[ExI] Cruise ship mortality rate was Re: The German oddity

[Stuart LaForge]

Quoting Stathis Papaioannou:

> On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 at 23:53, John Clark via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Germany has over 90,000 people infected with COVID-19, only the US, Italy
>> and Spain have more, but for some reason the deaths from it is remarkably
>> low there, only 1.3%; in comparison the death rate in Italy is 12%, in
>> Spain it's 10%, in the US it's 2.5%. Part of the reason may be Germany's
>> aggressive use of testing and their excellent health care system, they tend
>> to hospitalize people who test positive for the virus even if their
>> symptoms are mild because they have built lots of intensive care beds for
>> them and they know their condition can change for the worse very rapidly
>> and their chances of survival are much better if they're in a hospital when
>> that happens. The death rate in the US will certainly increase when doctors
>> start rationing ventilators and are forced to decide who should live and
>> who should die, and that will probably begin in the next week.

The US can prevent the death rate from rising by testing a lot more  
people so that asymptomatic carriers can be found and included in the  
calculations. Also, those people can be further isolated, to help  
prevent further spread. Absolute death can minimized with adequate  
ventilators. Relative death can be minimized with adequate testing.

> It?s a mystery as to why death rates are so different in different
> countries. Australia had 5548 cases and 30 deaths as of 4th April. There is
> widespread testing, about 100,000 people, but only sick people are
> hospitalised.

It's not a mystery. It simply means that Australia is doing an  
excellent job of keeping tabs on the virus. According to studies of  
Diamond Princess and other cruise ships, the virus' mortality rate  
under controlled conditions where you know exactly how many people  
have it is 0.5%

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00885-w
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-outbreak-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-death-rate

So kudos on Australia for keeping it real.

Stuart LaForge