RedFromMI wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 9:17 am
Emergency COVID-19 measures prevented more than 500 million infections, study finds
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/06/08/em ... udy-finds/
(from the University of California-Berkeley)
Emergency health measures implemented in six major countries have “significantly and substantially slowed” the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to research from a UC Berkeley team published today in the journal Nature. The findings come as leaders worldwide struggle to balance the enormous and highly visible economic costs of emergency health measures against their public health benefits, which are difficult to see.
In the first peer-reviewed analysis of local, regional and national policies, the researchers found that travel restrictions, business and school closures, shelter-in-place orders and other non-pharmaceutical interventions averted roughly 530 million COVID-19 infections across the six countries in the study period ending April 6. Of these infections, 62 million would likely have been “confirmed cases,” given limited testing in each country.
Continuation of these policies after the study period has likely avoided many millions more infections, according to lead author Solomon Hsiang, director of Berkeley’s Global Policy Laboratory and Chancellor’s Professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy.
“The last several months have been extraordinarily difficult, but through our individual sacrifices, people everywhere have each contributed to one of humanity’s greatest collective achievements,” Hsiang said. “I don’t think any human endeavor has ever saved so many lives in such a short period of time. There have been huge personal costs to staying home and canceling events, but the data show that each day made a profound difference. By using science and cooperating, we changed the course of history.”
The study evaluated 1,717 policies implemented in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States in the period extending from the emergence of the virus in January to April 6, 2020. The analysis was carried out by Hsiang and an international, multi-disciplinary team at the Global Policy Laboratory, all working under shelter-in-place restrictions.
Recognizing the historic challenge and potential impact of the pandemic, “everyone on our team dropped everything they were doing to work on this around the clock,” said Hsiang.
A substantial fraction of the world's population saved from infection, and if you assume a 1% death rate approximately 5 million deaths prevented.
Stats can be intentionally or unintentionally misleading. If I were going to gather data that was useful for people who have not taken statistics or econometrics courses (and passed them), here is what I would want to know:
1) How many people have the virus?
2) How many of those people became symptomatic?
3) How many of the symptomatic cases were mild and how many were severe?
4) How many of the severe cases required hospitalization?
5) How many of those cases required mechanical ventilation?
6) How many confirmed deaths from the virus?
I believe question 6 is the most unknowable of the questions, as I honestly believe some flu deaths as well as natural causes deaths for people with the virus but little or no symptoms are being classified as Covid deaths. This is because of perverse financial incentives for medical providers to intentionally classify non-Covid deaths as Covid. Rumor has it a gunshot victim tested positive and they classified his death as Covid related. Not sure if it's true but it would not surprise me in the least.
"I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member", Groucho Marx