Now, I think it's reasonable to assume that the proportion of people who die after being infected by COVID-19 will fall over time. It's probably true that being infected today is less deadly than earlier this year
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That being said, I'm quite skeptical of the evidence presented. This story seems to claim that death rates have dropped ENORMOUSLY, while I would expect something more in the range of a relative 10-20% drop (say from 25% to 20%)pic.twitter.com/ursEABLS8V
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The study that's linked to to verify the statement above is this one, and it's an interesting piece of research looking at some hospitals in NYC and the people they admitted for COVID-19 over time https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.11.20172775v1.full.pdf …
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Looking at the results table, something immediately springs out. The denominator here - the number of patients being admitted by week - has changed DRAMATICALLY over timepic.twitter.com/5yPTtA3VeV
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Perhaps more worryingly, that precipitous drop from 25% death rate to 7.6% cited in the news article appears to be based on...a single week of data. If you move back two weeks, there's no drop in death rates at all!pic.twitter.com/2JFezlEklb
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There also isn't really any trend here - a nonsignificant drop from 23% to 21% over two months, and then a sudden halving of the death rate in just one week, which corresponds to a sudden decrease in the average age
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Replying to @GidMK
Why are you ignoring the previous week w/ very low adjusted mortality (10%) & older patients (mean age 61), or 18% 3 wks earlier? A simple sample size weighted regression supports their claim of decreasing mortality (P=0.02). I don't think findings can be dismissed so quickly.
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Replying to @DiseaseEcology @GidMK
One can question their model for adjustment (details not provided in paper) but can't dismiss data out of hand when it's actually 3 low weeks suggesting lower mortality.
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Replying to @DiseaseEcology @GidMK
(FYI: an unweighted regression is even more significant; P =0.007). Not the way I'd actually analyze the data, but with what's provided that's what evidence suggests.
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Replying to @DiseaseEcology
Not trying to dismiss it out of hand, but I think the broader point that I made holds true - the death rate dropped precipitously from ~20% to ~10% in one week, coinciding with a massive drop in the number of patients and changes in their characteristics
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The most likely explanation, to me, would seem to be that the demographic changes were the major driver of this difference, both factors that could be adjusted for and those that can't/are unknown
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Replying to @GidMK
The adjusted mortality adjusts for all the major factors shown to be important in mortality. Which ones did they miss that would make more than a tiny difference?pic.twitter.com/izNMDYZGHT
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Replying to @DiseaseEcology @GidMK
worth noting there are similar hints of a change in other studies as well: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-3742 … (Kaiser Permanente Southern CA), bottom of this chartpic.twitter.com/sWJFNVpm6e
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