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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

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone will get it as you say, the elders will too.

Yes, it isn't even about protecting the old. The sole purpose of the quarantines and self distancing is to avoid the healthcare system to collapse. Corona will become a constant companion for mankind, unless people get, one day, broadly vaxxed. But since we can't get people to vax for far worse diseases this won't happen.

Agreeing with your point: there is only one human virus thought to have been successfully totally eradicated: smallpox, which plagued humanity from ancient history until the late 1970s.

But herd immunity due to widespread (if imperfect) vaccination gets you much of the way there. Assuming flu vaccines continue to work, there probably can't be flu outbreaks that kill tens of millions of people as there have been in the past.

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

#402
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that I am not an M.D. But, consider getting a pulse oximeter. You can use it to assess your respiratory function (more) objectively. Anxiety and panic attacks can impact your oxygen saturation, but unlikely to do so to dangerous levels. Again, I'm not an MD. Maybe someone from the field of medicine can add their thoughts here.

Your comment made me want to get an Oximeter so i hopped on amazon right now. These were my results: https://i.imgur.com/LIta2jR.png One of these things just doesn't belong!!!

LOL, thanks a lot for sharing! Really made my day here, and I needed that :)

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

#403

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.

As I understand it (please correct me someone if I'm wrong), this was a freak mutation. Not to suggest it couldn't happen again. And we 100% should be prepared. But the concept of a virus leaving, mutating to be more deadly, and coming back, isn't on the 'expected' path.

And when people talking about leaving, they mean that the mass transmission stops and it continues to transmit, and mutate, among some small subset population (e.g. remote island, etc). Eventually it recurs in the main population, whether hitting people who never got it, or because it has mutated enough that prior protections don't defend against it.

Which is exactly what happens with the flu and the cold. Lots of viruses, constantly mutating. So much so that when the next season comes around it's like an entirely new virus to your body.

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

#404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What no one is talking about is how much social distancing/isolation is needed to avoid hospital saturation. I ran the numbers for Canada, and it looks like we'd need isolation measures for 2+ years. I don't see how that's a feasible solution long-term.

The numbers I ran for the UK put it at 12 years: No. People in UK: ~66,000,000 Est. proportion of people who will get sick: 80% Est. proportion of sick people who require intensive care: 5% (in Italy it's 10%) So that's 60,000,000 0.8 0.05 = 2,640,000 Number of ICU beds in the UK: ~4100 (90% occupied, but let's ignore that for now) Length of time ICU required: at least 1 week (probably longer, but let's ignore that t…

It's likely that we'll have a vaccine or at least some kind of treatment by the end of the year, so this should improve the prospects quite a bit.

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

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the results of the "over capacity"? Are hundreds of people who could have recovered from the virus dead today because they didn't have access to oxygen, or ICUs?

Yes, that is exactly what it means.

And what the reuters article is saying is that that's not the case at all. So, by your definition, it's not actually over capacity.

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

#406
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…

I think there is a more reasonable explanation why they are not testing you. Simply because they wouldn’t do anything with that information anyway. If the test is positive they’ll send you home to quarantine telling you to call back if your fever worsens. If the test would show negative, they’d tell you, guess what; “please call back if your fever worsens, and stay in quarantine anyway”. So the information doesn’t re…

You should not be giving medical advice. 3% of people with no fever who test positive end up needing ITU admission. Deterioration can be sudden after the first week.

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

#407
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Droplet infection is only really a problem within a couple of metres - SARS-CoV-2 does not seem to be aerosol spread.

I seems Coronavirus can stay active airborne for several hours.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Emerging research suggests that aerosolized SARS-Cov2 can stay active for hours.

Droplets (e.g. projectile saliva or mucus) fall out of the air quickly, but this is different.

Here's a source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973, and an upvote.

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

#408

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…

"Tangent: I wonder if it’s partly the changing media landscape from 2009 to 2020."

You think that the reaction of health agencies worldwide was the result of a "changing media landscape"? This takes quite an extraordinary perspective to serious posit.

And just to be clear, there was a huge reaction to SARS (a sibling to this virus) six years before H1N1. A massive, coordinated worldwide effort, quarantines, and whole-cities going quiet.

How do you blame the media for that, or was it a "changing media landscape" between 2003 and 2009? SARS thankfully was contained through heroic efforts so it never yielded the catastrophe we have now.

Regardless, they're very different viruses. Even if we pretend that the world "barely noticed" H1N1 (hint: It saw a huge response), health agencies and their experts have rang the warning bell about this virus because of the way it accelerates and presents in an area. They aren't jerking about CFR (which is a post-facto statistic), they're noticing that it hits an area and as it spreads the need for massive intervention explodes. That is why Wuhan got so much attention early on, and why cities are taking extraordinary, historic actions.

Rather than repeat myself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607318

Trying to casually blame the media is not useful.

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

#409

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…

How does that quote contradict the parent? If you were a doctor, and you wanted to communicate the concept of triage without baldly stating that people are being left to die, how would you phrase it?

Not sure how, but definitely wouldn't lie about it. Plenty of 80 year-olds would have a chance of making it, so they wouldn't be turned away according to that declaration.

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

#410
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…

I think there is a more reasonable explanation why they are not testing you. Simply because they wouldn’t do anything with that information anyway. If the test is positive they’ll send you home to quarantine telling you to call back if your fever worsens. If the test would show negative, they’d tell you, guess what; “please call back if your fever worsens, and stay in quarantine anyway”. So the information doesn’t re…

Did you even read the article? The article points out that identifying those infected and isolating them from those who are not reduces infection and also increases the number of those that get better.
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