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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Wenche
- Start date
@AlanSubie4Life , you totally missed the point.
If those over 65 and those with pre-existing conditions make up 98% of the deaths, we need to protect them from the economic necessity of going back to work in the first wave.
As for your personal choice as a 42 year old, you're free to do as you wish.I'd really like to see some type of social safety net extended to the workers over 65 and to those with pre-existing conditions during the first wave of return to work. That group is where 98% of our deaths would come from.
And yes, you would need to do social distancing from those at risk if you return to work.
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AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I think you missed my point. Of course we must protect the extremely vulnerable (the 98% or whatever - which sounds incorrect - but don’t want to figure out how that number was obtained incorrectly - the WaPo numbers quoted above indicate 4-5% (700, 1/3 of which did not have pre-existing conditions) of the US deaths are below *50* years old).
My point is that for that group of 50 and below of which comprise 2-4% of the deaths, the risk (which is something like 0.1 to 1% if you become infected) is completely unacceptable, even if you were somehow able to perfectly isolate the rest of the vulnerable population (which is obviously impossible). You need to drive that risk down by a factor of 100 or more. The only way to do that is to basically make outbreaks extremely rare.
People of any age therefore can only return to work if you have a robust system in place to drive risk down.
We can learn from other countries what is needed, and do better. We have about 4-5 weeks to get a system in place. It is going to need to be extraordinarily good. Like someone likes to say - like nothing we have ever seen before!
A start would be having capacity to do about 10 million tests per week (10x current capacity), increasing to 50 million per week. That would be 2.5 billion tests per year.
Obviously for this small quantity, the cost would be pretty insignificant in the big scheme of things.
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Like++
Hell, spend one freaking trillion $$$ protecting those that are at risk in this event (65+ and sick) and let the rest of the people go back to work. Put deputies around every senior center, test everyone thoroughly that tends to those at risk, build special hospitals for them, etc. All of these options are less expensive than what we're doing now. We're using a sledgehammer on a nail. You'd save far more than half what this thing will cost us in the end.
I still can't get around the fact that no one gave a crap about the 60K mostly old+sick people who died from the flu in 2017-2018. Yet we've shut down the world over this event. Yeah, I know all about the "overloaded hospitals", etc.
Don't hold your breath. There seems to be no difference in case loads between warm and cold climates, so it's unlikely it will diminish over the summer. This is a different family of viruses from flu and the common cold.
Non-union cooks and cashiers at 30 popular fast food restaurants in Calif go on strike tomorrow, Thursday, for PPE protection wear. Follows other recent strikes in San Jose and L.A. and those of workers in other states serving the public as essential industry workers.
Fast Foods Workers at 30 Restaurants Across California Are Going on Strike
Fast food workers to stage walkout Thursday
Fast Foods Workers at 30 Restaurants Across California Are Going on Strike
Fast food workers to stage walkout Thursday
LiveLong&Profit
Member
Report from Danish Health Authority:
https://www.sst.dk/-/media/Udgivels...hash=6819E71BFEAAB5ACA55BD6161F38B75F1EB05999
Seems to only be in danish so far...
Page 27:
"I Statens Serum Instituts arbejde med modellering af udvikling af epidemien i Danmark har man på baggrund af undersøgelser i blandt andet Island og Tyskland valgt at arbejde med,at det reelle antal smittede i Danmark er 30-80 gange højere end det antal, der bliver påvist."
My attempt at translation:
"In the work done by the National Serum Institute regarding modelling of the development of the epidemic in Denmark we have, due to studies in Iceland and Germany, chosen to hold the belief that the real number of infected in Denmark is 30-80 times higher than the number which is proven by actual tests."
Clarification: "30-80 gange højere" translates as "30-80 times higher". It is not percent. It this is correct that is a huge number of people who are infected. This is news to me.
(Variation: "...valgt at arbejde med..." could be also be: "chosen the working hypothesis that" ...)
Not sure how firm the 30-80 times range is... One paragraph further down the range 30-70 times is used. Possible the range is very uncertain due to lack of testing. They intend to do a lot more testing.
Disclaimer: Not a doctor, not a translator.
https://www.sst.dk/-/media/Udgivels...hash=6819E71BFEAAB5ACA55BD6161F38B75F1EB05999
Seems to only be in danish so far...
Page 27:
"I Statens Serum Instituts arbejde med modellering af udvikling af epidemien i Danmark har man på baggrund af undersøgelser i blandt andet Island og Tyskland valgt at arbejde med,at det reelle antal smittede i Danmark er 30-80 gange højere end det antal, der bliver påvist."
My attempt at translation:
"In the work done by the National Serum Institute regarding modelling of the development of the epidemic in Denmark we have, due to studies in Iceland and Germany, chosen to hold the belief that the real number of infected in Denmark is 30-80 times higher than the number which is proven by actual tests."
Clarification: "30-80 gange højere" translates as "30-80 times higher". It is not percent. It this is correct that is a huge number of people who are infected. This is news to me.
(Variation: "...valgt at arbejde med..." could be also be: "chosen the working hypothesis that" ...)
Not sure how firm the 30-80 times range is... One paragraph further down the range 30-70 times is used. Possible the range is very uncertain due to lack of testing. They intend to do a lot more testing.
Disclaimer: Not a doctor, not a translator.
I believe it was the "like a smart person" who said it was "like a flu".
I am going with what ACTUAL smart people are saying, that's it's not like the flu.
Looks like travel from Europe should have been halted back in February as researchers say the virus genome came from there not Asia in the case of East Coast spread.
NYTimes article (Carl Zimmer, April 8) I can only access from Apple News link:
Most New York coronavirus cases came from Europe, genomes show — The New York Times
Interesting article on how researchers trace back the virus and its mutations through genome sequencing studies and a database, called Nextstrain. Surprising twist when they started studying New York infections.
“Of course, the coronavirus will continue to mutate as long as it still infects people. It’s possible that vaccines will have to change to keep up with the virus. And that’s why scientists need to keep tracking its history.”
So for our medical members out there, is it likely that different mutations would bring out different symptoms in people?
NYTimes article (Carl Zimmer, April 8) I can only access from Apple News link:
Most New York coronavirus cases came from Europe, genomes show — The New York Times
Interesting article on how researchers trace back the virus and its mutations through genome sequencing studies and a database, called Nextstrain. Surprising twist when they started studying New York infections.
“Of course, the coronavirus will continue to mutate as long as it still infects people. It’s possible that vaccines will have to change to keep up with the virus. And that’s why scientists need to keep tracking its history.”
So for our medical members out there, is it likely that different mutations would bring out different symptoms in people?
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Well, the IHME model changed its estimates for deaths overnight by 26% (a reduction). So we can clearly tell it is a quality model.
I think their model is being screwed up by the incomplete data from Italy. Who knows how much weight they gave that vs. something from a better tested location, like Germany. Germany very likely has not quite reached their peak death rate yet, though they may be close.
Germany’s numbers rise. From Reuters, 4/9.
Germany's coronavirus cases rise by 4,974, deaths by 246: RKI
Large under-reporting or simply slow testing results?
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AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
As mentioned, the specificity of the antibody test really matters. For a 2% true prevalence in the population, if the test is 99% sensitive and 95% specific, the test will show something like a 7% prevalence. It's really not very good at getting accurate prevalence numbers when the prevalence is low.
Looks like a repeat post of above.
This seems like a bad strategy, as it would be very hard to avoid such outbreaks if you just let the virus circulate elsewhere. The money is much better spent on actually solving the problem.
People did care a lot about that. That's why we have massive immunization campaigns every year, which saves many 10s of thousands of lives. Putting aside the hospital issue, the issue here with SARS-CoV-2 is that about 2 million these old & sick people would have died if we had let this go. That's a lot more than 60k.
In addition, you'd be losing about 200k people who were below ~65. And about 50k of these would have been 100% healthy individuals with no comorbidities.
These numbers are rough, but based on the best available evidence to date.
Yeah, I posted that data a few days back in this thread. I guess I scooped the NY Times! Sadly I did not publish my armchair virologist conclusion. Anyway, it was pretty evident from the Nextstrain data a week ago, and more genomes have come in since then. Not sure why the NY Times is only publishing that information now. Probably they had to double check with the experts.
Regarding timing of those introductions, it's a bit harder to determine. With lots of introductions (seems like at least 10, probably more), it's possible that the introductions could have started occurring in February. But would not be surprised if they actually started in January. The beginning of outbreaks tends to be fairly stochastic since a single introduction can either just fizzle, or it can explode in the case of a super-spreading. So the exact timing is hard to pin down. With more genome sampling they could probably be more precise, but they'd need genomes from back in February to be more definitive I think - such virus samples may exist somewhere incidentally, but just haven't been sequenced.
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AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
That's less than the 333 or so yesterday, so in theory they could now be past their peak death rate, but I doubt it, given that they had very steep case growth less than a week ago. They had some (relative) lulls in case growth (probably multiple different outbreaks with different phases...or due to weekends), so it's possible the resultant deaths are adding in such a way as to result in a local minimum today in deaths. Could easily be similar tomorrow, and then way up again Friday. Impossible to say.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
This is a super interesting Twitter thread, just showing the perils of concluding too much from apparent curve flattening when you view things at a country level with multiple disconnected outbreaks being summed together.
In this case, it is possible for exponential growth to appear to grow sub-exponentially, even if the process is exponential.
I'm not suggesting that that is what is happening currently with US case growth...there are various factors which make me think it's not, actually.
But interesting all the same - it is possible to see apparent curve flattening (when looking at data plotted on a semilog scale), without any actual flattening having taken place - especially when looking at country-level data.
Dr. Bauer on Twitter
In this case, it is possible for exponential growth to appear to grow sub-exponentially, even if the process is exponential.
I'm not suggesting that that is what is happening currently with US case growth...there are various factors which make me think it's not, actually.
But interesting all the same - it is possible to see apparent curve flattening (when looking at data plotted on a semilog scale), without any actual flattening having taken place - especially when looking at country-level data.
Dr. Bauer on Twitter
deonb
Active Member
A "funny" on this thread is really an eyeroll emoji.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Here's an analysis of case underreporting by country. I've posted this before, but it looks like they've updated their results with plots of % reporting over time for many countries.
Looks like the US is at about 20% reporting (which is a little higher than I thought, but just within my private confidence interval - implies about 2 million US cases - so maybe keeping deaths below 50k is possible, if we are perfect...???)
Using a delay-adjusted case fatality ratio to estimate under-reporting
Looks like the US is at about 20% reporting (which is a little higher than I thought, but just within my private confidence interval - implies about 2 million US cases - so maybe keeping deaths below 50k is possible, if we are perfect...???)
Using a delay-adjusted case fatality ratio to estimate under-reporting
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Trevor Bedford has weighed in on this one - basically doesn't believe it because he thinks they have the serial interval wrong:
Trevor Bedford on Twitter
While I get why companies would love this,
Trump administration says frontline workers can go back to work sooner after virus exposure
I can’t see how just going back to work without quarantining for the 14 days is acceptable for workers to do given what we know of the incubation period. You can say you are going to check temps but we know fever isn’t a symptom for everyone, let alone those that do come down with symptoms are contagious something like three days before they appear.
As it is employers can’t even supply their workers with PPE to keep them safer, although some have started. No one wants to expose their families to this virus, let alone themselves or their customers. I can see why workers are striking.
Trump administration says frontline workers can go back to work sooner after virus exposure
I can’t see how just going back to work without quarantining for the 14 days is acceptable for workers to do given what we know of the incubation period. You can say you are going to check temps but we know fever isn’t a symptom for everyone, let alone those that do come down with symptoms are contagious something like three days before they appear.
As it is employers can’t even supply their workers with PPE to keep them safer, although some have started. No one wants to expose their families to this virus, let alone themselves or their customers. I can see why workers are striking.
New clusters of Infected patients/staff at nursing homes/care facilities in SFBay area on the rise.
Bay Area Nursing Home Outbreaks Account For At Least 169 Positive Cases
Reading the numbers it’s easy to see how the counts for the Bay are going to spike upward in the next few weeks from patients, but care workers testing positive will have infected others they were in contact with including their families and those won’t show up for a few weeks.
Bay Area Nursing Home Outbreaks Account For At Least 169 Positive Cases
Reading the numbers it’s easy to see how the counts for the Bay are going to spike upward in the next few weeks from patients, but care workers testing positive will have infected others they were in contact with including their families and those won’t show up for a few weeks.
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Unfortunately, for a couple posters, their “eyes roll” whenever new scientific reports or data are posted that contradict conclusions they reached too hastily — before the evidence was in. For those posters, a “funny” is a sign of confirmation bias at work.
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