50% – 75% of cases of Covid-19 are asymptomatic • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by lostapathy » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #284

lostapathy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really a trump fan - but at the same time, these people have to have time to do the work, they can't spend it all in press conferences. At a practical level on the hoarding - what can the president do, declare martial law? There aren't enough police/solidiers to enforce it anyway. Far better to get to work on the source of the panic, especially if you believe it can be contained if you prioritize that. It's c…

They can make clear, well publicized examples of people hoarding goods for resale. They make well publicized examples of people getting arrested in stores who are loading their carts up with every hand sanitizer bottle on the shelf. It doesn’t take more than a few very visible examples to clamp down on that kind of behavior.

That absolutely should be happening - but that needs to be done at the state or local level, or in consumer protection agencies. That's not a job for the president at times like this.

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

#312

Post by chinathrow » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

warabe wrote: post #237

I live in Japan and I experience mild symptoms since last Wednesday but not sure if my symptom is due to Covid-19. In Japan, You have meet two conditions to take a CPR test. 1. the symptoms with fever of 37.5 degrees or more continue for 4 days or more (for the eldery and those with underlying disease, "4 days" becomes "2 days") 2. you have strong laxity (malaise) or breathlessness (dyspnea), or you have underlying d…

Are you having issues with your smell/taste? A german virologist talked to symptomatic patients and found that most patients were stating that they lost smell/taste for days.

"Almost all infected people we interviewed, and this applies to a good two thirds, described a loss of smell and taste lasting several days."

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/gesundheit/coronavi...

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

#313

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

travmatt wrote: post #300

bart_spoon wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don’t know any reason that wouldn’t be the case, and many/most experts are already predicting a second wave - we don’t know the reasons that the 1918 pandemic mutated to become more lethal, so I don’t know how someone can say that it won’t happen again. Good planning would dictate that we not write off worst case scenarios without reason.

I have heard that the reason 1918 was so bad was because, among all the soldiers in the trenches, it could be virulent and still be able to spread effectively, so it had no selection pressure to not be virulent. (If an illness is too virulent, it usually dies out before it spreads too far.)

Covid is a bit different, because it has a longer incubation time, and therefore has more time to spread before the spreader knows not to infect others, but that wasn't the issue with the 1918 influenza outbreak.

(Note well: I am not an epidemiologist.)

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

#314

Post by dwohnitmok » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

sudosteph wrote: post #254

logicallee wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Here is a comedy show lambasting Donald Trump for saying he had a hunch this was the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNfmTMdoao0 Donald Trump's gut probably saved thousands of Americans through closing the borders early (this is a talking point he repeats again and again and I…

I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too. The nation-wide lockdown plus direct cash stimulus are exactly the measures I had hoped to see. Pandemics may be one of the rare situations where having authoritarian leadership can actually benefit the populace. Though I guess we have a while before it plays out completely. I have doubts about whether any non-populist president would hav…

The U.S. is not under lockdown. Far from it. Any lockdowns have been entirely done at the state and local level and even those are very spotty and a far cry from the lockdowns in Italy at the moment and in China.

Direct cash stimulus is one thing I'm definitely looking forward to. The other big one is the various cash infusions into key pillars of business (e.g. airlines).

I don't think it's been an abject failure, but I think the U.S. response to the pandemic has been at best middling and full of whiplash in both rhetoric and policy pointing to a reactionary plan rather than any sort of proactive attempt to get out ahead of the curve. We didn't learn a lot of the lessons we could've from South Korea and Singapore (and at the very least why couldn't we have imported their testing).

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

#315

Post by jhayward » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

sudosteph wrote: post #254

logicallee wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Here is a comedy show lambasting Donald Trump for saying he had a hunch this was the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNfmTMdoao0 Donald Trump's gut probably saved thousands of Americans through closing the borders early (this is a talking point he repeats again and again and I…

I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too. The nation-wide lockdown plus direct cash stimulus are exactly the measures I had hoped to see. Pandemics may be one of the rare situations where having authoritarian leadership can actually benefit the populace. Though I guess we have a while before it plays out completely. I have doubts about whether any non-populist president would hav…

> I've actually been really surprised by how well he has handled this so far too

No one who knows how national pandemic response works agrees with you. They know that trying to suppress testing, and criminal lack of executive management of the testing capacity was a known and must-be-fixed quantity 6 weeks ago. They know that hundreds of millions of PPE supplies should have been ordered under federal pandemic authorities 8 weeks ago. They know that emergency powers for production of ventilators should have been invoked 6-8 weeks ago, and still haven't been. It's bungled beyond belief and the only thing that will prevent something near a worst-case run of this pandemic will be some luck.

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

#316

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #289

thu2111 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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;…

> What they're saying is so far they've had to turn away noone; that everyone who needs treatment is getting it. > all patients with a reasonable chance of recovering and living an acceptable quality of life had been treated. These two quotes from you are mutually contradictory.

They're not quotes from me. I'm directly citing the head of ICU for all of Lombardy.

I think reading the Reuters article I'm citing in full is the best way to understand what's going on. I've also tried to summarise it here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607485

The confusion probably comes from the definition of treatment. It's possible for simultaneously nobody to be turned away due to lack of a bed, whilst terminal cases they know they can't save are now being turned off quicker i.e. less aggressive intervention than before. That's what Grasselli is saying:

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. But he added that this approach is under strain. “Previously, for some people we would have said, ‘let’s give them a chance for a few days.’ Now we have to be more stringent.”

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

#317

Post by yiyus » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #299

gourabmi wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only optimism could kill viruses.

Humans are wired for doomsday scenarios. Our brains love to imagine the worst case scenarios.... probably how we survived as a species for so long. Our brains have not evolved to deal with 24/7 media coupled with social media, HN, Reddit, YouTube and every other information source feeding us a nonstop stream of raw unfiltered data. Dunno where I’m going with this but our brains latch onto stuff like this and run wild…

The people in the saturated hospitals know what's going on. HN or Reddit had nothing to do with that.

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

#318

Post by rjtavares » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #196

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

At this rate in Italy alone it will kill more than 100k people. And the rate is increasing.

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

#319

Post by rabidrat » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #144

lovecg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better still, it would make the host feel unusually social.

There is a paper that showed that the flu virus makes people more socialable. It was done with students who took flu vaccine. They found people socialised more after they had the vaccine (and thus, were a little bit infected) compared to before. A literature review looked at the study and came up with the negative explanation - that people felt more secure or relaxed after getting the vaccine as they felt safer. Or w…

A vaccine does not make people "a little bit infected". Vaccines are deactivated virii, so your body develops the antibodies, without any actual infection.

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

#320

Post by E14n » Tue, Mar 17, 2020, 5:44 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #292

warabe wrote: post #237

I live in Japan and I experience mild symptoms since last Wednesday but not sure if my symptom is due to Covid-19. In Japan, You have meet two conditions to take a CPR test. 1. the symptoms with fever of 37.5 degrees or more continue for 4 days or more (for the eldery and those with underlying disease, "4 days" becomes "2 days") 2. you have strong laxity (malaise) or breathlessness (dyspnea), or you have underlying d…

Isn't it the case that most countries in the world don't have enough tests, it seems only South Korea does. I live in Switzerland and they are also restricting tests to higher risk groups, and people with worse conditions (which is a bit grim, how dead do I need to be before I can get a test?) Either it's due to Olympics, or just logistics. Will the Olympics even happen if Japan is declared "OK" but many guest nation…

I would guess their criteria for testing is people who could develop into a critical situation quickly because the tests are not 100 percent reliable and they are slow.

They were talking about having a televised only Olympics which might work if there were enough countries with athletes willing to fly to Japan.