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Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

reuters.com

61–70 of 544 posts

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#61
post #42
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military is not a representative sample of people; it's a bunch of people with better health and fitness than the general population. And the military is an institution that will reject people from joining based on a lot of the health conditions that make COVID-19 more dangerous to them. It's useful data, to be sure, but it also highlights that the disease can be really dangerous for people outside certain gro…

> It's not at all clear yet that recovering from COVID-19 confers any lasting immunity. Coronaviruses aren't new...

Not sure how that's relevant. Coronaviruses behave differently from each other, and it's not clear how this one behaves wrt post-recovery immunity.

And to your point, many forms of the "common cold" are caused by coronaviruses, and it's not like herd immunity is a thing there.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#62
post #61
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not at all clear yet that recovering from COVID-19 confers any lasting immunity. Coronaviruses aren't new...

Not sure how that's relevant. Coronaviruses behave differently from each other, and it's not clear how this one behaves wrt post-recovery immunity. And to your point, many forms of the "common cold" are caused by coronaviruses, and it's not like herd immunity is a thing there.

Short to medium term immunity is conferred to survivors of other coronaviruses. No reason to expect it won't be the same with this one.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#64
post #52
post #10

This is mixed news. While this indicates the death rate may be lower and the infection rate higher among the general population, the demographic of individuals in the US military are going to be of significantly higher health than the general population. So, it doesn't necessarily ease the risk for demographics already identified as 'at-risk'. If anything, their risk might be understated given the higher infection ra…

I don't quite understand why "more infectious but less lethal" is better than "less infectious but more lethal" -- both mean that lots of people are going to die.

Even with the earlier estimates of how infectious it is, it seems quite likely that a large proportion of the population is likely to catch it sooner or later. If that is so, then the less lethal it is, the better.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially once you consider all of the pre-existing conditions that make you ineligible to be in the military.

this is a really good point. AFAIK, 100% of the canonical pre-existing conditions which are highly dangerous with COVID are disqualifiers for joining the military. this cohort will give us a much better picture of how the virus impacts a totally healthy and young population. as with countless other pieces of evidence, it should also help to put the "it's just a flu bro" falsehood to bed.

Does the mortality rate across entire population (not particular subpopulations) exceed that of the flu?

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially once you consider all of the pre-existing conditions that make you ineligible to be in the military.

this is a really good point. AFAIK, 100% of the canonical pre-existing conditions which are highly dangerous with COVID are disqualifiers for joining the military. this cohort will give us a much better picture of how the virus impacts a totally healthy and young population. as with countless other pieces of evidence, it should also help to put the "it's just a flu bro" falsehood to bed.

"AFAIK, 100% of the canonical pre-existing conditions which are highly dangerous with COVID are disqualifiers for joining the military."

Including being "old".

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#67
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially once you consider all of the pre-existing conditions that make you ineligible to be in the military.

Good point, yes, but I bet that Gulf war soldiers where also extra-healthy when they enlisted. Not so much when they returned home. Army, is an activity with lots of health risks, chemicals and strange diseases exposure attached. Not the best choice if you expect to live for one hundred years.

That reminded me of an Army recruiter well known for his “tactics”. People close describes him as a “Car salesman “. Apparently, is very good at making sure the candidate doesn’t change his/her mind.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#68
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you of the opinion that this is simply just a slightly worse flu? > All the data points to the fact that coronavirus is more widespread and less deadly than most outlets are reporting You couldn't be more wrong. There are nurses and doctors working on the front lines dealing with patients, and they're completely and utterly overloaded. Lack of resources. Lack of help from local and federal governments. They're th…

There are more hospitals and health workers doing nothing now globally (and no, I am not ignoring the outliers here, like Lombardy, Madrid, London, New York, I’m talking about the rest of the world), waiting for a wave that never came, even though everyone was 2 weeks behind Italy in the last 2 months. Cancer patients, people with other serious issues are being ignored now, if one of your parents had a condition that…

People seem addicted to comparing numbers at a point in time and drawing conclusions, not considering whether they are changing at different rates, not to mention the derivative of the rate of change.

Why would the ratio of, say, cases in NY vs Oklahoma vs. Japan stay constant? Just because? Clean living?

I don't have expertise or authoritative predictions, I'm just saying that graphs are all over the place and practically everywhere has historical data with a different shape, and the end state/equilibrium is not know, except apparently, tentatively, for China and South Korea.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#69
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, the more young healthy people are immune, the less likely the virus will make it to them.

Being asymptomatic is not the same as being immune. It means that more people will feel fine and spread the virus more because they don't know they have it.

It's not clear to me that asymtomatic doesn't mean immune. If the primary symptoms are due to over-replication of the virus and not fighting it enough resulting in cell death in lungs and other airways, then asymptomatic infection indicates the immune system is fighting it enough to fend it off.

Now, this rests on symptoms being directly caused by higher virus cell counts rather than toxic byproduct cascades of some sort. I'm not sure that's true

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#70
post #59
post #35

All the data points to the fact that coronavirus is more widespread and less deadly than most outlets are reporting (after all, increase the denominator, the % goes down). The countries with the lowest death rates are also the countries that did the most comprehensive testing. Ditto for this aircraft carrier. Of course governments and outlets are fearmongering lest they be accused of not doing enough, but this thing…

Sad to see that everything that tries to bring some positivity to this crisis or a different point of view gets downvoted into oblivion here, including studies and opinions on how we’re doing more harm with certain measures.

I get it. Everyone wants to find some meaning and importance to justify what's going on.

Tons of jobs and wealth are being destroyed, governments are issuing tons of debt and expanding the money supply, people need to believe they're saving millions of lives.

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