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by guscost 2275 days ago
So on the one hand, I think you're bringing up enough problems for me to agree that the extreme scenario is not likely to hold up.

On the other, I don't understand how after making so many (often reasonable) assumptions in your arguments, you can say that it's "quite impossible" for the total infected to be so high, or the population-wide IFR to be three orders of magnitude lower than a nursing home or any other special case that you do not fully understand.

Here are some of those assumptions, which again do not all seem unreasonable to me:

- A mild case would likely be detectable by a PCR test for 8+ days

- The PCR test does not have a high false-negative rate in mild cases (see https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17319/v1)

- Italy has not already had a sharp drop in new infections/most new infections are being identified as cases within two weeks

- Italy did nothing to slow the rate of infection until the full lockdown was in effect (but slower spread would mean higher mortality, no matter the reason)

- COVID-19 was the only/main thing that contributed to mortality in the special cases