Coronavirus

[rxlawdude]

Antibody tests are irrelevant for this. I am talking PCR. It has a non negligible false negative rate but basically non-existent false positive (not that that matters). Look at the Paul Romer link above, it is quite informative.

The PCR test is the current standard test and would be perfectly adequate for this purpose. Let’s try to do 100 million per month. Not sure why we are not already doing so. It’s not like people have anything else to do - they may as well get paid for making and administering tests.

Um,

Conclusions:
The false-negative rate for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing is highly variable: highest within the first 5 days after exposure (up to 67%), and lowest on day 8 after exposure (21%)."
False-Negative Rate of RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 Tests - American College of Cardiology

In the real world, testing conditions and process are far from perfect, and accuracy suffers. Researchers still don’t know what the real-world false positive rate is, but clinical sensitivity of RT-PCR tests ranges from 66% to 80%. That means nearly one in three infected people who are tested will receive false negative results.
Coronavirus tests are pretty accurate, but far from perfect

 

[golfcart]

Stand by. Georgia, Florida, and Alabama seem to be where your question will be answered in another week. That is, if they actually test and report results consistently and with veracity.

Despite over 20% of the Florida population being over 65 years old, and all of the doomsday talk after spring break, they have a death rate that is roughly 1/3 of the U.S. death rate as a whole. I hope they are as successful in their partial reopening as they have been to date. As far as the data goes, they seem to be pretty transparent with it.

Home

 

[rxlawdude]

Despite over 20% of the Florida population being over 65 years old, and all of the doomsday talk after spring break, they have a death rate that is roughly 1/3 of the U.S. death rate as a whole. I hope they are as successful in their partial reopening as they have been to date. As far as the data goes, they seem to be pretty transparent with it.

Home

Perhaps. We shall see. In the words of Hans Solo, "don't get cocky, kid."

 

[cusetownusa]

You do realize that those countries that have "eliminated" it are having second waves, right?

And test, trace: so if a pool party (who would be stupid enough to do that... oh, wait) with 100 people transmits to 50% of them, and it takes the incubation period to even know there was transmission, you think we can eliminate this by August.

Optimism. I like it, but realism is much better in dealing with pandemic viruses.

Do you have a source on a pool party where 50% of them got infected or are you just making numbers up?

 

[rxlawdude]

Do you have a source on a pool party where 50% of them got infected or are you just making numbers up?

That was a hypothetical. As made up as the fantasy that the US will be COVID-19 virus free by August.

 

[dfwatt]

I would argue that more people in that thread care more about their TSLA share price than anything else. I at least get that impression (strongly).

That very well could be. I'm just amazed that what was an overall very positive post about Elon except for his epidemiology got slammed with so many dislikes. It's like are we so tribal that we can't see any Shades of Grey anymore? God I hope not!

 

[deonb]

The deniers are rampant here.

Yes... yes they are.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Um,

Conclusions:
The false-negative rate for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing is highly variable: highest within the first 5 days after exposure (up to 67%), and lowest on day 8 after exposure (21%)."
False-Negative Rate of RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 Tests - American College of Cardiology

In the real world, testing conditions and process are far from perfect, and accuracy suffers. Researchers still don’t know what the real-world false positive rate is, but clinical sensitivity of RT-PCR tests ranges from 66% to 80%. That means nearly one in three infected people who are tested will receive false negative results.
Coronavirus tests are pretty accurate, but far from perfect

Exactly - non negligible. But it doesn’t matter that much - see the Paul Romer thread. It is way better than not testing. There is not a lot to debate here. We’d be way better off if we were doing 50 million tests a month. We still have a shortage (you have to read the articles about having tests but no one to test to see what the issues are - it is not because we have enough tests).

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

That was a hypothetical. As made up as the fantasy that the US will be COVID-19 virus free by August.

For the record, I did not say that the US would be free of virus (to a very low level) by August. Context matters.

However, it certainly is possible.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Um,

Conclusions:
The false-negative rate for SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR testing is highly variable: highest within the first 5 days after exposure (up to 67%), and lowest on day 8 after exposure (21%)."
False-Negative Rate of RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2 Tests - American College of Cardiology

In the real world, testing conditions and process are far from perfect, and accuracy suffers. Researchers still don’t know what the real-world false positive rate is, but clinical sensitivity of RT-PCR tests ranges from 66% to 80%. That means nearly one in three infected people who are tested will receive false negative results.
Coronavirus tests are pretty accurate, but far from perfect

I have trouble squaring these numbers with cases like the Ohio prison where 78% of the inmates tested positive (78% of Inmates in This Ohio Prison Have Contracted Coronavirus).
Looks like even more people in that prison have tested positive since then.
https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/reports/DRCCOVID-19Information.pdf

 

[Doggydogworld]

As far as the data goes, they seem to be pretty transparent with it.
Home

I've seen three issues with Florida's numbers that give me pause:
- The Rebekah Jones firing
- The medical examiner report fiasco
- They excluded snowbirds who weren't full time residents

Any single incident can be explained, but when a pattern forms I get suspicious.

 

[CyMan]

It's funny how we all assume we aren't going to be the person to die if we open everything up and go back to normal. I am in NY. People at my work have died, two of my girlfriends students died and a teacher died, I have an uncle that died.

I have no solution but there are people significantly underrating this virus because we all assume the odds are in our favor. What if you end up alone in a hospital bed trying to text your family and struggling to breath. Even I just assume it's not going to be me.

Saying we need to open up the bars and nail salons and accept more death so someone can make money sounds horrible. As far as NY goes this thing is definitely coming back full force when we all start taking the subway to work again. You can't contact trace someone in NYC. 1 person can expose 200 on one train ride. The news won't say it but obviously that's why NY and long island are bad. We cram into trains.

Maybe we will get a vaccine, maybe we won't. I'd rather not die before we find out though so you won't see me out and about this summer.

Same here - agree wholeheartedly with everything you say - I live in London where we have struggled hard to push NY into second place globally for Covid19 deaths and we have also worked hard to find a leader that can actually make yours seem almost competent. I shut down my business and sent my employees home 2 weeks before our PM decided to lockdown and I have already informed everyone that we are 100% not seeing anyone face to face before 1st Sep and that we will 'review' the position at that stage. In my heart I do not think I will return my staff to normal this side of 2021. Sadly though our Gov seems happy to stand back and allow another 60,000 innocents to 'die before their time' (one of the most pathetic sentences used by a leader in modern history).

However - having said the above I still get on with my own little life safe inside my M3 with the windows shut and gently filtering the outside air through my air con and a mask. If the covid19 pandemic taught me one thing it is that life in the slow lane is far nicer than that stupid rat race that I was caught up in. I actually get more work done now and feel a lot less stressed. Long may the lockdown continue

 

[SVMike]

I think at most it is $100 billion or so to eliminate the virus from the US with test/trace/treat/isolate/quarantine/support. The best part is: the money we put into those efforts actually is additive to GDP! It’s part of the economy!

How do you get to $100B?

The first Congressional relief bill was almost $3T. And they are talking about another $3T.
And this doesn't include state and local government costs.
Nor the fallout from all the businesses that have to shutdown permanently and that cascading effect.

I'm not an economist, so I don't know how to gather and properly account for all these things without double counting.
But $10T looks like a good first approximation.

Or are you saying that $100B is just the engineering cost of getting a vaccine developed and produced?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Or are you saying that $100B is just the engineering cost of getting a vaccine developed and produced?

It's an estimate of the cost of test, trace, isolate, quarantine, etc. Maybe it'll be more like $300B - who knows. If you go look on Google people have estimated the cost and I think $100B is probably in the ballpark. But it doesn't really matter - it's certainly going to be a lot less than $10T.

That's the whole point! If we want to save money, we need to be intelligent like the rest of the world!

Some money (I think on the order of $25B - you can look it up) was already allocated to this in the last bill passed. But there's remarkably little leadership to establish this obvious (and proven!) solution to the problem as the plan of record.

Way faster than a vaccine. Excellent stopgap while we wait for the vaccine to be ready. I thought we'd be there by now - it's been three months! (Though I'm not entirely surprised based on the rolling train wreck we have been witnessing over that time period.)

 

[Schly]

I always say "In a zombie apocalypse, nobody thinks they are going to be the zombie, but there sure end up being a lot of zombies."

 

[rxlawdude]

I have trouble squaring these numbers with cases like the Ohio prison where 78% of the inmates tested positive (78% of Inmates in This Ohio Prison Have Contracted Coronavirus).
Looks like even more people in that prison have tested positive since then.
https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/reports/DRCCOVID-19Information.pdf

Actually, the official cite you gave clearly states that 9,098 persons were tested, of which 4,644 were positive. Further, you don't have data on how many tests were repeated on individuals, which, of course, reduces the odds of a false negative.

 

[dfwatt]

Despite over 20% of the Florida population being over 65 years old, and all of the doomsday talk after spring break, they have a death rate that is roughly 1/3 of the U.S. death rate as a whole. I hope they are as successful in their partial reopening as they have been to date. As far as the data goes, they seem to be pretty transparent with it.

Home

Spring break would have spread covid-19 among people going back to college or north in general and not nearly as much Florida residents. On the other hand there was a recent firing of a FL state data manager because she did not like the way Ron DeSantis was posting numbers, claiming that he was deliberately fudging on deaths and cases. I don't know enough to have a firm opinion on that but it was worrisome.

 

[gerebgraus]

It's funny how we all assume we aren't going to be the person to die if we open everything up and go back to normal. I am in NY. People at my work have died, two of my girlfriends students died and a teacher died, I have an uncle that died.

I have no solution but there are people significantly underrating this virus because we all assume the odds are in our favor. What if you end up alone in a hospital bed trying to text your family and struggling to breath. Even I just assume it's not going to be me.

Saying we need to open up the bars and nail salons and accept more death so someone can make money sounds horrible. As far as NY goes this thing is definitely coming back full force when we all start taking the subway to work again. You can't contact trace someone in NYC. 1 person can expose 200 on one train ride. The news won't say it but obviously that's why NY and long island are bad. We cram into trains.

Maybe we will get a vaccine, maybe we won't. I'd rather not die before we find out though so you won't see me out and about this summer.

600 Physicians Say Lockdowns Are A ‘Mass Casualty Incident’

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Actually, the official cite you gave clearly states that 9,098 persons were tested, of which 4,644 were positive. Further, you don't have data on how many tests were repeated on individuals, which, of course, reduces the odds of a false negative.

Guys, as I said originally, the false negative rate is non-negligible, but it also doesn't really matter that much. If you have enough tests you continue to do tests. And someone who is pre-symptomatic with low viral loads who tests negative isn't really a false negative. It's a test that is done too early. Obviously you'll be rechecking people who are identified to be at higher risk based on all the other positives you find. Paul Romer thread goes through all of this in detail. This isn't rocket science.

The idea is to get a picture of where the disease is (and get rid of all infections of unknown source). It's like having a puzzle with 80% of the pieces in place, rather than 5% of the pieces. Makes it a lot easier to fill in the remaining pieces if you have most of the pieces in place already.

 

[dfwatt]

For the record, I did not say that the US would be free of virus (to a very low level) by August. Context matters.

However, it certainly is possible.

We'll be rid of the virus by August if there is a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

Back to reality - Or in this case the lack thereof.

20% of the US just indicated that they would not get covid-19 vaccination even if it becomes available and is regarded as safe and effective. This proves that mass psychosis or some version of it (social media brainwashing via ridiculous conspiracy theories) is a sizable factor in US politics.