" a new paper by Mikko Paunio, a Finnish epidemiologist and key scientific advisor to the Finish Government, estimates that the IFR is 0.13%, making the virus roughly as dangerous as seasonal flu. Paunio submitted an earlier version of this paper to a MedRxiv prepublication site, as well as PLOS Medicine, but both rejected it. Consequently, I’ve decided to publish it on this site. If any epidemiologists want to challenge Paunio’s conclusions, feel free to do so in the comments."
" a new paper by Mikko Paunio, a Finnish epidemiologist and key scientific advisor to the Finish Government, estimates that the IFR is 0.13%, making the virus roughly as dangerous as seasonal flu. Paunio submitted an earlier version of this paper to a MedRxiv prepublication site, as well as PLOS Medicine, but both rejected it. Consequently, I’ve decided to publish it on this site. If any epidemiologists want to challenge Paunio’s conclusions, feel free to do so in the comments."
Truth is no-one knows what the Infection Fatality Rate is for Covid-19, which increases anyway as more people die over the course of the epidemic. Best estimates are that it is less than 1% and more than ten times more virulent than influenza.
Neil Ferguson at Imperial estimated IFR in China of 0.6% based on testing of international passengers from that country. This IFR figure would increase if it turns out China has been underreporting deaths.
0.6% has also been estimated for Korea based on an extensive testing programme.
I would say Mr Paunio's sample is ridiculously small, leaving aside any methodological issues. He also has an agenda, which is a warning sign for any empirical study.
Let's not forget that the fatality rate is not the only reason why we should attempt to mitigate the virus. It's very infectious, and very debilitating for several weeks to at least 50% of those who contract it. If we'd done nothing, we could have had multiple tens of percentage of the workforce all off sick simultaneously. "So what?", you might say, "The lockdown has effectively done that anyway." But we've been able to choose to a large degree which workers get taken out of the economy temporarily.
We as a society can cope with a large percentage of say bar and restaurant staff off work, painful as it is for us and them, but could we cope with 50-60% of power, sewerage, supply, emergency workers each being off for 2-3 weeks over just a couple of months?
Wake up, do exercises, spend an hour doing Hungarian translation exercises, do chores as instructed by higher powers, lunch, spend time in the garden or write, go for a walk, dinner, talk, listen to music or watch TV. Spending more time online is fitted in throughout this.
That's nice.
I'm working harder than I ever have before during this - I'm up at 5am and in bed by 11pm and either working or looking after my child the whole time in between (she is currently distracted by Milkshake).
My wife is the same.
I'm impressed. To be honest I am almost the exact opposite. I am finding concentration very difficult and don't even get on with the work I have to do. My productivity isn't even a quarter of what it is in normal times. I am spending a lot of time walking and running but find I don't even have the concentration span for books. I fear it is indicative of depression. I am finding I am spending a lot of time on PB, probably too much to be honest, but it is a comfort. I really cannot wait for this to be over but the financial implications will be with me for a long time.
Where my partner and I benefit enormously now is that we have been through one life-changing disaster, so this is not new territory. What you learn is to put the past to one side as much as you can and focus on your goals for the future.
My partner made a full recovery in part because he wasted little time with regret and from a very early stage put all his energies into his recovery. In this respect he is inspirational. We are all suffering a catastrophe and how we recover from it will depend on what we do in the coming weeks and months.
It’s ok to not be ok. None of us are ok. And if you fear you are depressed, get the professional help you need. Just asking for it is a major step forward. However, it may well be that your state of mind now reflects that you understand the future more clearly than many. This is not a holiday, but limbo, an ante-chamber to purgatory. Far too few really understand that yet.
Right now there are limited things we can do, but never let a crisis go to waste. Now is a good time to reflect, so if you can’t concentrate on reading (I can’t either), try thinking through what needs to be done. Write down lists of them. Do one or two things on the list each day.
It won’t feel like much but when you look over time at long lists of ticked-off items, you start to realise you are doing things after all.
Thanks Alastair, I really appreciate that.
Sorry to hear that. One of the few advantages of a more..er..variegated career trajectory is that major upheavals don't come as quite such a shock.
As Alastair M. suggests, if you're at the point where you think that you may be depressed rather than feeling justifiably gloomy because the world is going to hell in a handcart, in my experience that might be the time to speak to a professional.
It's pretty hard to tell. If you are not depressed right now you clearly have not understood the situation.
The Treasury has announced the extension of the UK’s job furlough scheme, which will now run an extra month until the end of June to “reflect continuing social distancing measures”
The scheme, which allows firms to keep employees on the payroll with the government paying cash grants covering 80% of their wages up to £2,500, was originally set for a three month period between March and the end of May.
The Treasury said the Chancellor would “keep the scheme under review and extend it if necessary.”
From the Guardian live blog.
If nine million workers are indeed furloughed then somebody on line calculated that that little policy will cost the taxpayer (if there are any left), 18 billion pounds a month.
A month.
Part of the problem is that far more employees have been furloughed than the government expected. The guidance was to carry on working but work from home where possible. Instead, employees have been furloughed left, right and centre. The longer lockdown goes on the more difficult it will be to get people back to work because they will have become accustomed to being paid to stay at home (as Peston pointed out the other day). This is partly why polls show that lockdown is well supported by the public.
The government is going to find getting out of lockdown far more difficult that putting us into lockdown. And it will get more difficult the longer lockdown lasts.
To blow own sax this is what I predicted would happen even if Sunak didn't. Furlough is a very tempting proposition for many businesses that actually have the reserves to carry on for quite some time without laying people off.
If lockdown and social distancing are working then how come the percentage of positive tests is still so high?
They should be dropping like a stone by now. We;ve been in lockdown for a month
The truth is clearly that lockdown is killing substantial numbers of people due to other reasons than coronavirus (one third of all excess deaths according to Fraser Nelson), is destroying our economy, whilst only having a marginal impact on the virus.
The cleverer countries are junking this policy and getting moving while they still can.
Our government, meanwhile is making the biggest policy mistake of any British government, ever
Look at Spains figures today, well over 5,000 cases 35 days into their lockdown
It is a lot isn't it? Presumably a lot of health and care workers, shop assistants and cases which have been rumbling on for some time but we need to learn from this.
@kinabalu, how can I make sense of this exchange when you remove all the earlier posts relating to it?
I always just leave the one I'm replying to. Do most people leave all of them? I'll do that too from now on if it's the norm. But anyway, not missing much in this case. @BannedInParis has some insight into what Spanish flu 2nd wave outcomes specifically tell us about how the Nightingale(s) will be used for Covid. Sounds interesting so I was hoping to squeeze it out of him.
Thanks. Most people do indeed leave the earlier exchanges to view under "show previous quotes". I fairly often find I need to open up an exchange to understand how the discussion has gone. When we had that phase of Vanilla not collapsing the threads it was useful to cut out intermediate stuff for simple legibility, but thankfully that glitch didn't last more than a few weeks. There is no need now to hide the intermediate stuff.
OK. So test that right here, right now.
It works. Revelation. Will save me much time. Hats off @geoffw. Hats off everyone.
It is quite astonishing that anyone could still be claiming that the infection fatality rate could be as low as 0.13%, seeing that even taking only confirmed cases into account 0.09% of the population of New York City has already died. And we may be only halfway through the first wave.
So far from the "research" of these people being publicised online, I should think a very good case could be made for them to be confined in padded cells.
I don't find it astonishing. We're in a truly terrible place with no clear and quick way out. If the mortality rate is tiny it follows that we are close to mass immunity already - since millions will have had it and barely known they were sick. This is a devastatingly attractive notion. It's up there with the magic money tree and life after death. If anything I'm surprised how few believers it has garnered.
He claims to be an academic epidemiologist, though. And he thinks that the infection fatality rate can be only slightly bigger than the percentage of the whole population of NYC who have already been killed by the virus, at this early stage ...
Its ridiculous. Peoples' idea of the mortality of this virus are still being shaped by Chinese lies, even now. Of those known for a fact to have had it and recovered 21% have died worldwide. If you strip out China its much higher. Anything else is a guess on how many others might have had it.
The UK really isn't helping in this respect because we don't even record how many have recovered..
@kinabalu, how can I make sense of this exchange when you remove all the earlier posts relating to it?
I always just leave the one I'm replying to. Do most people leave all of them? I'll do that too from now on if it's the norm. But anyway, not missing much in this case. @BannedInParis has some insight into what Spanish flu 2nd wave outcomes specifically tell us about how the Nightingale(s) will be used for Covid. Sounds interesting so I was hoping to squeeze it out of him.
Thanks. Most people do indeed leave the earlier exchanges to view under "show previous quotes". I fairly often find I need to open up an exchange to understand how the discussion has gone. When we had that phase of Vanilla not collapsing the threads it was useful to cut out intermediate stuff for simple legibility, but thankfully that glitch didn't last more than a few weeks. There is no need now to hide the intermediate stuff.
OK. So test that right here, right now.
I must admit I always leave the quotes in as far back as they will allow. That seems to have changed recently. Previously there was a fair tight letter limit before you had to start cutting out previous quotes. In that instance I always used to cut out everything except the immediate posting I was replying to. This was because I was too inept at trying to just cut out a certain number of quotes and always ended up with the quotation system all screwed up. Now I notice you can keep a much larger thread.
The Treasury has announced the extension of the UK’s job furlough scheme, which will now run an extra month until the end of June to “reflect continuing social distancing measures”
The scheme, which allows firms to keep employees on the payroll with the government paying cash grants covering 80% of their wages up to £2,500, was originally set for a three month period between March and the end of May.
The Treasury said the Chancellor would “keep the scheme under review and extend it if necessary.”
From the Guardian live blog.
If nine million workers are indeed furloughed then somebody on line calculated that that little policy will cost the taxpayer (if there are any left), 18 billion pounds a month.
A month.
Part of the problem is that far more employees have been furloughed than the government expected. The guidance was to carry on working but work from home where possible. Instead, employees have been furloughed left, right and centre. The longer lockdown goes on the more difficult it will be to get people back to work because they will have become accustomed to being paid to stay at home (as Peston pointed out the other day). This is partly why polls show that lockdown is well supported by the public.
The government is going to find getting out of lockdown far more difficult that putting us into lockdown. And it will get more difficult the longer lockdown lasts.
To blow own sax this is what I predicted would happen even if Sunak didn't. Furlough is a very tempting proposition for many businesses that actually have the reserves to carry on for quite some time without laying people off.
9 million was the expectation of the government when they put in place the scheme. Do we have the actual figure? Is it really a lot higher than that? I don't think so.
Comments
We as a society can cope with a large percentage of say bar and restaurant staff off work, painful as it is for us and them, but could we cope with 50-60% of power, sewerage, supply, emergency workers each being off for 2-3 weeks over just a couple of months?
The UK really isn't helping in this respect because we don't even record how many have recovered..