Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#71

Post by AstralStorm » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:47 PM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #33

mikejb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the German man [...] said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Unfortunately, this isn't a valid assumption. Lots of people come in to work sick - just yesterday we had to ask our boss to send someone home because they showed up to work caughing and sneezing all day (Today, two other coworkers aren't coming in because they're not feeling…

Also, just today there are reports [1] they released a 78 year old with both diabetes and hypertension - two of the six risk factors named so far - after he tested positive for nCoV-2019, went into critical condition, and fully recovered & tested negative. Even for the elderly who have serious complicating health conditions, it's probably not a death sentence (unless you are immunocompromised). It's just a problem gi…

Less transmissible than flu, somewhat more deadly. But press needs sensational headlines...

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#72

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

avery-dawn wrote: post #10

Gravityloss wrote: post #2

Is testing fast now? Do patients who don't have symptoms spread it effectively? I'm not an expert, but I see two main possibilities: It can be contained. Or it will spread all around the world and only vaccines will later make it go away, if a large enough percentage of the population is vaccinated. How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays? And mass production...

> How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays? https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/artic... From this article: “If the vaccine appears effective and safe in a number of animal species, it will go into clinical trials on humans. This takes at least one year even if expedited,” Yuen said.

Inovio of San Diego already have a computer designed but untested DNA vaccine. In the past DNA vaccines have not been approved for use in humans but they are partnered with a Chinese company and I'm not sure the Chinese will be as conservative as the FDA in terms of trying things. [pasted from another thread]

Their previous Elboa vaccine seemed to work well in tests though I think it never made it to the field. http://ir.inovio.com/news-and-media/news/press-release-detai...

I sometime think the testing protocols are a bit over cautious when you have a candidate that is probably safe and quite likely effective.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#73

Post by contravariant » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

edejong wrote: post #69

contravariant wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just dividing the number of (known) deaths by the number of known infections. As other's have pointed out this isn't the most reliable way of doing it, but it gives some indication.

No, it does not give any information for a multitude of reasons. 1. Deaths are lagged by known cases 2. Both are skewed distributions 3. These people might have received professional care when it was available. During an outbreak, the available health care will decline.

Those just mean the estimate is inaccurate. When dealing with something entirely unknown almost any estimate is better than nothing.

Sure it could end up being off by a factor 10 either way, but even then it's still informative.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#74

Post by mikejb » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

edejong wrote: post #24

mikejb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the German man [...] said he had a mild fever in the weekend and slept it off, and came to work on Monday, which must mean he had recovered. Unfortunately, this isn't a valid assumption. Lots of people come in to work sick - just yesterday we had to ask our boss to send someone home because they showed up to work caughing and sneezing all day (Today, two other coworkers aren't coming in because they're not feeling…

I would turn that around. There is a substantial amount of healthy individuals who end up in in ICU or worse due to the virus. This is certainly different from the common flu, for example.

I may be misunderstanding you, but in case I was misunderstood: I didn't mean to say that the virus is harmless. It may have longer-term effects, and just because it is more deadly when certain conditions are met, we shouldn't just throw people who meet these conditions under the bus, or assume it's going to be harmless in other cases - it isn't.

But it's hard work not to fall for the paranoia that is fed (partly as side-effect) by the current attention-seeking headline-business formerly known as news.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#75

Post by edejong » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #73

edejong wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does not give any information for a multitude of reasons. 1. Deaths are lagged by known cases 2. Both are skewed distributions 3. These people might have received professional care when it was available. During an outbreak, the available health care will decline.

Those just mean the estimate is inaccurate. When dealing with something entirely unknown almost any estimate is better than nothing. Sure it could end up being off by a factor 10 either way, but even then it's still informative.

Estimations work when dealing with symmetrical distributions. You might be wrong either way. But these distributions are fundamentally not symmetrical! Also, you should compare deaths with number of cases a couple of days ago (like 7), since that’s the time between diagnosis and death.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#76

Post by uranusjr » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

edejong wrote: post #70

yorwba wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Wikipedia, the flu causes 3-5 million severe cases and 650,000 deaths worldwide each year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

Yes, but the mortality rate of the common flu is much, much lower. Mortality of admitted patients is around 11% according to latest Lancet article.

The key here is “admitted.” Reports from Wuhan all indicate the hospitality rate is much much lower than usual circumstances since the patient count is over the roof (due to CCP trying to cover up initial cases), and a lot of patients don’t get treatments at all as a result. The high mortality rate is expected sunce only the most acute cases are admitted.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#77

Post by scruple » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #67

allovernow wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine China is severely underreporting the numbers. I got downvoted last time I suggested it, but this is a modern day, protectionist, authoritarian state which controls what its people can say and see.

I don't know what particular phrasing you got downvoted for, but if it's along the lines of "China is authoritarian, therefore underreporting", that's a a non-sequitur and I can see why it would get downvoted. What is true is that authoritarian regimes regularly use misreporting when it's in their own interest. If you want to make a solid argument, you need to explain why it is in the Chinese government's interest to…

They officially reported 144 influenza deaths in 2018, out of 700,000 infected. Would you prefer it if we said, "They use dramatically different statistical methods?" Lies, damned lies, and statistics, etc... Why? God only knows.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#78

Post by irq11 » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

edejong wrote: post #75

contravariant wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those just mean the estimate is inaccurate. When dealing with something entirely unknown almost any estimate is better than nothing. Sure it could end up being off by a factor 10 either way, but even then it's still informative.

Estimations work when dealing with symmetrical distributions. You might be wrong either way. But these distributions are fundamentally not symmetrical! Also, you should compare deaths with number of cases a couple of days ago (like 7), since that’s the time between diagnosis and death.

The distributions are asymmetrical in exactly the way that argues against your fear-mongering across this thread: only the most serious cases are self-selecting for treatment and testing.

The infection rate is, in all likelihood, much higher than these early numbers suggest. People don’t go to the hospital for sniffles, and therefore, the bulk of infections don’t show up. Deaths almost always get counted.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#79

Post by majewsky » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

scruple wrote: post #77

majewsky wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what particular phrasing you got downvoted for, but if it's along the lines of "China is authoritarian, therefore underreporting", that's a a non-sequitur and I can see why it would get downvoted. What is true is that authoritarian regimes regularly use misreporting when it's in their own interest. If you want to make a solid argument, you need to explain why it is in the Chinese government's interest to…

They officially reported 144 influenza deaths in 2018, out of 700,000 infected. Would you prefer it if we said, "They use dramatically different statistical methods?" Lies, damned lies, and statistics, etc... Why? God only knows.

I would prefer if such evidence had been included in the initial post to make for a full argument.

Re: Japan confirms coronavirus infections without symptoms

#80

Post by allovernow » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #67

allovernow wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine China is severely underreporting the numbers. I got downvoted last time I suggested it, but this is a modern day, protectionist, authoritarian state which controls what its people can say and see.

I don't know what particular phrasing you got downvoted for, but if it's along the lines of "China is authoritarian, therefore underreporting", that's a a non-sequitur and I can see why it would get downvoted. What is true is that authoritarian regimes regularly use misreporting when it's in their own interest. If you want to make a solid argument, you need to explain why it is in the Chinese government's interest to…

It isn't just the fact that it is authoritarian, it's the combination of authoritarianism, protectionism, and an evident practice of lying to its own population in order to force narratives. Sure some of this applies to the U.S., but we don't have social credit scores or unmentionable events like Tiananmen.

I imagine one strong motivation could be that the CCP is trying to delay or prevent quarantine on the global stage, which would cripple the Chinese export based economy. Could be justified with the assumption that although numbers are worse, China expects it will nonetheless successfully contain the outbreak before other nations need to shut down flights and such.

Governments lie all the time. Communist style dictatorships like China and North Korea are particularly guilty, as their authoritarian rule depends on misinformation - not to mention in decades past, underreporting of negative data was not unheard of, for example in harvests of food when regions were in famine.

We have nothing to go on but China's word for these figures and their entire government is predicated upon varying degrees of misinformation. Any data which could possibly paint China in a negative light should be scrutinized.