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New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#71

Post by fspeech »

btilly wrote: post #59
scott_s wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China tested hundreds of thousands of people in provinces with known cases, and found very little evidence of asymptomatic circulation. See my comment from a week ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475853 , which quotes Bruce Aylward, an assistance director general and epidemiologist for the WHO. Our current evidence points to there not being millions of asymptomatic people.

I see your HN comment from 2 weeks ago and raise you with a point in this article lifted from a recent Science paper. Namely, ...individuals with undetected infections were so prevalent in China that they apparently were the infection source for 86 percent of confirmed cases. This is strong evidence of asymptomatic circulation. This conclusion is not in contradiction to the evidence behind your previous comment. In m…

The study is on the initial outbreak in Wuhan when testing was in short supply.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#72

Post by eanzenberg »

david_draco wrote: post #7
sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

From the number of deaths you can crudely infer the number of infected, assuming the mortality on the Diamond princess and in South Korea (1%). Demographic effects are in play that don't make this quite right.

More than half that cruise ship was older than 60. All the deaths on the ship attributed to coronavirus were people above 70 years old.

https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/severity/diamond_crui...

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#73

Post by catalogia »

rezeroed wrote: post #52
david_draco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the number of deaths you can crudely infer the number of infected, assuming the mortality on the Diamond princess and in South Korea (1%). Demographic effects are in play that don't make this quite right.

Aren't cruise ships generally an older crowd?

Yes, they're basically floating nursing homes doubling as casinos.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#75

Post by btilly »

hinkley wrote: post #41
sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

It doesn’t get called out, but when I read about the Spanish Flu I can’t help but feel that certain genotypes got very strong selective pressure. Conversely, there are probably genotypes running around today that are completely asymptomatic to Covid. You could have whole families shedding virus wherever they go and never even know what they’ve done. And one of the ways we learn about immunology is to study people who…

This is absolutely correct.

Quick recombination so that a beneficial gene can spread without losing genetic diversity of the population is is one of the benefits of sexual reproduction. And immune resistance to new threats is one of the top reasons why we need this capability.

In fact we broadcast signatures of our immune systems in pheromones and women are attracted to the smell of men whose immune systems are different from their own. This improves the probability that the children will be resistant to a wider range of possible diseases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_odour_and_sexual_attracti... is one of many places that you can start learning more about this topic.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#76

Post by dboreham »

scott_s wrote: post #22
sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

A comment by Bradley Kuszmaul on that blog post gives a good reason why the scenario presented is not likely: > Given the amount of testing being done in South Korea, we can rule out that there are a lot more people currently infected than we know about. And if there were a lot more people recovered than we know about, we would have seen deaths earlier in South Korea, since South Korea started their testing earlier.…

It's possible (likely imho) that there is some missing factor that we have yet to discover that explains the funky nature of the data. Something about the people rather than a property of the disease. Almost like an allergy: peanuts are quite fine for everyone to eat, except those with severe peanut allergies.

What we do know is that it can't be quite "there were zillions of people infected so when we talk about 1% IFR really it's 0.01% so everything is fine", because there are accumulating bodies in various localized places around the world. There's nothing we know to say that pattern wouldn't repeated everywhere.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#77

Post by fspeech »

makomk wrote: post #66
scott_s wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China tested hundreds of thousands of people in provinces with known cases, and found very little evidence of asymptomatic circulation. See my comment from a week ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475853 , which quotes Bruce Aylward, an assistance director general and epidemiologist for the WHO. Our current evidence points to there not being millions of asymptomatic people.

I haven't been able to make heads nor tales of his logic. In Guangdong province, at the peak of the outbreak, 0.47% of people tested were positive. Guangdong province has a population of about 110 million people. If that was a representative random sample, that would mean a lot of infections, so he's clearly relying on the fact that it's a sample of people who saw a doctor because they had symptoms. Except that I don…

It's 0.5% of people who were tested for the flu, not the general public.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#78

Post by btilly »

fspeech wrote: post #71
btilly wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your HN comment from 2 weeks ago and raise you with a point in this article lifted from a recent Science paper. Namely, ...individuals with undetected infections were so prevalent in China that they apparently were the infection source for 86 percent of confirmed cases. This is strong evidence of asymptomatic circulation. This conclusion is not in contradiction to the evidence behind your previous comment. In m…

The study is on the initial outbreak in Wuhan when testing was in short supply.

And has the testing story improved relative to the need?

Also from the article and the same Science paper, For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#79

Post by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 »

sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

Not to mention it is still extremely difficult to be tested in the US. Yes, doctors can test you, but you basically can’t get a test unless you have all of the symptoms and are sick enough to need to visit the ER.
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