Which, as you say, is probably a rather inflated number. Moreover, the CFR is not evenly distributed across the population. The actual risk of dying from covid-19 is very strongly correlated with age. Guess what, old people are more likely to die of just about everything, including simply existing.
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Is COVID strategy moving towards herd-immunity?!
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Exactly, hence the fact that when people go around talking about how lethal this pathogen is they are grossly exaggerating things unless they qualify that concern by bounding it appropriately.
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That simply glosses over the unpleasant facts that distinguish COVID 19 from, say, the flu.
I'm not an "old person" about to die anyway. I'm only 56. And yet estimates of the CFR of Covid put my chances of dying at between 1.4 to 2.5 percent! (This is one of the lower estimates):
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-seasonal-flu-in-the-us-death-rates-2020-3
Vs my chance of dying from the flu at my age being around .06 percent.
That's a significantly higher risk factor, and something that surely is reasonable to worry about!
Not to mention, anecdotally, I'm not aware of a single incident of anyone I've known ending up in the hospital with the flu. But my buddy, my age, came down with COVID and ended up almost dying in the hospital from it. Further, like many who have had the disease, months later he's still trying to recover. There is growing evidence that COVID may be damaging tissue and organs, including the brain, in ways that may persist for a long time in many people, even in milder cases. So, yeah, there's a lot to worry about here.
Are you taking comorbidities into account? If you are for example fat, diabetic, or taking immunosuppressants, you should be careful. Otherwise your risk is much lower.
A long recovery process is common after any illness requiring hospitalisation, including the flu.
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No I'm healthy, but that is a red herring. The stats take in to account populations comprised of healthy and less healthy individuals, and shows the risk factor rises across the board. In other words, the general risk to a population means plenty of more people dying and or suffering long term health consequences from COVID 19. It does no good to start implying "the risk of COVID isn't so bad - that guy who died had diabetes anyway."
The long recovery times and persistant illness is far from limited to those who end up in ICU. There are tons of reports of people who have battled this while not having ended up in ICU. E.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/06/coronavirus-covid-19-mild-symptoms-who
"Another troubling phenomenon now coming into focus is that of “long-haul” Covid-19 sufferers – people whose experience of the illness has lasted months. For a Dutch report published earlier this month (an excerpt is translated here) researchers surveyed 1,622 Covid-19 patients who had reported enduring symptoms; the patients, who had an average age of 53, reported intense fatigue (88%) persistent shortness of breath (75%) and chest pressure (45%). Ninety-one per cent of the patients weren’t hospitalized, suggesting they suffered these side-effects despite their cases of Covid-19 qualifying as “mild”. While 85% of the surveyed patients considered themselves generally healthy before having Covid-19, only 6% still did so one month or more after getting the virus."
That single number doesn't give you the full picture. The average risk goes up with age in part because the incidence of various risk factors like diabetes also go up with age. Until you develop diabetes (or receive a transplant, etc.), your personal risk remains much lower.
According to an analysis from Imperial College, the risk of dying from covid-19 is roughly the same as dying in the next year anyway, for all ages. Are you terrified of living another year because you might die?
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My risk remains significantly elevated on age factor alone - having an older immune system. My chances of dying from a cold or flu are still far lower than dying from, or suffering long lasting consequences, from a case of COVID.
What in the world are you actually trying to say here?
Are you actually suggesting an attitude along the lines "World-wide pandemic of a novel, deadly virus? Meh. Why worry? It doesn't increase the chances of more people dying!"
This nonchalance goes against the warnings of virtually every expert in the field. We've seen healthcare systems overwhelmed in ways none of those physicians have experienced from any other disease, certainly not the yearly flu or colds etc. Do freezer trucks pulling up to hospitals to handle the spill over of dead bodies during the NYC crises sound like an every-year occurrence to you?
The early Imperial College estimates of the CFR were quite tentative, and also didn't take in to account the type of extended suffering we are seeing with this virus:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/195217/coronavirus-fatality-rate-estimated-imperial-scientists/
A quote:
"Our estimates – while subject to much uncertainty due to the limited data currently available – suggest that the impact of the unfolding epidemic may be comparable to the major influenza pandemics of the twentieth century. It is therefore vital that countries across the world continue to work together to accelerate the development and testing of effective treatments and vaccines, on the fastest possible timescale."
Doesn't exactly have the sanguine spin you put on this. The number of deaths during the major influenza pandemics are CLEARLY higher than expected in a scenario with no such pandemic occurring. That's why the report emphasizes it's tone of urgency in fighting the virus.
We've seen just how rigorous the steps are to keep infections from flaring up and causing rising tides of suffering and deaths. Estimates have lockdowns having saved millions of people from death who would OTHERWISE have died:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsa...ckdowns-saved-millions-from-dying-of-covid-19
e.g. "Bhatt's team analyzed infection and death rates in 11 European nations through May 4. They estimate that an additional 3.1 million people in those countries would have died if lockdowns had not been put in place. "Without them we believe the toll would have been huge," Bhatt says."
So it's not SIMPLY a problem of a CFR. (Which is higher for most individuals than for the flu). The more the virus is allowed to spread in a society, the higher the number of people suffering and dying, and the extent to which the world has had to lockdown on normal behaviours to even tamp down the cases clearly indicates the severity of the danger presented by this virus.
And, again, you are ignoring that there are issues beyond CFR, such as the evidence for long lasting illness given the *particular* type of damage this virus seems to cause to human bodies.
So, sorry if I don't buy your "what me worry?" line of reasoning, which requires one to be highly selective in ignoring the various threats of the virus.
Yes, this is something to be worried about.
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One in three Americans (33%) would refuse a COVID-19 vaccine ...
• https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/1...-finds/ar-BB17HHm0?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=spartandhp
About Canadians? ...Germans? ...Australians? ...French? ...British? ...Japanese? ...Chinese? ...Brazilians? ...South Africans? ...Indians? ...Mexicans? ...Italians? ...Russians? ...???
• https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/1...-finds/ar-BB17HHm0?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=spartandhp
About Canadians? ...Germans? ...Australians? ...French? ...British? ...Japanese? ...Chinese? ...Brazilians? ...South Africans? ...Indians? ...Mexicans? ...Italians? ...Russians? ...???
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Efficacy is also tested in Phase II (this is clearly stated all over the FDA website), which is why I asked the question because the poster stated that we zero knowledge of the efficacy of the vaccines at this point. It should be noted that some of the Phase III vaccines on the tracker are in combined PhaseII/III trials, so for those we really don't know much about the efficacy.
Instead of making some juvenile straw-man argument intended to trigger the poster, maybe you should actually link to the article you are referring to so everyone on this thread can read it. Here is an article published in The Lancet that modeled excess mortality due to COVID19 in a 1 year period for England:
"We included 3 862 012 individuals (1 957 935 [50·7%] women and 1 904 077 [49·3%] men). We estimated that more than 20% of the study population are in the high-risk category, of whom 13·7% were older than 70 years and 6·3% were aged 70 years or younger with at least one underlying condition. 1-year mortality in the high-risk population was estimated to be 4·46% (95% CI 4·41–4·51). Age and underlying conditions combined to influence background risk, varying markedly across conditions. In a full suppression scenario in the UK population, we estimated that there would be two excess deaths (vs baseline deaths) with an RR of 1·5, four with an RR of 2·0, and seven with an RR of 3·0. In a mitigation scenario, we estimated 18 374 excess deaths with an RR of 1·5, 36 749 with an RR of 2·0, and 73 498 with an RR of 3·0. In a do nothing scenario, we estimated 146 996 excess deaths with an RR of 1·5, 293 991 with an RR of 2·0, and 587 982 with an RR of 3·0."
I already did, a few pages back.
My earlier point about efficacy still stands. Trials are not perfect indicators of how a vaccine will fare in actual mass immunization. You can bet that the samples used in the trials were still rather small (although I will admit to not knowing this number). The fact that these vaccines are being rushed to use at the speed of light should make everybody that much more cautious. Normally trials take years and have to be replicated in subsequent samples which clearly is not the case here so please don't start touting the efficacy horn yet as in all practical sense it remains to be seen. Not to mention what are the therapeutic effects? I would think we are looking for something that prevents infection or prevents the virus from really taking hold. If the efficacy is something like 3 less days spent sick or released from the hospital earlier not sure how powerful that is as a tool. Anyway, I would need to read the research so I will clearly state that I do not have that information myself.
The Oxford vaccine is being tested on thousands of people in the UK, Brazil, and South Africa. You can read about it at https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/.
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Let's just hope that they don't do what they did with flu vaccine trials. First issue was in many studies there were no control groups and one of the worst tricks pharmaceutical companies used when they did have controls they biased the groups intentionally by placing younger, health oriented people into the experimental groups while placing older and or health compromised people into the control group. That way they had statistical differences simply because the differences would have existed anyway.
This isn't conspiracy theory stuff by the way. I once was in contact with a researcher into public health policy who was studying the efficacy of mass flu immunization programs. He pointed me to the largest meta-analysis ever conducted that I retrieved from the Cochrane database. The meta-analysis looked at all of the studies the drug companies used to demonstrate efficacy of the vaccines. These studies were designed, conducted and reported on by the drug companies and then provided to in this case the Canadian government for the assessment of whether or not the mass immunization approach had merit.
The meta-analysis demonstrated that virtually all of the drug company conducted studies were so methodologically weak that the evidence could not be considered as valid. When they threw out the poor quality studies they were left with a very small number that only revealed a modest protective effect from mass immunization for the very young, and the very old. The meta-analysis was conducted I think around 2002 and the authors concluded that the evidence base used to justify mass immunization was far too weak to justify healthy adults receive flu immunizations.
My point with that cautionary tale is that there are still many ways that a study can be conducted poorly and produce erroneous results. Given that the amount of money pharmaceutical companies will make, and this is going to be astronomical sums of money, we need to be extra vigilant about the quality of the studies. If there isn't randomized group assignment as a minimum that will be problematic. I am not saying that I know any issues with methodology exist, just that we still need to approach this evidence with the same healthy skepticism that we subject all evidence to.
This isn't conspiracy theory stuff by the way. I once was in contact with a researcher into public health policy who was studying the efficacy of mass flu immunization programs. He pointed me to the largest meta-analysis ever conducted that I retrieved from the Cochrane database. The meta-analysis looked at all of the studies the drug companies used to demonstrate efficacy of the vaccines. These studies were designed, conducted and reported on by the drug companies and then provided to in this case the Canadian government for the assessment of whether or not the mass immunization approach had merit.
The meta-analysis demonstrated that virtually all of the drug company conducted studies were so methodologically weak that the evidence could not be considered as valid. When they threw out the poor quality studies they were left with a very small number that only revealed a modest protective effect from mass immunization for the very young, and the very old. The meta-analysis was conducted I think around 2002 and the authors concluded that the evidence base used to justify mass immunization was far too weak to justify healthy adults receive flu immunizations.
My point with that cautionary tale is that there are still many ways that a study can be conducted poorly and produce erroneous results. Given that the amount of money pharmaceutical companies will make, and this is going to be astronomical sums of money, we need to be extra vigilant about the quality of the studies. If there isn't randomized group assignment as a minimum that will be problematic. I am not saying that I know any issues with methodology exist, just that we still need to approach this evidence with the same healthy skepticism that we subject all evidence to.
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