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Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

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Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#151

Post by amscanne »

_euac wrote: post #128
wutbrodo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Diamond Princess likely had a very atypical (older) population than the general population though. This would dovetail with the fact that places like sub-Saharan Africa and India haven't been hit very hard yet; they also happen to be _very_ young compared to Western countries.

I don't know if people are aware of this, but there's an increasing suspicion that countries still using the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis might be seeing [1]way lower infection rates. If that's the case, it'd explain why developed countries are bearing the brunt of the pandemic. A very interesting example of similarly developed countries with comparable (but not equal) populations and population density, but differen…

The map in [4] suggests that every adult in France would have received the BCG vaccine, as they only stopped in 2017 (and receive it as an infant). There are so many confounding variables here, I don't think anyone should be deriving any evidence by looking at the case charts like that.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#152

Post by [deleted] »

casefields wrote: post #117
Daishiman wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hypothesis has already been tested by Stanford and found to be false.

New signs suggest coronavirus was in California far earlier than anyone knew: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-11/bay-area...

[deleted]

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#153

Post by rovolo »

makomk wrote: post #140
cgb223 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, we're now doing significant amounts of testing, but we're still primarily testing only those with severe symptoms Its not a significant amount of testing if we're only testing those with severe symptoms Here in SF at least there are scores of people I know who all were sick with a "weird flu" at some point from February to now who would all kill for a test to show that they have COVID immunity. These are…

The US is doing a significant amount of testing compared to what's available almost anywhere else on the planet. I think Germany is still beating them, but they're basically the only large country that is at this point. Journalists here in the UK have actually been pointing to the US as one of the examples that proves we're the ones failing at testing for a while now.

Where are you getting that data? The 'Our World in Data' site says reporting is inconsistent, but the data they do have shows per-capita Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Austria doing more than the US, and France, the UK, and the Netherlands doing less.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/full-list-cumulative-tota...

(I'm using cumulative because the daily numbers are missing for Germany, France, and the Netherlands)

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#154

Post by sjg007 »

pm_me_ur_fullz wrote: post #146
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is that the most preposterous hypothesis that doesn't warrant any review? It's not. What is preposterous is advancing the hypothesis without any meaningful evidence, to the detrement of more useful topics, or even useful discussion of the same topic. It's one thing to be an epidemiologist saying "hey, let's see how we can double check the exact origins of this", which is a potentially useful line of inquery. It…

People don't advance a hypothesis without enough anecdotes to say "look over there" People like you can help fill gaps of savants saying "this isn't a constructive methodology but it isn't inherently without merit" versus "I don't want to believe that because thats not consensus right now" versus "hm thats interesting maybe worth a look sometime before the 2022 congressional committee to fund the epidemiologists?"

We would have seen a higher death rate if the virus was here earlier.

As for hiding within the flu statistics, we test for influenza so these deaths would not have been classified as flu related.

It's possible to have flu and covid-19 but early on it would have been rare. It's probably still somewhat rare.

I am sure flu surveillance samples will be retroactively tested for the virus that causes covid-19. Stanford did this and they have mid to late Feb.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#155

Post by pm_me_ur_fullz »

casefields wrote: post #117
Daishiman wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hypothesis has already been tested by Stanford and found to be false.

New signs suggest coronavirus was in California far earlier than anyone knew: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-11/bay-area...

Which is something people have been discussing for weeks here in San Francisco, including RNs that have been thinking back to early January.

So how do we move this from a collection of anecdotes and immediate dismissal to prioritizing some antibody tests to the bay area. Possibly reopening it faster and keeping it open.

Just acknowledging the possibility can influence public policy, and the research that some other people want to see before they can acknowledge it.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#156

Post by jsnell »

gridlockd wrote: post #126
jsnell wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a study of representative German households, but just those in a Gangelt. A small town that was basically the ground zero for the epidemic in Germany. Those numbers do not generalize to Germany as a whole, let alone other countries. Also, the particular antibody tests they used appears to have a much higher FP rate than they claimed. Another study found 4% FPs rather than <1% like the press release for the…

It does generalize to my point, because we're talking about the basic reproduction number of the virus. It is not supposed to vary dramatically across populations. If COVID-19 can spread to 15% of that particular population within that timeframe, and the estimate of a basic reproduction number of 2-3 predicts that this is not possible, then the estimate must be wrong. > Also, the particular antibody tests they used a…

R0 isn't a fundamental constant, but just an estimated average. It's affected both by human behavior and random chance. In this case, the town had a very early superspreader event, which shifted them far ahead of the curve.

A FP rate that high will make a very significant difference in the results. (How large a difference depends on whether the 15% is a raw number or if it's been adjusted based on the expected test specificity and sensitivity. One would hope nobody would just report the raw numbers. But since all we've gotten from this study is basically a press release, expecting scientific rigor seems ill advised.)

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#158

Post by usaar333 »

Retric wrote: post #150
usaar333 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not plausible they caught most cases. Here's the result of randomized testing in Iceland, which also has the virus under control and has done even more testing per capita ( https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?query=fe... ) Randomized testing was still finding 0.6% of the population (outside those otherwise quarantined already) actively infected. This means even in Iceland, less than half of infe…

South Korea cases peaked 45 days ago, Iceland peaked 2 weeks ago so their CFR are not directly comparable. Compare Iceland with a South Korea at a similar point post peak infections and the CFR look similar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I... South Korea had 5 deaths per day on both 2/29 and 4/13 that’s a horrible sign.

I'm extrapolating from hospitalization rates for that reason. Otherwise, you'd get a 0.45% CFR in Iceland.

Looking at the raw data, I don't think Korea ever had below 3% using deaths/recoveries. Iceland is at 0.75% right now. Two weeks after peak, Korea was at a crude CFR (deaths/total confirmed) at 1.1%

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#159

Post by chrisco255 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #63
jcp2fa wrote: post #6

> Cough (7.5%), shortness of breath (1.4%), and fever (0.7%) were all uncommon among COVID-positive individuals It seems the more important point here is that the majority of the COVID-positive individuals were asymptomatic, putting another datapoint towards the conclusion that there are orders of magnitude more people that have this disease than have tested positive. We need more studies to gather data on these asym…

> Imagine if 10+% of the population already had COVID and where immune By some estimates we need over 80% of the population to get it in order to achieve herd immunity, so if only 10% of the population has it we're not very close at all to this being over.

If 10% already have it wouldn't that mean we're only a few weeks away from it fizzling out, given the rapid rate at which it spreads?

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#160

Post by microtherion »

makomk wrote: post #140
cgb223 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, we're now doing significant amounts of testing, but we're still primarily testing only those with severe symptoms Its not a significant amount of testing if we're only testing those with severe symptoms Here in SF at least there are scores of people I know who all were sick with a "weird flu" at some point from February to now who would all kill for a test to show that they have COVID immunity. These are…

The US is doing a significant amount of testing compared to what's available almost anywhere else on the planet. I think Germany is still beating them, but they're basically the only large country that is at this point. Journalists here in the UK have actually been pointing to the US as one of the examples that proves we're the ones failing at testing for a while now.

It depends on where you draw the line for "large", but the US is really not doing all that great (though it has caught up significantly over the last month): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Drawing the line at ~5M inhabitants, the following countries/territories have conducted more tests per million population than the US: The UAE, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Austria, Hong Kong, Australia, Spain, New Zealand, Israel, Czechia, Singapore, Canada, Belgium, South Korea, and Russia.

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