Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by arcticbull » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

jaynetics wrote: post #281

manfredo wrote: post #103

Random testing in Germany has also revealed higher than expected rates of people with antibodies. Their IFR (infected fatality rate) was 2% overall based on non-random testing. Random testing has yielded an IFR or 0.37%. This does not increase the risk. These tests only test people who had coronavirus. The larger this portion, the more herd immunity there is in the population. It implies that there were a larger than…

The lower rate was calculated based on only 7 or 8 fatalities. Also the people in Gangelt, where that test was carried out, are significantly younger than the average German. Their share of people over 75 is 17% below the national average.

That isn't what I saw when I looked up their demographics, it looked roughly in line, skewing older even. [1] They had 12.8% over 75 as compared to for instance, 9% in Frankfurt [2]. Also in a population of 10,000-ish the number of fatalities would have to be by definition closer to 40.

[1] https://www.citypopulation.de/en/germany/census/nordrhein_we...

[2] https://www.citypopulation.de/en/germany/hessen/frankfurt_am...

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

#342

Post by henrikschroder » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

anewguy9000 wrote: post #214

aaron_m04 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK that's good to know. Is their government handling it any differently than other countries? Or has it in the past?

absolutley: public schools remain open for example. rather than enforce mandatory rules the government is encouraging personal responsibility. wfh is at 50% as is transit usage. source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronav...

> public schools remain open for example.

Universities and high schools have been closed for almost a month now, that's pretty much the same timeline as most other countries. Elementary schools are not closed, but they're very empty, most kids are staying home.

The reasoning behind this is that elementary schools function as babysitters, and this frees up adults in essential occupations so that they can go to work normally, instead of having to stay at home with their kids. There's also starting to appear evidence that kids might not be a serious disease vector, contrary to pretty much everyone's gut feeling.

And this is what I mean by the reporting being bananas. It's very easy to look at the fact that "schools are open" and assume it's business as usual in Sweden. It absolutely isn't.

It's also pretty funny that you linked an article from The Guardian, which breathlessly exclaims that Sweden has a death rate that's twice that of Denmark. Yeah, ok, but the death rate in the UK is twice that of Sweden. Pot meet kettle. If Sweden is doing twice as good as the UK, who the fuck are people in the UK to criticize Sweden's actions? It's as if a Swedish newspaper would criticize Denmark for having twice the death rate of Finland. It's absurd.

The reporting is bananas. It's agenda-driven, not fact-driven.

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

#343

Post by rconti » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

gdubs wrote: post #193

Stanford’s study should give us more info soon. They recently screened a decent sized group in Santa Clara County to get a sense of how widespread it is, using their newly developed finger-prick test which looks for both antigens and antibodies (whether you have it / had it and recovered). Currently the test is being prioritized for frontline healthcare workers while they work on scaling up: https://www.stanforddaily…

still hearing 2-4% infected rate between east coast and the Stanford testing, random tests. I think this article is suggesting it's possible a lot more people have/had it (and are hopefully immune for some unknown time) but we're just not seeing that in the general population yet.

It still feels like the general population is very underexposed to the virus :-/

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

#344

Post by philwelch » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:02 AM UTC

khuey wrote: post #334

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sent an email to his commander and his commander's commander about how the situation was deteriorating... which were then leaked to the press and was promptly relieved of command by Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly who later on resigned. Most people think it was a good call but it also may have compromised the safety of the carrier because now it's known they may be operating under less than perfect condition.

The Washington Post managed to get the original letter: https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1250840016806445056 It's pretty clear he was canned by a political appointee for political reasons.

Yes and no. He was relieved because he went around the chain of command, which is a universal career-ending move in the military even if you do it for all the right reasons—which he did.

Also, although he was relieved of command, he wasn’t “fired” or “canned” or discharged from the Navy. He will undoubtedly go into an early retirement with a full pension at his current rank of Captain. That doesn’t change the fundamental unfairness of how he’s been treated, but he’s going to be fine. And I think he knew and accepted the consequences of his actions.

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

#345

Post by yomly » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

system2 wrote: post #322

manfredo wrote: post #103

Random testing in Germany has also revealed higher than expected rates of people with antibodies. Their IFR (infected fatality rate) was 2% overall based on non-random testing. Random testing has yielded an IFR or 0.37%. This does not increase the risk. These tests only test people who had coronavirus. The larger this portion, the more herd immunity there is in the population. It implies that there were a larger than…

If 0.37% is true, why are the hospitals in this shape?

Imagine all 65M people in the UK caught the virus then a 10,000 case fatality number would give a rate of 0.015%.

The rate itself has no time element so it tells you nothing about the number of people in hospital right now and hence isn't very illustrative of how hospitals can be swamped by this disease.

More interestingly (for me at least) is that the mortality rate is dependent on a patient's access to a ventilator. This means if you caught the virus early in the spread of the pandemic your odds of surviving are substantially higher than if you caught it right at the peak of infection.

This is impossible to reflect in a simple global mortality rate and so really paints a different picture of the virus - the death rate in South Korea vs other places really highlights this.

I guess to your point, hospitals are more in this way because the virus is so infectious, rather than it being a universally dangerous disease as may be seen from a higher mortality rate. Remember, a high number of people experience little to no symptoms from catching this.

This variability in symptoms doesn't seem to be as true for other lethal diseases like say malaria or dengue fever

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

#346

Post by de_watcher » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #329

nednar wrote: post #323

It's the first time I see news about the aircraft carrier. Could someone summarize why the captain got fired for testing his whole crew in an environment where a lot of people have to live very closely together? My first assumption is that it was a really good decision.

He sent an email to his commander and his commander's commander about how the situation was deteriorating... which were then leaked to the press and was promptly relieved of command by Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly who later on resigned. Most people think it was a good call but it also may have compromised the safety of the carrier because now it's known they may be operating under less than perfect condition.

Ok, apparently his commanders didn't want the responsibility. They wanted a "phone call" they can ignore, not a written record that will later bite them in the ass.

And in order to actually act they had to leak it because silently acting on it involves getting a refusal from their commanders and also writing an email. It's monkeys all the way up.

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

#347

Post by arcticbull » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

system2 wrote: post #322

manfredo wrote: post #103

Random testing in Germany has also revealed higher than expected rates of people with antibodies. Their IFR (infected fatality rate) was 2% overall based on non-random testing. Random testing has yielded an IFR or 0.37%. This does not increase the risk. These tests only test people who had coronavirus. The larger this portion, the more herd immunity there is in the population. It implies that there were a larger than…

If 0.37% is true, why are the hospitals in this shape?

Because it's spreading so very fast, and nobody has any pre-existing immunity to this new disease. The flu kills 60,000 Americans every year and so far COVID has killed about 10,000 -- over roughly the same flu season time period. The difference is that the flu is spread out over time and is fighting some pre-existing immunity and flu shots. It also has a lot to do with excess capacity. If there suddenly appeared a new disease exactly as fatal as the flu, that would kill another 60,000 Americans per year and 650,000 people worldwide. There's not really capacity for that.

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

#348

Post by iso947 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

misun78 wrote: post #314

feral wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands has 3.3k deaths vs 29k confirmed cases, which would give a CFR of ~10% I.e. the Netherlands aren't testing much. A 10x reduction there brings it back to the CFR range we see in countries with bigger testing programs. I'm not a specialist but have been following this for a while, and have yet to see evidence the IFR for this isnt around 0.5-1% (assuming decent healthcare). That's what we saw in the Dia…

Diamond princess skewed heavily towards an older age population, as did some of the hardest hit cities in Italy like Lombardi etc. To counter your point, there isn't any evidence to infer an IFR or 0.5-1% either. We simply don't know given the lack of antibodies testing in a randomized population set that's adequately representative of the right demographics in a given location (say NYC).

Half the diamond princess people were staff - mainly under 40s.

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

#349

Post by rconti » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

nednar wrote: post #323

It's the first time I see news about the aircraft carrier. Could someone summarize why the captain got fired for testing his whole crew in an environment where a lot of people have to live very closely together? My first assumption is that it was a really good decision.

TL;DR is the first guy got canned for "politicizing" (and, really, operating outside the chain of command by widely publicizing his fears and 'leaking' information about) the problem.

Basically, the military chain of command has ALWAYS really cared about how you handle these things. He violated it, and my military friends generally feel he did the "right" thing, but many also feel he knew what was coming and should take his punishment, because you just don't do it. While, at the same time, our government has shown an increasing desire to centralize authority and cover up for political reasons. So, I can see both sides, for sure. "You should never do that" meets "doing that is the right and moral thing in this environment". Fine.

The guy who called him out basically said a bunch of uncool and undisciplined shit about him, VERY publicly, and had to resign under pressure. He could have kept his job if he had toed the "outside of the chain of command" line and kept his cool. But he couldn't resist running his mouth in exactly the "uncool and outside of the military's expected behavior" manner. Again, the MO of the current administration.

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

#350

Post by iso947 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #300

jmckib wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also don't know yet (or at least I don't) how easily asymptomatic people are able to transmit the infection, which is why I'm perplexed by this quote from the article. > “With regard to COVID-19, we’re learning that stealth in the form of asymptomatic transmission is this adversary’s secret power,” said Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the Navy.

The know that presymtomatic people are highly contagious.

WHO disagree with you, so citation needed.