191–200 of 544 posts
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.
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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.
Maybe you are saying the implied model is too crude. Perhaps, but there's a value in it's simplicity - folks can get a convincing estimate of the rough scale of the IFR, that this disease is serious, not the flu etc.
> let’s see how your prediction does over the next few months: between 14,400 and 80,000 deaths in Ireland.
That prediction, was based on the measures in place over a month ago (very few, which was the point). We're since in lockdown almost 3 weeks.
However, I think it remains a reasonable prediction for an unmitigated epidemic.
To go back to the simple math: If you believe that 3% of a random sample of the Netherlands have had covid, and that the Netherlands has had 3k deaths, then if 100% were infected they might have 100k deaths (without modeling clustering, and healthcare saturation effects). Their population is 3x Ireland's.
>There’s nothing to prove you wrong yet either, of course,
If the serological sampling had shown instead that their 3k deaths had come from 30% of their population being infected, that would have proved the prediction wrong.
There's loads of subtlety which could improve that estimate (people take time to die, clusters, etc) but there is an increasing body of evidence that the early IFR estimates were not wrong by an order of magnitude.
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2020/04/04/stanford-researcher...
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
And in Sweden's case, if you also look at the number of ICU admissions, they've been flat for weeks, and those numbers have very little lag.
I'm not saying everything is fine, I'm not saying we're over the peak, but I am saying that it's not the case that any country is experiencing uncontrolled exponential growth and is going to turn into a zombie wasteland in a couple of days.
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> Are you of the opinion that this is simply just a slightly worse flu? I mean I'm about 95% sure I already had it. Had literally every single symptom but the local health authority (Alberta, Canada) wouldn't test me. My SO had it worse but again, they wouldn't test her. Felt like a worse flu + more coughing and shortness of breath. Worse fever. My symptoms were bad for about 3 days, then felt like a cold for about a…
This is the terrible take that will be everywhere in the next few weeks; “I think I had it, therefore I am an expert on the spread of this disease”. There is no data or coherent argumentation here. I’m sorry you were sick, but this isn’t an argument based on facts, it’s an anecdote based off of little that might put people in danger. We need to inoculate ourselves from this argument because we are about to see it eve…
In the weeks before the story went crazy I bought a dehumidifier in the belief that this might help me eradicate a dry cough that would not go away. Not for one moment did I think I had coronavirus at the time, however, as time went on, I began to wonder. Placebo or not, the dehumidifier was an extraordinary measure and my symptoms had been remarkably similar to those of the dreaded disease.
Because none of us were tested and because we didn't go to hospital we can be readily dismissed by those that only believe the TV news.
The founding myth is also a bit odd. We have a flying mammal - a bat - passing the disease on to an ant-eating mammal nobody ever sees in zoos - the Malayan pangolin - for this creature to be smuggled into China to then make it to a seafood market to then infect Wuhan. The sources for this are lacking and it is lazy reporting dressed up as science. I am surprised Father Christmas isn't in there somewhere.
The Spanish Flu of a century ago was only called that because neutral Spain wanted to know what was going on with the flu whereas the warmongering nations were blind to the epidemic that was wiping out their troops. There is a theory that the Chinese folk brought in to dig the trenches of WW1 were the source of the so-called Spanish Flu.
I am open to the idea that the Chinese happened to do the research and pick up on covid-19 first, hence the idea that it came from Wuhan. But did it really? There are 7 billion or so humans with many billions of intensively farmed animals yet it was some endangered species that doomed us all? I am increasingly believing the anecdata is stronger than this 'pangolin story'. I am definitely open to the idea this virus was doing the rounds outside China although there is no proof. However, I see this as like the Spanish Flu, now believed to have not started in Spain.
There is a Chinese saying about people too afraid to eat food in case they choke on it. Right now we are on track for everyone to stay indoors for eternity lest a Baby Boomer get it.
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…
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…
Death numbers are close but still have some uncertainty. New York for example is reporting much higher than usual numbers of people found dead at home. Not clear if they have been tested, if they are victims, or if maybe they had unrelated medical problems but couldn't/wouldn't go to a hospital under these circumstances.
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…
Well we'll know whether they were asymptomatic or presymptomatic in about five days after the typical incubation period has passed.