Diamond Princess update

Data so far suggests that of the 3,711 people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, 705 contracted the virus, i.e. 19%. Much higher than in any place in China, as we have stated passim, but then a cruise ship is a confined space with a lot of people in it. So far, 6 people appear to have died, which is 0.85% of those diagnosed. The mortality relative to the whole population is therefore 6 divided by 3,711, i.e. 0.16%.

These figures conflict somewhat with the crude distribution we published here, but we did say to treat all figures with caution. There is a conflict because, as is well known, mostly old people like us go on cruises, but we are seeing nothing like an 18% case fatality rate.

[EDIT] A useful paper on the Diamond Princess age distribution is here. Table copied below.

Age group Symptomatic cases Asymptomatic cases 1 Total Crude asymptomatic ratio 2 Persons aboard3
0-9 0 1 1 100% (95%CI: 2.5%, 100%) 16
10- 1 1 2 50.0% (95%CI: 1.3%, 98.7%) 23
20- 18 2 20 10.0% (95%CI: 1.2, 31.7%) 347
30- 18 5 23 21.7% (95%CI: 7.5%, 43.7%) 429
40- 18 7 25 28.0% (95%CI: 12%, 49.4%) 333
50- 27 22 49 44.9% (95%CI: 30.1%, 59.8%) 398
60- 73 56 129 43.4% (95%CI: 2.5, 100%) 924
70- 92 136 228 59.6% (95%CI: 53.0%, 66.1%) 1015
80- 27 25 52 48.1% (95%CI: 34.0%, 62.3%) 215
90- 2 0 2 0% (95%CI: 2.5%, 84.2%) 11
  1. Symptom status is based on the information at the time of specimen collection. There is a possibility that a fraction of asymptomatic cases develop symptom.
  2. Proportion of asymptomatic cases among all the cases. CI: Confidence Interval (CI) is based on binomial distribution
  3. As of February 5, 2020