It’s far from clear how accurate those numbers for Italy and China are. China essentially gave up on testing the general population in Wuhan and their numbers mostly represent the most serious cases. Italy’s infections seem to be mostly centered around the elderly with 40% of infections in the 70+ age range despite 65+ year olds only representing 21.53% of their population.
China plainly lied about the outcomes of the SARS epidemic and reported about half the fatality rate of nearly every other country. Hell, no Chinese person I've talked with recently believes the official numbers.
I flagged this because it was published in January nearly a month earlier than the WHO's verification.
Essentially this was not in bad faith when it was published but it is now so out of date and misleading and sharing it now is dangerous in that it may cause people to ignore safety advice.
It was a nowcast. It's intended to be out of date after a while. And provide an estimation at the time. I don't understand how it is dangerous, could you explain that?... earlier action would have been better.
You are claiming that a study published in January supercedes a study in February.
Given that people are making difficult choices right now that will impact the course of the epidemic we should be very careful sharing outdated information that could lead to people becoming infected.
China's numbers are a minimum. Many people are saying online they are a maximum. I.e. claiming that there are lots of hidden mild infections when there are not.
> You are claiming that a study published in January supercedes a study in February.
No, I am no. I am saying the study supercedes numbers reported by authorities. The point of the study was to scatter information on very opaque reporting.
> China's numbers are a minimum. Many people are saying online they are a maximum. I.e. claiming that there are lots of hidden mild infections when there are not.
Death rate was under 1% outside of Wuhan and in South Korea. It's over 5% within Wuhan and in Italy.
The way I interpreted that discrepancy is that in the presence of full testing and good ICU care, the death rate from COVID-19 is about 0.7-1%. When the hospitals get overloaded, as they've been in Wuhan and Italy, the death rate skyrockets to 5-10%. This also squares roughly with the number of people who need ICU care in places where the death rate is low. If you need ICU care and don't get it, presumably you'll be dead.
Median death is 14 days after first symptoms with many cases taking significantly longer. That combined with an exponential growth curve looks significantly less deadly. A major discrepancy is the under detection of cases as full population testing has been rare outside of the cruse ships which also have an elderly population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy