among the last places (after Europe, after Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc) to get this outbreak. A lot has to do with the travel ban to China which, IMO was the only good early measure this administration took. This administration only understands measures like travel bans, tariffs, and tax cuts, while everything else is beyond its comprehension, so not difficult to see why this occurred. To compare U.S. today to S Korea today is laughable. S Korea is way ahead of U.S. and has now flattened its curve. U.S. still in early stages of rapid exponential growth. I guess this is what happens when you look at numbers too closely without considering broader context of things... OK... at least you agree that early travel ban was good decision, which was criticized by press at that time. Coming back to numbers, even in "latest deaths", US is better than Korea. I guess under your definition, US "rapid exponential growth" is better than Korea "flattened out" death rate. Koreans have more than double US "latest deaths" in per capita terms. Also, setting aside US for a moment. Japan did much better than most countries. But Japan did not have heavy testing or lockdowns. But S. Korea and Italy had heavy testing. You want to follow S. Korea and Italy with heavy testing rather than look at what Japan did?