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In reply to the discussion: Pandemic math [View all]

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(54,531 posts)
2. I don't think it's quite that dire
Sun Jul 26, 2020, 01:57 AM
Jul 2020

the death rate among already resolved cases may be about 7% (140k divided by 2m) but that's rather higher than what they're saying the COVID-19 death rate is (about 1.4%).

In any event, the death rate among active cases isn't necessarily the same as the death rate among resolved cases. First, although Donnie is abusing the point, it is true that we are testing more now than we were early on. So the resolved cases reflects more symptomatic and serious cases, whereas the active cases include more people with mild or no symptoms simply because we're testing more. So the death rate among active cases should be lower.

Second, there's a timing issue in terms of how long it takes for a case that's going to result in death for the death to happen vs. how long it takes for a case that's going to result in recovery for them to deem that person recovered. My guess is the deaths get found out and recorded but the recoveries could take a long time as it may take multiple testing and so on. Moreover, an active case might no longer have a fever and just stop checking in. They might actually be recovered but system loses track of them. Hopefully this doesn't happen often but surely it happens more with recoveries than with deaths.


Anyway, though, you correctly note that this doesn't even take into account new cases, which are on the rise, so we certainly could see over 300k deaths by November.

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