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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

#161

Post by pm_me_ur_fullz »

sjg007 wrote: post #154
pm_me_ur_fullz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

> What if this is already the "second wave". Something with lower symptoms wouldn't have warranted checking for a new strain, complications and deaths would fit into the normal distribution of last fall's flu season with no outlier spikes.

I think you are misunderstanding what wave means here. It means an earlier not as deadly strain/conditions had already occurred, just like in the Spanish Flu in the spring versus the fall deadly resurgance, but at lower orders of magnitude. The strain itself doesn't have to be different if the co-morbidities were different - such as different opportunistic viruses or bacterias being present.

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

#162

Post by tamaharbor »

stetrain wrote: post #147
kevingadd wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending out checks is pretty popular with voters, which is why he's insisting on having his personal signature on them in an election year.

I'm just not clear on which government is chomping at the bit to cause a recession given an excuse.

Because Democrats.

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

#164

Post by yters »

Retric wrote: post #129
yters wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do you think about iceland?

Iceland’s peak was significantly more recent than China or South Korea which continued to have regular deaths over a month after their peak. So, my expectation is their deaths will likely double in the next three weeks. Which would be consist with ~1/2 their ICU cases dying. That said it’s a small sample size so significant variability is possible. Just compare new cases vs new deaths here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w…

I wish the media would focus more on the outliers of the doomsday narrative, as well as the long term consequences of the lockdown solutions being pushed.

covid-19 is bad, but seems nowhere near comparable to what much of the developing world faces on a daily basis (4000 kids die a day from malaria?!?)

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

#165

Post by jrockway »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #32
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is that it's much more than 10%. In NYC I think it's at least 20%-30% by now. Obviously, I don't have any more data than what you can find online, but anecdotally, I think one of my sons had it; he most likely got it from his piano teacher who exhibited all the Covid symptoms (fever, dry cough, loss of smell), but was never tested. I think at least myself and my wife got this from him as well; likely his two s…

brooklyn resident here. fwiw (not much), it feels like easily 1/3 of the local people i know got some mild fever symptoms in the same 3-week timespan.

Do you think this happened in early February? If so, I agree. Sort of.

The problem is that according to the data, none of us that had the "weird cold" in February ever went to the hospital and tested positive for COVID-19. So it was probably something else, but it is weird that there was a widespread "weird cold" in New York right before the COVID-19 cases, isn't it?

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

#166

Post by Retric »

usaar333 wrote: post #158
Retric wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%

With a sample size of 8 deaths, 0.45% is easily comparable to 1.1%. We are talking different infected populations, different healthcare systems, and so forth it’s expected to see that kind of a range. The US had what ~19 deaths out a single nursing home.

Also, deaths/recoveries is the least useful metric to compare countries as people with minimal symptoms recover first, again look at the South Korea or China graphs of the number of infected over time.

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

#167

Post by coliveira »

marvin wrote: post #132
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…

That's a much more reasonable interpretation of the available data, although there are still plenty of unknowns here, as sibling comments are pointing out. My interpretations the last week are converging on the same ballpark figures. I'd just like to point out that this is still a far cry from the wishful thinking a lot of people are putting forth, claiming an IFR of These interpretations seem less likely to be true…

There is a very economical way to figure out this: test the majority of the US population. Sure, the government will have to spend a few billion dollars, but that would possibly save a few trillion dollars in GDP losses. The fact that people and businesses are not requiring this right now from the government makes my head explode!

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

#168

Post by jrockway »

kens wrote: post #34

Regarding the title "Covid+", it seems that most people (even on the news) don't care about the difference between SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and COVID-19 (the disease). Is this distinction being abandoned? (I'm not trying to be pedantic here; I'm just curious about the common usage.)

People were never good about making a distinction here. HIV and AIDS are synonymous in popular culture, even though HIV is the virus and AIDS is the disease. No reason to think that SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are going to receive different treatment.

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

#169

Post by 6nf »

smallgovt wrote: post #49
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bet is that it's much more than 10%. In NYC I think it's at least 20%-30% by now. Obviously, I don't have any more data than what you can find online, but anecdotally, I think one of my sons had it; he most likely got it from his piano teacher who exhibited all the Covid symptoms (fever, dry cough, loss of smell), but was never tested. I think at least myself and my wife got this from him as well; likely his two s…

Does this study change your mind on that 20-30% figure? After all, the study measured a 35% infection rate for people living in close quarters with other infected individuals. Surely, the overall population would yield a much lower infection rate than this?

NYC is the definition of living in close quarters.

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

#170

Post by coliveira »

perl4ever wrote: post #134
_euac wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"there's an increasing suspicion that countries still using the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis might be seeing [1]way lower infection rates" Obvious to me, perhaps dumb, question - if countries that were slower to change vaccination regimes have some advantage, then wouldn't we see older people in the countries that did change also at an advantage? Yet all reporting seems to be that older people are harder hit.

BCG vaccine requires a booster every few decades, so it becomes less effective over the years. Apart from health issues related to age, this would explain why old people are at higher risk.
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