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anyone have a sense of what the fatality rate for covid19 would be *without* modern medical capabilities? the comparisons to spanish flu seem harder to make since that pre-dated ventilators and antibiotics (both dating to 1928) for eg
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the standard stat going around is 80% out of hospital ("mild"), 20% in hospital, 5 % ICU, 2% dead. So somewhere between 5-20% seems likely (working under the assumption that the hospital only helps, which is shaky given nosocomial infections etc)
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Spanish flu hit younger/middle aged people much harder, with older often being resistant, so QALYs lost could be higher even at lower death rate
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Not even remotely. This has a J shaped fatality curve along, and the spanish flu a U shape; so in Quality Adjusted Life Year terms even at same mortality this is much less severe. We dont know how many are asymptomatic, but could be 80% (making IFR proportionally lower)
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Italy is substantially over-capacity, so they’re our best proxy and they’re running around 10% CFR (which sort of matches the ICU/ventilation rate). They also likely have more actual cases than tested cases, however.
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