Steve Willson Reflects on Coronavirus

From Steve Willson:

The numbers on worldwide deaths from the flu are somewhat suspect.

If you take the average number of deaths in the U.S. from the flu over the last several years, you get an average of about 38,000 deaths per year. Divide that by the U.S. population and then multiply by the world population, and one would expect an average of 880,000 deaths worldwide each year from the flu.

But according to WHO and the CDC, the range is 290,000 to 650,000.

I’ve been in correspondence with a couple of epidemiologists in the last week, and the feedback I get is that third world countries do a bad job of reporting cause of death, so there are probably more deaths than the WHO estimates.

As for COVID-19, the critical factors in an epidemic are how widespread initial immunity is, the rate of transmissibility, and mortality.

With regard to the first factor, the word “novel” in the term “novel coronavirus” means it’s new to humans, and so immunity is likely to be low. I was advised to set immunity at 0% in modeling likely outcomes.

With regard to the second factor, people who get the disease appear to be contagious very quickly, days before symptoms appear, and to remain contagious for an average of about three weeks. Thus, initial indications are that transmissibility is much higher for COVID-19. On average, about 28 million Americans get the flu each year. If COVID-19 is two to three times as virulent as the flu, then 56 million to 84 million Americans could contract it.

With regard to the third factor, estimates of the overall mortality rate range from 1% to 2.4%, obviously much higher among the elderly, and apparently much higher among men than among women. The death rate from the flu is around 0.13%.

So, if there are only as many cases as the flu, one might project 275,000 to 667,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S., absent any action to contain the spread.

You can do your own math if COVID-19 is more contagious.

How likely is this? I’ve plugged numbers into a couple of different SIRS models of infectious disease, and the numbers are consistent. These same models indicate a peak in around two months and then an equally rapid decline, if COVID-19 follows the usual pattern for epidemics first discovered by William Farr in the 19th century.

One can also look at the historical record.

The bubonic plague wiped out an estimated one-third of the population of Europe. Part of this was due to greater susceptibility due to poor hygiene and poor diet. But it took a couple of generations for Europe to build up immunity.

Or consider the Native Americans when Europeans first landed here. Their population is estimated to have declined 90% to 95% within a hundred years due to lack of immunity to diseases to which Europeans were largely immune.

The Spanish flu killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide in 1918, although again estimates vary widely. The total world population at the time was about 2 billion versus 7.7 billion now.

Will shelter-in-place help? Probably, at least in the short run. The lower the contact rate, the lower the number of potential victims. If 75% of Americans follow the rules, the reduction would be greater than 75% because transmissibility is partly a function of population density.

But there is also a concern about a second and even a third wave of COVID-19. Those who contract the disease and live are probably immune. But those who avoided contact with it on the first round will be susceptible if we resume normal life. So we could see follow-on waves of this disease.

Ultimately, immunity will either come from a vaccine, which would confer immunity to the population as a whole very quickly, or it will come from survivorship, which could take a couple of generations.

I’m sorry if I seem alarmist.

I’m not trying to be.

I’m just passing on the conclusions of the research that I’ve done, especially the method of making forecasts and the best data we have to date.

Keep in mind that there is low confidence in the data we have to date.

Perhaps we’ll be lucky and it will turn out that transmissibility and mortality will be lower than initial estimates.

And please keep in mind that while I’m an analyst by trade, my normal research is in finance, not epidemiology.

I’m sure experts in the field would have better insights than mine.

= = = = =

An addendum:

I should point out that there is also contrary evidence to the potential for mass infection and mortality.

Both SARS and Ebola were epidemics of concern.SARS has many similarities to COVID-19.

But it turned out not to spread as quickly as initially indicated, and mortality was low.

Ebola is not a particularly good analog because while mortality was much higher.

But Ebola was spread by physical contact.

Once this was understood, behavioral changes quickly reduced transmission to near zero.

In the case of COVID-19, the number of cases in both China and South Korea has already dropped rapidly, indicating that containment may be effective.

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Steve Willson Reflects on Coronavirus — 16 Comments

  1. The Chinese reported contagion, death and recovery rates are all hogwash.

    Nobody believes them, but apparently the non-epidemiologist Willson does.

    How does he know what’s happened in China or what’s happening there now in real time?

  2. in 2017 56k Americans died of the “Influenza and Pneumonia”, 2% of total deaths, and the 8th leading cause of death, according to the US Department of Health.

    It compares to nearly 650k who die of heart disease.

    The latest estimates suggest between 200-700k Americans could die from Wuhan Flu.

    Most of them will be elderly, but it’s going to be an enormous strain on hospitals.

    The disease is now going exponential.

    We’re expecting it to follow what’s happened in Italy – but Italy and the US are not similar.

    To generalise; Italy is urban, densely populated, and tight family groups with multiple generations live together, while America is younger and more spread out.

    They will be very different.

  3. Oh good Lord Justincase,

    Steve is perfectly capable of defending himself but his analysis of anything is solely made to allow others the opportunity to critically think about whatever subject he offers.

    In this case you clearly didn’t read his piece which pointed out the fallacies written into the article he was critiquing.

    Whether you want to use his analysis to create higher or lower estimates of the sick and dying the opportunity is there for you to utilize proper analytical techniques rather than broken logic.

    Read before you comment.

    It will help you be taken seriously in the future.

    This time you muffed the shot badly.

    Spectacular and thought provoking writing Steve.

    You allow me to put proper vocabulary to my raw thoughts of, “Huh? That ain’t right”.

  4. Priest, get ready to bury the dead.

    I’ll help you load them up in horse drawn carts.

  5. I’ve already cornered the market on Dark Ages Style Ox Carts.

    My problem is my storage is at capacity, with cases of Topps Baseball Cards and over 11000 Beanie Babies.

  6. I pray we won’t have so many dead we’ll have to go find the ox, a cart and the guy in the long nose mask to ring the bell asking folks to bring out the bodies.

    That’s too much work.

    If we Illinoisans can survive the kleptocrats and morons in political leadership we can survive this kerfuffle.

    It’s going to be alright.

  7. Teacher’sPet, your comments about density and age distribution are insightful and induced me to do a little more research.

    The population density of Italy as a whole is 520 per square mile.

    The population density of Rome is 5,790 per square mile.

    The population density of the District of Columbia is 10,589.

    There are five U.S. states with population density greater than Italy’s, including New Jersey (1,210) and Massachusetts (858).

    The population density of the Chicago MSA is around 1,300.

    The median age in Italy is 44.5 years, the third highest in the world after Japan and Germany. About 22% of Italy’s population is over 65.

    The median age in the U.S. is 38.1 years.

    About 16% of our population is over 65.

  8. Los Angeles County health officials advised doctors to give up on testing patients in the hope of containing the coronavirus outbreak, instructing them to test patients only if a positive result could change how they would be treated.

    The guidance, sent by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to doctors on Thursday, was prompted by a crush of patients and shortage of tests, and could make it difficult to ever know precisely how many people in L.A. County contracted the virus.

  9. It’s not hard to envision a world where a person can be “detained” on “suspicion of having the virus” when they are perfectly healthy, and their family has all their social media posts about it taken down for spreading “misinformation”.

    Hell, the new rules would then make it easier to cover up any deaths in custody by having private funeral directors register deaths that require no secondary confirmation.

    A claim this person died “whilst being treated for Covid19” would also render all those involved legally immune.

    That is an extreme example, but there lies the danger of vaguely worded “powers”.

    They are wide open to abuse.

  10. If we had not known about the bioweapon coronavirus virus out there (developed by Chinese or the USA or the USA in cahoots w/ the Israelis at their evil Ness Ziona lab in the Negev, just like the US/Israeli combine that developed the Stuxnet computer virus) and checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to ‘influenza-like illness’ would not seem unusual this year.

  11. Our MSM absolutely MUST stick to the Narrative that COVID-19 came from an animal.

    The Truth is that it is a man-made weapon with 6-7 “features” in it that prove it can only be a lab created (HIV protein spikes; gene splicing; weak or non-existent antibody; off the chart R0; etc)

    However, if the Politicians allow that Truth to be revealed, then it will automatically require an answer to the question of just who developed the bioweapon.

    If you dig deep in the research, it is easy to determine that Truth.

    However, the “animal” (bay, pangolin or panda) MUST be placed in the media to avoid the natural progression to a War Crimes trial (of Politicians), and the subsequent financial liabilities an collapse of Political Power.

    The general public will of course take the bait on the Fake Narrative, and believe COVID-19 came from exotic animals.

    Likewise, the Politicians will point fingers and play the blame game, to keep the most gullible elements (majority?) of society diverted with such bread and circuses.

    If you followed the 9/11 anthrax attack all the way through you end at Ft Detrick.

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