If we are getting so many more cases than before, why are people not dying from this disease?



False data?

Better healthcare?

Disease just not that dangerous anymore?

Disease just not that dangerous to begin with?

I don't understand. These two things just don't add up.

In March and April tests were rationed, they are not now. Testing capacity has gone up, so we are catching increasingly marginal cases. I would suggest looking at this website which tries to estimate the real number of cases and infections over time from the past.
https://covid19-projections.com/

Deaths is a lagging statistic. If you look at the last week of reported deaths in Houston, we are still reporting deaths from late April and early May. In Texas, if there is a spike in cases and hospitalizations, you won't see the spike in deaths for a while.

Additionally, death rates are highly dependent on age and comorbidity. Everyone is reporting that cases and hospitalizations are trending younger from the crowds that showed up in March-April.

Diseases do tend to get less deadly over time via natural selection. The viral strain that is less deadly and produces less symptoms is more likely to get spread around than the one that makes people sick enough to stay home, go into the hospital, or die. Additionally our understanding of the virus and how to treat it is probably helping. In the early days doctors were trying everything to see what could work, now we know what works, and we're trying to see what works better.

Deaths also do tend to lag behind cases. We will likely see an increase in deaths in the next week or two. However I suspect it will be proportionally not as bad as what we saw in March/April.

• Increased testing
• Better treatment
• Lag between cases and deaths

Some intelligent responses to a very good question.

I worry the data has been compromised to some extent. The treatment didn't get THAT much better.

If there has been a less deadly mutation that's the only thing that makes sense if the age banded death rate has bottomed out like that.

culdeus said:

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I worry the data has been compromised to some extent. The treatment didn't get THAT much better.

If there has been a less deadly mutation that's the only thing that makes sense if the age banded death rate has bottomed out like that.

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I don't believe that at all. On Jan 1...the medical community had ZERO idea or knowledge on how to treat this virus. Not only that, but through no fault of their own, the standard care options actually made some patients worse.

Through unbelievable cooperation and mutual interest, dr's, pharma, research, etc have worked their tails off and found ways to not cure it but SUBSTANTIALLY improve the outcome of patients.

In every one of Dr. Rev's daily updates, he's spoken about how deaths will be lagging behind the daily case #s.

We hopefully will not see the same rate of deaths since these new cases seem to be largely a younger population. But we won't really know for another couple weeks just how much lower.

They haven't been near this high in my county.

And for the love of God just stop with the "Time running out on that narrative" nonsense.

Most of us aren't trying to run a "narrative" to fit our hopes and dreams. Nobody WANTS deaths to be high. Christ, this is exactly what makes most people fed up.

If deaths stay down as the cases rise, it will be the best argument for proceeding with some segments of society this fall (schools, universities etc) to let the virus continue to trickle. However, older alums, grandparents etc will need to plan on keeping their distance from these populations.

We're already in the future.

Look at the last several days of death reporting in Houston to see how much lag there is between the day of reporting to the day of death. Then, also consider that there is a lag between:

• Getting infected
• Getting symptoms
• Getting a test
• Receiving test results
• Reporting test results
• Going to the hospital
• Being recorded as hospitalized
• Dying
• Coding and reporting the death

There are deaths being reported this week that happened in April... APRIL!

ursusguy said:

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We're already in the future.

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No, we're in 1984

Dumb young adults are getting it and spreading it because they tend to be most asymptomatic and most DGAF, so when they get tested, they are positive but require no treatment. They are the most social group.

As long as they only socialize with eachother, no big deal.

The cases are increasingly among a younger population. Fatality rate is extremely low among <60 year olds

One only need look at the national trends to see that the value of a "case" has changed dramatically over the past few months.

We've increased testing volume dramatically and improved our ability to target testing efforts. There are other ways to "salt" the case and test numbers as well.

Bottom line: the more asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic cases one finds, as we are, the more decoupled case counts and fatalities will become.

Player To Be Named Later said:

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They haven't been near this high in my county.

And for the love of God just stop with the "Time running out on that narrative" nonsense.

Most of us aren't trying to run a "narrative" to fit our hopes and dreams. Nobody WANTS deaths to be high. Christ, this is exactly what makes most people fed up.

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It's not nonsense, it's a fact. The flare-up started around June 10th. That's 16 days ago.

And there has been a "wait 2 weeks" narrative being pushed by the more panicky people and the media. That's also a fact.

Is the virus spreading more? As evidenced by the increased hospitalizations, yes. But a combination of better treatments and a younger population getting infected, an increased percentage of hospitalized patients are being discharged home rather than to the morgue.

First of all, great thread, guys. I appreciate the comments. More comments coming.

Keegan99 said:

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Bottom line: the more asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic cases one finds, as we are, the more decoupled case counts and fatalities will become.

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Which means that, either the fatality rate of this virus has been extremely over-reported since the beginning, or it has just become much, much less dangerous due to the discussion above.

Bottom line is, if this thing isn't dangerous now, we should open everything back up, but protect the people that are vulnerable.

agforlife97 said:

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Player To Be Named Later said:

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They haven't been near this high in my county.

And for the love of God just stop with the "Time running out on that narrative" nonsense.

Most of us aren't trying to run a "narrative" to fit our hopes and dreams. Nobody WANTS deaths to be high. Christ, this is exactly what makes most people fed up.

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It's not nonsense, it's a fact. The flare-up started around June 10th. That's 16 days ago.

And there has been a "wait 2 weeks" narrative being pushed by the more panicky people and the media. That's also a fact.

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Averaged below 2k cases a day up until June 16th and then a significant jump that turned pretty dramatic over the last week. https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/ed483ecd702b4298ab01e8b9cafc8b83

I think we'll start to see an uptick in deaths, I don't think we'll see an "explosion" if it really is a younger cohort. But, looking at TMC ICU usage you still have to be cautious and also consider that these people don't live in a bubble, secluded from higher risk populations. I think that's what is driving the "wowa, we might need to do something about this" from Abbott et al.

HotardAg07 said:

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That would assume epidemiologists were relying on case numbers to say how dangerous it was (they weren't). The calculated case fatality rate was 3.4% when the lock down started globally and rose over time to 7%. However, doctors have been saying for a while that it was probably more like 0.5%-1.0%.

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It's going to end up at 0.3% or less I think. And for people under 50 a small, small fraction of that.

ETFan said:

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agforlife97 said:

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Player To Be Named Later said:

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RTesting They haven't been near this high in my county.

And for the love of God just stop with the "Time running out on that narrative" nonsense.

Most of us aren't trying to run a "narrative" to fit our hopes and dreams. Nobody WANTS deaths to be high. Christ, this is exactly what makes most people fed up.

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It's not nonsense, it's a fact. The flare-up started around June 10th. That's 16 days ago.

And there has been a "wait 2 weeks" narrative being pushed by the more panicky people and the media. That's also a fact.

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Averaged below 2k cases a day up until June 16th and then a significant jump that turned pretty dramatic over the last week. https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/ed483ecd702b4298ab01e8b9cafc8b83

I think we'll start to see an uptick in deaths, I don't think we'll see an "explosion" if it really is a younger cohort. But, looking at TMC ICU usage you still have to be cautious and also consider that these people don't live in a bubble, secluded from higher risk populations. I think that's what is driving the "wowa, we might need to do something about this" from Abbott et al.

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We haven't seen my 83 yr old Dad since Christmas, and we were going to see him in Houston this weekend, but my 18-year-old woke up yesterday feeling really crappy, 101 fever. So we're putting the brakes again on going to see the old man, but I think it's a smart thing to do.

BTW, my kid hasn't been at bars or anything like that obviously, but 18-year-olds will hang out with friends and go swimming, and there are their older brothers and sisters hanging around that are getting out a lot more. That may have been how he got sick I don't know.

Arizona's moving averages for deaths are at their highest. They just had their worst day, by far, on June 24. Yesterday, June 26, was their second worse day.

Texas' moving averages are up about 40-50% from two weeks ago.

Florida's moving averages are up about 20% from two weeks ago.

Alabama's has been creeping up; others (like North Carolina, Georgia, etc.) certainly aren't down. They're not yet up, but they're not down.


There are starting to be signs of growth of deaths. There's no narrative that's hoping for deaths, I pray the demographic skew of new infections helps keep deaths down, and we may not return to 2,000 deaths a day nationally. Still, there are a variety of troublesome numbers that suggest we may be in for some bad times.