“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.”
–Gustave Le Bon 1841-1931
There is no immunity for bureaucratic madness
Stockholm University June 2020 – COVID-19 fatality rates
| Healthy 35-year-old woman | If unlucky enough to catch coronavirus, chance of surviving = 99.9991% The chance of dying is less than the fatality risk of a general anaesthetic for a procedure |
| 55-year-old man with co-morbidities* | If unlucky enough to catch coronavirus, chance of surviving = 99.2135% The chance of dying is less than the risk of an average 55-64 year old dying of any cause this year |
| Healthy 75-year-old woman | If unlucky enough to catch coronavirus, chance of surviving = 99.8251% The chance of dying is less than the risk of being injured in a car accident each year |
| 85 year old man with co-morbidities* | If unlucky enough to catch coronavirus, chance of surviving = 79.9154% The chance of dying is less than the risk of living for one year in a care home |
Predicted COVID-19 fatality rates based on age, sex, comorbidities and health system capacity
Abstract
Early reports suggest the fatality rate from COVID-19 varies greatly across countries, but non-random testing and incomplete vital registration systems render it impossible to directly estimate the infection fatality rate (IFR) in many low- and middle-income countries. To fill this gap, we estimate the adjustments required to extrapolate estimates of the IFR from high-income to lower-income regions. Accounting for differences in the distribution of age, sex and relevant comorbidities yields substantial differences in the predicted IFR across 21 world regions, ranging from 0.11% in Western Sub-Saharan Africa to 1.07% for high-income Asia Pacific. However, these predictions must be treated as lower bounds in low- and middle-income countries as they are grounded in fatality rates from countries with advanced health systems. To adjust for health system capacity, we incorporate regional differences in the relative odds of infection fatality from childhood respiratory syncytial virus. This adjustment greatly diminishes but does not entirely erase the demography-based advantage predicted in the lowest income settings, with regional estimates of the predicted COVID-19 IFR ranging from 0.37% in Western Sub-Saharan Africa to 1.45% for Eastern Europe.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003094
July 13, 2021 – iFR of COVID-19 in community-dwelling populations with emphasis on the elderly
Data Synthesis Twenty-three seroprevalence surveys representing 14 countries were included. Across all countries, the median IFR in community-dwelling elderly and elderly overall was 2.4% (range 0.3%-7.2%) and 5.5% (range 0.3%-12.1%).
IFR was higher with larger proportions of people >85 years. Younger age strata had low IFR values (median 0.0027%, 0.014%, 0.031%, 0.082%, 0.27%, and 0.59%, at 0-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, and 60-69 years).
Conclusions The IFR of COVID-19 in community-dwelling elderly people is lower than previously reported. Very low IFRs were confirmed in the youngest populations.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v2
April 2021 – Mortality risk from COVID-19
The constant portrayal of COVID-19 as a threat has caused distortion in people’s perception of their risk of dying from it, if they are unlucky enough to catch it. The risks of dying are dependent on age and comorbidities, e.g.:
*comorbidities included in the study were: cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, chronic liver disease, diabetes mellitus, cancers with direct immunosuppression, cancers with possible immunosuppression, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, chronic neurological disorders, sickle cell disorders.
https://www.hartgroup.org/22-april-2021/
COVID iFR – John P A Ioannidis
October 13, 2022 – Age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19
The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection is important to estimate accurately, since 94% of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86% is younger than 60 years.
In systematic searches in SeroTracker and PubMed (protocol: https://osf.io/xvupr), we identified 40 eligible national seroprevalence studies covering 38 countries with pre-vaccination seroprevalence data.
Highlights
Across 31 systematically identified national seroprevalence studies in the pre-vaccination era, the median infection fatality rate of COVID-19 was estimated to be 0.035% for people aged 0-59 years people and 0.095% for those aged 0-69 years.
The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0-19 years, 0.003% at 20-29 years, 0.011% at 30-39 years, 0.035% at 40-49 years, 0.129% at 50-59 years, and 0.501% at 60-69 years.
At a global level, pre-vaccination IFR may have been as low as 0.03% and 0.07% for 0-59 and 0-69 year old people, respectively.
These IFR estimates in non-elderly populations are lower than previous calculations had suggested.
The calculation below is for young people aged 0-19.
The IFR of #COVID19 for 0-19 year olds: 0.0003%. So the absolute probability of dying is 0.000003%.I know it’s not, but we assume that vaccination reduces that probability by 95%.
So then the probability of dying after vaccination becomes 0.05 x 0.000003 = 0.00000015.
Therefore, the absolute risk reduction is 0.00000285
The #NumberNeededToVaccinate is then 1 / 0.00000285 = 350,771.
Three hundred and fifty thousand seven hundred and seventy-one. That number you need to vaccinate to save a child from #COVID19.
Chance of myocarditis in this age group when vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines: 1 in 3,000 to 1 in 5,000.
And this is only a short-term side effect; we know virtually nothing about the longer term.
These children still have dozens of healthy years of life ahead of them.
Which now they just have to wait and see. Bizarre. Incredibly bizarre. Even with one less zero.
Source: John_bumblebee tweet
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1588850809869307905.html
March 26, 2021 – Reconciling estimates of global spread and iFR
Conclusions
All systematic evaluations of seroprevalence data converge that SARS‐CoV‐2 infection is widely spread globally. Acknowledging residual uncertainties, the available evidence suggests average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5‐2.0 billion infections by February 2021 with substantial differences in IFR and in infection spread across continents, countries, and locations.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13554
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13554
October 14, 2020 – iFR inferred from seroprevalence data
Objective To estimate the infection fatality rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from data of seroprevalence studies.
Results I included 61 studies (74 estimates) and eight preliminary national estimates. Seroprevalence estimates ranged from 0.02% to 53.40%. Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 1.63%, corrected values from 0.00% to 1.54%. Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%): the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%.
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
Formated copy online https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/99/1/20-265892.pdf
Dr Malcolm Kendrick – How dangerous is COVID19?
26th October 2020 – What is the true Infection Fatality Rate.
This article appeared in Russia Today https://www.rt.com/op-ed/504167-facebook-fact-checkers-censorship/ (Since Oct. 2022; from EU you need a VPN to be able to access rt.com, download a reader version of the RT article below)
I (Malcolm Kendrick) have made a couple of small changes to it
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/10/26/how-dangerous-is-covid19/
National Center for Health Statistics – CDC
Updated: August 26, 2020
For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.
Website direct link: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm
Review of calculated SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality rates
August 2020
Good CDC science versus dubious CDC science, the actual risk that does not justify the “cure” – By Prof Joseph Audi
Introduction by Denis G. Rancourt: In this letter to me, Joseph accomplishes the following points:
– An explanation of the various kinds of fatality rates for a pathogen
– A review of the measured infection fatality rates for SARS-CoV-2
– A demonstration that a recently changed CDC evaluation is most certainly incorrect, along with an illustration of how not to do a meta-analysis
– His conclusion that “the absolute and relative ‘flu-like’ risk of death from a SARS-CoV-2 infection is far too low to rigorously justify governments imposing major disruptions to normal life, let alone the massive and indiscriminate ‘lockdown’ disruptions people have been forced to submit to and endure” —- Joseph Audie, PhD (biophysics), MS (biomedical engineering), BS (bioengineering) is a professor of chemistry.
D. G. Rancourt In a very real sense, a discussion about whether or not the pIFR of SARS-CoV-2 is ≈ 0.26% or ≈ 0.6% is only of academic interest. Put simply, the absolute and relative “flu-like” risk of death from a SARS-CoV-2 infection is far too low to rigorously justify government’s imposing any major disruptions to normal life, let alone the massive and indiscriminate “lockdown” disruptions people have been forced to submit to and endure, as such disruptions will inevitably unleash innumerable forces, including deadly forces, that will reverberate throughout society in predictable an unpredictable ways for years to come.
SARS-CoV-2 poses a significant risk to a well-defined, vulnerable population of elderly and in-firmed people and is a statistical non-issue for the vast majority of people.
This is good news, for it empowers communities to adopt targeted and scientifically-based mitigation strategies, ultimately allowing everyone else to keep working to support their families, communities and the health care system, voluntarily practice standard cold and flu mitigation strategies, and ultimately acquire natural immunity, bring the epidemic to an end, preserve and perpetuate their way of life, and avoid the collateral damage wrought by imposition of the many crude and draconian interventions subsumed under the general term “lockdown”. Full story online at ResearchGate
Predicted COVID-19 fatality rates based on age, sex, comorbidities, and health system capacity
June 07, 2020. – Selene Ghisolfi, Ingvild Ingvild Almas, Justin Sandefur, Tillman von Carnap, Jesse Heitner, Tessa Bold
For those without a comorbidity, the cIFR is effectively zero and flat up to the age of 50, and then increases roughly twenty-fold between 50-59 and 70-79 (from 0.01% to 0.17% for women and from 0.02% to 0.48% for men).
With a comorbidity, the pattern is similar, but because the cIFR is already higher at younger ages, the age-gradient is less steep, roughly doubling the cIFR for each decade above age 50. The difference in the cIFR between patients with and without comorbidities is large but declines rapidly with age: a 30-39 year old is roughly 150 times more likely to die from COVID-19 if they have at least one comorbidity; at age 70 this ratio has decreased to roughly 10.
Finally, the female cIFR is lower than the male cIFR for each age and comorbidity status.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.05.20123489v1
https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/9/e003094
Why is the Covid-19 Death Rate So Low – Dr Eric Berg
Comparing the 1st and 2nd Coronavirus wave
“All systematic evaluations of seroprevalence data converge that SARS- CoV- 2 infection is widely spread globally. Acknowledging residual uncertainties, the available evidence suggests average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5- 2.0 billion infections by February 2021 with substantial differences in IFR and in infection spread across continents, countries and locations.“
John P.A. Ioannidis
