Thursday, March 12, 2020

By The Numbers - Yet Massive Reaction Underway


Coronavirus Codswallop -- By the Numbers

"Codswallop" is one of those interesting words that might have been used by Supreme Court justice Anton Scalia in a dissenting opinion, or by conservative intellectual William F. Buckley in describing some liberal policy.
It's a British expression that refers to words or ideas that are foolish or untrue — in other words, nonsense.

Despite the hair-on-fire reporting of coronavirus news, let's look at some actual numbers, rather than the codswallop from CNN or MSNBC.  Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Dashboard are illustrative.

At the time of this writing, there are 107,352 cases worldwide, 3,646 deaths, and 60,558 recoveries.  Fifteen of those deaths occurred in the U.S.  The odds of recovering are far higher than the odds of dying.

Cases in mainland China have peaked, with few added cases over the past week.  Cases elsewhere are on the rise, following the same pattern as China in early February.  Recoveries are rising at an even faster rate.

Anthony Fauci, M.D., of the National Institutes of Health and a member of the Trump administration's task force, gave some perspective in a New England Journal of Medicine editorial:
The median age of the patients was 59 years, with higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions (similar to the situation with influenza).
The overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza.

In other words, the coronavirus may be a nastier version of the seasonal flu, potentially fatal for the elderly and infirm.  How many Americans die from the flu each day?  Let's ask the CDC.
Influenza and pneumonia caused 55,672 deaths in the U.S. in 2017, or 153 persons per day.  As a reminder, only 15 have died from the coronavirus to date, the number dying in any four-hour period from the flu.

Over the past decade, influenza has affected between 9.3 and 45 million persons each year, depending on the flu severity.  Hospitalizations for the flu have ranged from 140,000 to 800,000 persons per year, and deaths varied between 12,000 and 61,000 each year.

These numbers, in America only, far eclipse the number of coronavirus fatalities worldwide, about 3,600 thus far.  This could and will likely change, but are the numbers worthy of the hair-on-fire reaction from cable news anchors...?

Health and Human Services assistant secretary Admiral Brett Giroir declared, "The best estimates now of the overall mortality rate for COVID-19 is somewhere between 0.1% and 1%."

For comparison, the fatality rate for the seasonal flu is 0.1%.  The coronavirus fatality rate is likely similar to the 0.1–1% figure based on confirmed cases.  How many individuals have a normal cold, when in reality they have the coronavirus, and recover after a week?  That would mean that far more are infected but are unreported, as their infection is a nonevent, making the fatality rate lower than reported.
Look also at past viral illnesses, far more lethal than the coronavirus.  The fatality rate for MERS and SARS was 34.4 and 9.5% respectively.  Neither illness generated as much media hysteria as coronavirus.

For additional perspective, heart disease kills 1,774 persons a day, cancer 1,641, accidents 466, and strokes 401 per day.  A recent tornado in Tennessee claimed 24 lives, almost twice the number of Americans who died from the coronavirus thus far.










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