C19 Testing Program that requires pre-screen for risk:
COVID-19 | Project Baseline
Everyone in my family failed to qualify, but if you do qualify, it's free.
We were interested in testing because we are required to keep our business open, and we have an employee who returned from South Korea during it's peak there. We paid him to stay at home for 14 days, but you never know. That and we bought a Tesla in a very crowded Costa Mesa showroom on March 10th, and then our advisor was sick for two weeks.
If you were exposed March 10 or before and either didn't come down with it, or had an asymptomatic case, you're not at risk to get it from those exposures. Most immunologists agree that the incubation period is 5-14 days.
I think from context they mean new cases per day per million people. Seems about right to me - 330 cases per day nationwide seems like a level where we could actually contact trace, quarantine, and isolate rapidly enough that it MIGHT just work. This virus is wily, so it’ll really take an extraordinary effort even at that low level of background infection.
Though that would have to be 330 actual cases and not 330 detected with the kind of testing levels we have now. It's also estimated that it will take an army of over 300,000 contact trace people to do the job. We're nowhere near having enough people to do that job. There are quite a few people who could be retrained to do the job (who have related skills already), but somebody needs to be putting together a contract tracing program and I see no evidence of this.
The sad thing is that this is really a false dilemma, and if we actually had good leadership, the nation could pull together, and there is some reason to think we could implement a system that actually can beat the virus, preventing further catastrophic spread, while also allowing resumption of significant economic activity. It does require federal leadership to maximize chance of success, though.
South Korea has been able to stay more open through this, but they are testing at levels that are a pipe dream in this country.
Another thing that would help is aggressive antibody testing and allowing those with the antibody to do jobs that put them more in contact with the public. The downside is some economically desperate people will try to get the virus so they can work. It's not going to help the economy much if the percentage of people in the population with the antibody is low.
But, whoever is behind the propaganda being pushed to sow division is definitely not emphasizing this. And of course our president is falling right into the trap. What is strange is that this is a perfect opportunity for him to maximize his re-election chances - a flawless response which gets the best of both worlds is probably his best hope. But looks like he is sticking with the strategy that got him there, even though it is not the best for the country.
If his people aren't behind it. My SO was reading an article about Trump's financial situation. His businesses are losing almost 1/2 million a day right now and he's heavily in debt. He's pushing to get the economy open again because he's teetering on bankruptcy.
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Keep in mind that the research suggests (I think I posted a paper here at some point) truly asymptomatic cases are much more common the younger the population. So extrapolating this 60% asymptomatic number to the general population cannot be done (so probably the real number is closer to 15-25% asymptomatic in a more typical population). To be clear: I can’t currently find the paper but I found one in the last week that had studied the asx rate vs age.
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I think Iceland found about 35% in their testing. I think that may be on the high side. It's probably more likely in the 25-35% range. But any percentage that high should be of concern to anyone who is trying to slow the spread. A decent percentage of people who are contagious, but don't know it and can't be detected except through the full virus test makes this thing almost impossible to stop short of herd immunity (either through cases or a vaccine).
Of course there is some incompetence involved, but I think this just shows how the virus is much harder to stop than we estimate. Many homes are trying to stop infiltration and still failing. The more we underestimate the virus, the worse the results. And unfortunately it looks like we’re about to start making the mistake nationwide, because there are insufficiently strict requirements gating transition to Phase 1. Even more to the point, there aren’t any actual metrics for going to phase 1. Very problematic. Without science-based metrics, the phase 1 experiment will fail, which will be costly in lives lost and economic output.
Remember that many people are staying home regardless of what the gov’t says to do, and they will remain there until it is safe, or desperation forces them to work. So economic output cannot return until the problem is solved, no matter what the government says is allowed.
Smart people who are high risk have been isolating since early on in this pandemic and will be for some time. Bill Maher had an interview with Andrew Sullivan last night. Sullivan is HIV positive and has always had lung problems. He's been isolating for 2 months now and said it could be a year for him. He's going nuts, but determined not to get it.
I'm thankful my father's exposure chances have been low thus far. He's in a home in a small town in Morro Bay, CA. He is their second oldest resident (100) and has multiple organs in terminal decline. His risk is astronomical. I keep tabs on COVID-19 news from Morro Bay and thus far the town has been very lightly hit. But it's probably only a matter of time. If something else doesn't get him first, this would almost certainly kill him.
Latest version of my chart comparing actual total deaths to the 03/30 IHME model mean total deaths for 04/17:
View attachment 533615
I'm not super thrilled with Excel's color table scheme. I colored up to +-50% to bring out those that are closer to 0%. The outliers dominate. Look at CT.
Not sure whats up with NM.
I think some states are under reporting deaths. For example Ron DeSantos has shown a lot of signs of hiding the ball in Florida.
The virus that keeps on giving? Article yesterday afternoon in
Wall Street Journal on recovered patients in South Korea turning up now, some with symptoms and positive test results, others no symptoms but positive. Researchers there say U.S. and other countries will be looking to South Korea for more answers on this as they continue their testing. “Doctors believe that the disease may have gone dormant and then come back, posing more challenges for testing”. The take-away:
““It’s clear that we don’t fully understand what it means to have immunity against this virus,” said Keiji Fukuda, a former WHO official who worked extensively on the H1N1, avian flu and other recent major outbreaks.”
WSJ:
South Korea’s New Coronavirus Twist: Recovered Patients Test Positive Again
Though the South Koreans have found that those who test positive again is very small and when they have done deeper dives for live virus, they can't find any. They are thinking now that some people still have RNA from the virus in their system after they recover, but there is no live virus left.
This disease also seems to relapse easily in the weeks following recovery. If a person tries to do things that are stressful on the system too quickly symptoms can return.
Some posts here used New York City as a sanity check for low IFR values, and when I took a closer look at that, I was a bit shocked to see that NYC's mortality is already within the order of magnitude of common IFR estimates, as the mortality is a lower limit for the IFR.
As of today, the mortality in New York City is 0.15%.
((8,448 + 4,264) / 8,400,000)
And to get a picture of what this means, I made this list:
If for 1 or 2 weeks ago,
you assume 50% or less were infected, that means the IFR can't be below 0.3%.
If you assume 20% or less were infected, that means the IFR can't be below 0.75%.
If you assume 15% or less were infected, that means the IFR can't be below 1.0%.
If you assume 10% or less were infected, that means the IFR can't be below 1.5%.
On the other end, I think nobody expects the IFR to be above 2.0%, probably mostly since South Korea's CFR is now ~2.2% and at the end of its curve. So I think we now have data that narrows down the possible range to one order of magnitude (for NYC).
A birthing center in NYC started testing all women coming in to give birth. I think they tested about 215 women and found about 1/8 were positive for COVID-19, though only 4 had any symptoms. This is a population more likely to have mild cases. Most pregnant women are under 40, most will be taking extra good care of themselves while pregnant, and women tend to be at lower risk than men. But if this is indicative of the NYC population, that would put the infection rate to be in the 15% range. Though this is a small sample and they didn't do any antibody testing. Some of those who tested negative for COIVD-19 might test positive for the antibody, which would push the infected and recovered population over 15%.
