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50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

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Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#191

Post by adam-a »

robocat wrote: post #136

Yet another full population study estimates: “We estimated the asymptomatic proportion at 17.9%” - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.20.20025866v...

I read this study and the recorded figure is around 50%. They're using some probability estimation based on the 50% discovered cases to account for people who had mild symptoms but not at the time they were tested (potentially after they left the ship). They identify flaws in the study though: the passengers were mostly old, so they are more likely to be symptomatic. They also didn't test everyone on the boat, only vulnerable, or symptomatic people, so their base numbers are missing some number of asymptomatic cases. It's not a perfect study and I think you could take 19% as a low bound on the figure and in wider society 50% is plausible.

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#192

Post by xenonite »

The original source of the linked article is a letter by Prof. Sergio Romagnani, sent to the newspaper Corriere Fiorentino, published here on March 15:

https://corrierefiorentino.corriere.it/firenze/notizie/crona...

As follow-up, they interviewed him, published on March 17:

https://corrierefiorentino.corriere.it/firenze/notizie/crona...

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#193

Post by huffmsa »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #42
nostromo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, like CFR, we don’t know how high the rates are if we have no idea how many people have or had it. Here’s a few first hand accounts of what the illness was like. These folks aren’t even that young and they describe it as being quite mild: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/coronavirus-patient-from-diamo... https://www.adn.com/opinions/national-opinions/2020/03/01/i-... https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/don-t-panic-say…

Anecdotes are not sufficient data

They are when there's little quantitative data to work with.

A lot of people's biggest questions are what the hell "COVID-19 symptoms" and apparently it means just about anything.

I'm suspicious of the 2 week long illness my family has just gotten over. Hit each of us differently. Predominantly nasal mucus, but the kids had some chest congestion, wife had a fever, and I had what felt like a sinus infection and a bit of a dry cough.

None of it particularly severe. Likely not COVID-19, but given the scattershot presentation of the disease in non-critical cases, I'm not ruling it out.

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#194

Post by notahacker »

rv-de wrote: post #157
torpidor wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I'm not a confirmed case but I've been isolation since Friday just out of general precaution, and I developed a mild chest tightness while here. I was sure it wasn't covid because I didn't have a fever, but just a few hours ago I checked again and I have a borderline one (99.4). Then my girlfriend got an email that someone tested positive from the same floor in her office. I don't qualify for a test and my…

Same here, persistent mild chest pressure. My girlfriend as well as myself are experiencing it. But it's so subtle that you start to question it at times. But especially when lying in bed it becomes quite annoying or frightening if I think too much about it.

The 'it feels worse when lying in bed' is something I can really identify with

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#195

Post by huffmsa »

hellofunk wrote: post #66
Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Covid-19 does end up being a dud, then we are in real trouble if/when an actual pandemic arrives -- because by then everyone will say the CDC is Crying Wolf.

It’s already proven not to be a dud — healthcare systems stretched to beyond 200% capacity is solid evidence of something no one has seen in recent memory. When youngish healthcare workers are dying, something is going on.

Not necessarily. If it's already in a sizable portion of the population but mostly undetected, it will kill some seemingly healthy young people.

They may have some unknown underlying condition, may have the genetics to trigger a lung destroying cytokinin storm, or may just have gotten unlucky.

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#196

Post by easytiger »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185
easytiger wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO predicted that 150 million people would be killed by avian flu https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2005/... Using the same logic that had lead to the severe predictions for cv19. For swine flu they promoted and stood by a CFR of 60%. Again turned out to be nonsense; nonsense known at the time to others https://jech.bmj.com/content/62/6/555.abstract

When it comes to these estimates, the WHO seem to be really bad at their job. But the reality now is that no matter what the estimated CFR is, Covid-19 guarantees that without containment there will be significantly more people in need of hospital care than there will be beds and support staff. And that will affect the final mortality rate, and push it higher than a normal flu season.

> and push it higher than a normal flu season.

last major flu season in Italy killed 24k people. We didn't immolate the global economy as a result

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#197

Post by ksec »

lgats wrote: post #71
endogui wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Italian number (75%) comes from testing everyone in a village of 3000 people. The Chinese number (1%) comes from testing everyone who comes to hospitals and maybe their family members. I would guess that the Chinese sample was selected for people displaying symptoms (asymptomatic people will not go to the clinic), while the Italian number biases for people early in the course of the disease. For the purposes of p…

How are the South Korean's coming up with such few positives if the disease is presumably spreading among the 70% with no symptoms?

They wore medical grade mask in the first place. Hygiene and cautious about it. They stopped and block visits from China ( or any where else with COVID ) very early on. Instead of acting everything is going to be great despite all the warnings, they were mindful and kept social gathering to minimal. ( Comparatively speaking ). Citizens were also proactively reporting if they were having symptoms, and government are testing every case as well as tracing where they have been and issue warning.

Medical Mask also meant even though the case broke out in a city with very high population density, the spread is far lower ( again comparatively speaking ).

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#198

Post by easytiger »

notahacker wrote: post #187
easytiger wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WHO predicted that 150 million people would be killed by avian flu https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2005/... Using the same logic that had lead to the severe predictions for cv19. For swine flu they promoted and stood by a CFR of 60%. Again turned out to be nonsense; nonsense known at the time to others https://jech.bmj.com/content/62/6/555.abstract

Overestimates of the severity of the threat have much less harmful consequences than underestimates. For a start, actual casualty statistics are not independent from mitigation actions taken.

> Overestimates of the severity of the threat have much less harmful consequences than underestimates.

We didn't take the estimates for SARS and h1n1 as "seriously" as now, and they are just as if not worse than this.And look what happened.

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#199

Post by mantap »

jansan wrote: post #174
he_is_legend wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge shortage of masks in the west - even hospitals are running out.

And that is the only reason for the claim that masks are useless. Of course they are not useless, Chinese aren't idiots.

It's a white lie by the media. If they told the truth to the public then they fear it would deprive hospitals of masks and cause worse outcomes for society.

Re: 50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic

#200

Post by notahacker »

easytiger wrote: post #198
notahacker wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overestimates of the severity of the threat have much less harmful consequences than underestimates. For a start, actual casualty statistics are not independent from mitigation actions taken.

> Overestimates of the severity of the threat have much less harmful consequences than underestimates. We didn't take the estimates for SARS and h1n1 as "seriously" as now, and they are just as if not worse than this.And look what happened.

I think Asian countries took the estimates pretty seriously. I think both would have been worse if they didn't, especially SARS.
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