Hi Peter & All,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
New case numbers in Oz continue to fall.
Looking at the cold hard numbers, two dozen deaths from COVID-19 is remarkably low. Begging the question why are Spain/Italy being hit so hard?
The Netherlands went for herd immunity with no attempt to reduce the risk
to their (younger) population. Their numbers are remarkably good...and certainly way better than Spain/Italy.
I am struggling to see how early predictions of 1.4 million cases in NSW alone will come to pass. What am I missing here?  |
I think the thing that is just beginning to be come apparent is that the bulk figures as to who has been infected, is very dependent upon to width of the testing regime within any nation.
In first world nations, with some some degree of variance as to the median age and quality of the health service, I think we can assume the overall mortality rate is about 1% of those infected. So, the "death" figures is a bit like a proxy for the true infection rate.
So figures of about 1000 deaths probably indicates the background rate of infection is somewhere around 100,000 -- despite the fact that many countries are reporting official confirmed infection rates a small fraction of that.
Sweden is probably a good example to compare with Australia. Similar demographic and average wealth, comparable quality of health service and number of "confirmed infections". Here confirmed 5,300 infected 28 dead. Sweden 5,500 confirmed infected, 308 dead. Their death rate
appears to be about twelve times higher.
The likely difference is the width of testing practices. We know from no lesser authority than Greta Thunberg, that testing in Sweden is confined to "serious cases only". Here it is very broad (we have the highest per-capita test rate in the world) and more than 1% of the entire population has been tested so far and the rate of positives is quite low (<2%).
I think there is good reason to use the actual number of deaths within a country as a proxy for the true extent of (background) infection rates. Look at the number of deaths, add a couple of zeros and that's a clearer approximate picture of how many have it there.
One of the big differences for us here was the early travel prohibition from China -- particularly Wuhan. As for the rest of your comment, yep, I think so far the actions taken here by governments have done a good job of limiting the spread. There have been instances where blunders have occurred (Ruby Princess) but I guess that just human nature and the tendency to make a bad decision from time-to-time, irrespective of political "colour".
Even for us in Ozrtaylia, this will be a marathon effort lasting months to limit infections and the death toll. The way we're living now will be the norm for at least three months and probably somewhat longer.
When it's all over, I hope we and a lot of other nations join together to send one hell of an invoice to the government of communist China, for their initial lack of action, lies and obfuscation that led directly to this being a world-wide pandemic.
Best,
L.