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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

#261

Post by bcrosby95 »

nostromo wrote: post #26

I wonder if this will be like H1N1. At first we only identified extreme cases and we had these terrifying reported fatality rates. Then we identify more and more mild or asymptomatic cases and the rates drop and drop. We’ve already seen how CFR was reported as 3 or 4%. Then on the cruise ship full of people over 60 it’s 0.7%. If there are lots of mild or asymptomatic cases it will likely be much lower. H1N1 was ident…

You're comparing a virus that early on was reported as 3-4% to one that early on was reported as 0.4%.

The cruise ship and South Korea are probably closest to the true death rate of this virus. CFR in South Korea is currently around 0.8%. A common "educated guess" I see from people that work on this is its probably around 0.5%-1% assuming you can get the care needed for it.

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

#262

Post by majos »

easytiger wrote: post #163
nostromo wrote: post #26

I wonder if this will be like H1N1. At first we only identified extreme cases and we had these terrifying reported fatality rates. Then we identify more and more mild or asymptomatic cases and the rates drop and drop. We’ve already seen how CFR was reported as 3 or 4%. Then on the cruise ship full of people over 60 it’s 0.7%. If there are lots of mild or asymptomatic cases it will likely be much lower. H1N1 was ident…

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

The estimates in that first article seem oddly cavalier:

> “Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak," said Prof [of mathematical biology at ICL] Ferguson. "There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably."

As of 2014 the number of deaths is [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5...

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

#263

Post by watwut »

alkonaut wrote: post #106
watwut wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and practice that. But even in tech where work from home is an option and companies are rich enough to let people stay in bad anyway, in many companies it is treated as heroic to push through. Meaning, staying at home makes you seen as less comited and less passionate. Thus, people avoid it.

Those environments are created by employees themselves. If you don't tell someone with a cold to go home, you are part of the problem.

By employees and by leadership. It absolutely does matter more what management does and how management acts then what random employees do.

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

#264

Post by mateo411 »

bart_spoon wrote: post #258
travmatt wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it could be like the 1918 Spanish flu - a bad first wave that was most dangerous to the elderly, and a second wave that mutated and killed mostly young adults.

I don't know why there would be any reason to believe that would be the case. Generally viruses become less deadly over time, not more. The Spanish flu was an outlier.

I'm pretty sure the Spanish flu did become less deadly over time. I'm sure the virus didn't go away after the second wave, however humanity started developing an immunity to it.

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

#265

Post by bart_spoon »

ash wrote: post #165
confeit wrote: post #43

> "The vast majority of people infected with Covid-19, between 50 and 75%, are completely asymptomatic but represent a formidable source of contagion". The Professor of Clinical Immunology of the University of Florence, Sergio Romagnani > Asymptomatic infection has been reported, but the majority of the relatively rare cases who are asymptomatic on the date of identification/report went on to develop disease. The pro…

Are there countries who conduct serologic tests? PCR tests (widely used?) wouldn't catch people who got the infection, developed antibodies with no or mild symptoms, but didn't transmit the virus around at the moment test is taken. From the article about Covid-19 serologic test development: > The serologic tests, which are different from the ones used to diagnose active infection, would allow researchers to test the…

> Are there countries who conduct serologic tests? PCR tests (widely used?) wouldn't catch people who got the infection, developed antibodies with no or mild symptoms, but didn't transmit the virus around at the moment test is taken.

Not that I know of. On the most recent "This Week in Virology" podcast, they mentioned that China has recently said they won't be doing serologic testing, which lead them to think that China has reason to believe the disease is far more widespread than their official numbers show. This may be in line with the idea that most infections are asymptomatic.

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

#266

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

thu2111 wrote: post #245
hellofunk wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been so widely reported, not sure where to start. Operating rooms at many Italian hospitals have been closed and turned into ICUs to handle the demand, which means that surgeries in many places are no longer possible. You can read about this in any of hundreds of media outlets. Here's one: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8095835/Overwhelmed...

You don't seem to be contradicting me. I'm not saying everything is normal or other operations weren't cancelled. I'm saying that at this time, Italy is saying they have not run out of capacity to treat CV patients. And they definitely aren't 200% over capacity (for CV) as claimed.

They have not enough ICU beds.

That is pretty much the definition of running out of capacity.

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

#267

Post by thu2111 »

bob33212 wrote: post #249
thu2111 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... Lombardy intensive care coordinator Grasselli said he believed that, so far, all patients with a reasonable chance of recovering and living an acceptable quality of life had been treated. I wonder if we're getting mixed messages here; that is, it's inevitable doctors give up on some cases and unplug them from the ICU but that is always a ri…

Doctors "Give Up" on people all the time. If you have advanced pancreatic cancer, are 85 and a heavy smoker, most doctors are going to suggest you go home and spend your last few days with loved ones.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at.

What I see at the moment on HN and elsewhere is a lot of people who seem to believe that in Italy the hospitals are already overrun and people are being turned away in large numbers because all the beds are gone already days ago.

But this doesn't match what is actually happening there, according to the Italian government. What they're saying is so far they've had to turn away noone; that everyone who needs treatment is getting it.

I think this mismatch is coming from a couple of places. One is mis-interpreting doctors switching off life support for patients who can theoretically be kept alive using e.g. ECMO but for whom their lungs are destroyed and they wouldn't really have a life afterwards. That's terribly sad but isn't the same thing as patients who are in the middle of making a full recovery being switched off, or people who could be saved being denied beds because there just aren't enough. Another is a confusion between "we're about to run out of beds" and "we think we're about to run out of beds".

I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation here, but we have also have to keep our heads and double check things being claimed about that seriousness, as it's always tempting in times of crisis to lose our heads and go full sandwich-board. Maybe by tomorrow Italy will actually be there, but as of yesterday at least, it seems they aren't.

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

#268

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

thu2111 wrote: post #226
8fingerlouie wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday the news was that anybody over 80 is not treated. They simply don't have the capacity for it, and survival chances are better for people under 80.

Are you sure? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... Lombardy intensive care coordinator Grasselli said he believed that, so far, all patients with a reasonable chance of recovering and living an acceptable quality of life had been treated. I wonder if we're getting mixed messages here; that is, it's inevitable doctors give up on some cases and unplug them from the ICU but that is always a ri…

I don't understand what you don't understand. That quote is literally saying they are over capacity.

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

#269

Post by lostapathy »

neuronic wrote: post #181
piokoch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Italy more than 300 people die every day, the overall mortality rate is between 3% and 8% this is 10 times more than 0.4%. Even if 50%-75% are asymptomatic, there is still large percentage of critical cases that need ICU treatment and currently we are not prepared for it. For me the title should be 25% of cases require treatment in hospital and we are not able to put 25% of population into hospitals, so, very like…

That's assuming that all reported cases make up all ACTUAL cases. This is likely completely wrong. What if a much much larger chunk of Italy is already infected and simply not showing symptoms? You would never get permission for a test. Estimates, I found them on Germany's top Robert Koch Institute website [1], suggest that Wuhan underreported cases by a factor between 4.5x and 11.1x (3 separate studies with differen…

Surely the amount of symptomatic but untested people in Italy is high. If you're sick but readily able to manage the symptoms, and you're already under lockdown because the health system is overloaded, you're not going to bother going in to get tested - you're going to let the doctors work on the people who need it.

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

#270

Post by spookthesunset »

GreaterFool wrote: post #124

Here’s another question: isolation... and then what? Sit at home until 2021 when we maybe have a vaccine? I don’t see how we make this virus disappear so while I can see how people staying at home can stop the spread, what happens when they leave? Back to square one? Maybe UK approach is better. Maybe we should infect young people deliberately. Here’s Netflix, some books, some video games, some virus, stay at home fo…

It really bothers me to see comments like this get buried. The comment asks a perfectly valid, well articulated question.

How long can these lockdowns continue before their costs outweigh their befits?

It should be safe and okay to question and criticize the actions society is taking right now. Groupthink is its own form of a virus and can be just as destructive, if not more destructive than a physical virus.

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