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

reuters.com

171–180 of 544 posts

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany and Finland are doing this. Here are some results already completed in a German town showing that 14% of people tested positive for antibodies... https://spectator.us/covid-antibody-test-german-town-shows-1...

That study did their research in a town that was already infected, meaning that our understanding of the infection rate for Covid-19 is probably lower than reality.

Precisely - as an early outbreak centre that town is referred to as "Germany's Wuhan", and is expected to have among the highest proportion of infected inhabitants. So actually the 15% figure came as a disappointment and something of a surprise.

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

#172
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even w/o those non-positives, the death count for NYC is in the neighborhood of 8,000[0] (and still rising at a decent clip) for a population of 8 million. That's 0.1%. You can also look at individual counties[1] and you get some variation but the same picture. Ex. 2.7k deaths in Queens for a population of 2.3mil, 0.4k deaths in Richmond for a population of 0.4mil (That's 0.1% for the entire population and not even n…

also while this may sound insensitive 0.1% of the population is not the same as X percent of old and sick people it is not like the virus takes down everyone equally. The overwhelming majority of those affected are both old and fairly sick already. Again I am not implying anything other than there is clear skew and the measures should target those that are at risk. It makes no sense to create generic, unworkable rule…

There’s also the problem that healthy young adults are generally very stupid when it comes to assessing risk. Sure, they’re probably only at mild risk of days of debilitating hospitalization, but they’re also going to be fairly careless about people at greater risk around them.

Locking everyone up gives us a chance to gather data, prepare treatments, and find a way to protect those at risk. Letting spreaders run around carelessly will not make anything but the economy better.

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

#173
post #27

This figure does not surprise me. It is in line with Iceland finding that 50% of people they tested were asymptomatic. However as https://www.propublica.org/article/what-we-need-to-understan... notes, in other samples about 75% of people who were asymptomatic at the time of the test went on to develop symptoms. So the fact that these sailors are currently asymptomatic does not mean that they will remain so. See https…

Agree on the asymptomatic/presymptomatic thing. Also, I'd imagine the doubling time on an aircraft carrier is a lot shorter than in normal society. There are a lot of people packed into very small spaces.

Suppose the doubling time on an aircraft carrier is 5 days. That means half your infections are in the 5 day presymptomatic window.

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

#174
post #27

This figure does not surprise me. It is in line with Iceland finding that 50% of people they tested were asymptomatic. However as https://www.propublica.org/article/what-we-need-to-understan... notes, in other samples about 75% of people who were asymptomatic at the time of the test went on to develop symptoms. So the fact that these sailors are currently asymptomatic does not mean that they will remain so. See https…

It is in line with Iceland finding that 50% of people they tested were asymptomatic.

That's imprecisely stated. 50% of the people that tested positive were asymptomatic. Most of the people tested, both in Iceland and on the Theodore Roosevelt, have tested negative.

Esper's comments are ridiculous. It's been clear for months that there is some significant degree of asymptomatic spread, it's not new information.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any data on the severity of the symptoms? From what I've gathered, but without any hard data, in non-severe cases (i.e. not needing hospitalization) they can vary from a slight sore throat, dry cough and mild fever, to the same with a high fever and general sense of exhaustion.

Non-severe covers bronchitis, pneumonia, etc. My friend (who tested positive but was not hospitalized) described it as "chest pain, difficulty breathing, if I do something silly like walk 10 feet to the kitchen I get lightheaded and hold on to the wall" - for about ten days.

The question I had was whether there’s a connection between delay and severity: if you’re one of those asymptomatic cases for a week or two, how does that change the likelihood of ending up on the worse end of the spectrum?

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

#176
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a thing I've been thinking about a lot. We're quick to say "We're not testing enough", but also quick to throw statistics around "disproving" the amount of asymptomatic cases. I am on the side of "It's probably orders of magnitude widespread than most countries think", and the number of totally asymptomatic cases is actually far far higher. You can't test only the old and the already sick and then accurately…

Humanity's understanding of this disease is much more sophisticated than the two comments above this would imply. Researchers are not stupidly looking at Diamond Princess and getting confused because the population is old. Rather it's a powerful dataset because it enables us to quantify the asymptomatic people of all ages, because people were tested fairly exhaustively before being allowed leave, regardless of sympto…

Anyone who actually knows this stuff would never say that it’s a matter of “simple math”, that’s absurd. Those people have not been saying that they’re sure about anything at this point, because they’re not.

There’s nothing to prove you wrong yet either, of course, but let’s see how your prediction does over the next few months: between 14,400 and 80,000 deaths in Ireland.

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

#177
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we KNOW it's controlled? Asymptomatic people are not, as a rule, tested, so actual infection rates could be massive.

No country except Iceland or South Korea knows how many are infected, everyone else's numbers are horribly wrong. But death numbers and hospitalization numbers don't lie. Sure, different countries are counting deaths differently, making it hard to compare them to each other, but the trajectories don't lie. And if you look at growth trajectories, no country is experiencing uncontrolled exponential growth at this point…

> but the trajectories don't lie

Except for when they do. Easter just passed and the the trajectories are plotted up to and including today, when Sweden for example is adding deaths to dates two weeks back every day, and the last 5-7 days _ALWAYS_ looks like a downward trajectory. The last little spike there from before easter has grown by 35% since after easter and is still growing daily.

You can't draw conclusions based on the trajectory of the last few days when an absolute majority of cases are added days, and up to weeks after.

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

#178
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the asymptomatic thing is more wishful thinking in places where infection control has failed. Other countries have shown that you can contain the spread of Covid19, even if there are asymptomatic (or more realistic, low symptom severity) cases.

How do we KNOW it's controlled? Asymptomatic people are not, as a rule, tested, so actual infection rates could be massive.

There's like 5 or 6 data points that all point at the infection rates being reasonably close to the published estimates.

(Veneto, Gangelt, Telluride, Iceland, the Diamond Princess, the Theodore Roosevelt)

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it would indicate the we may be closer to herd immunity than we thought, which would be great news.

Let’s assume 100% in NY are or have been infected. 12,000 deaths / 20 million = 0.0006% fatality. Then scale that up to US population outside N.Y.: 18,0000 deaths / 0,0006 = 3,000,000 infected out of 300,000,000 for an infection rate of... 1%. Herd immunity takes about 66% to 70%. So: only 65% to 69% to go, or about 200,000 deaths. Lower the assumed infection rate in NY to anything realistic and it only gets worse. F…

that would be 30 million, not 3 million

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

#180
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for what it's worth, if they get the virus while on a long tour of duty, by the time they get back they should be good to contribute to the herd immunity.

Only if they form antibodies. Studies have been suggesting that people who get it in asymptomatic form are not all forming antibodies - leaving them wide open to be future communicators of the disease.

Forming antibodies (antibody driven adaptive immunity) seems like the most likely way patients are recovering. This would be typical of recovery from Coronavirus infection.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0819-2

I can’t find any research suggesting that patients (symptomatic of not) are recovering in some other way.

And in any case, recovery implies some form of immunity, either innate or adaptive. The virus doesn’t just give up after 14 days.

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