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

#351

Post by vrtx0 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

IMHO, this article is intentionally misleading. The incubation period is currently estimated to be 2-14 days (mean is 5.6 days per CDC, similar per WHO). The article doesn’t mention any dates or time frames, but does mention:

”Roughly 60 percent of the over 600 sailors who tested positive so far have not shown symptoms of COVID-19” — note how “so far” is ambiguous in that sentence. It also states, “The Navy’s testing of the entire 4,800-member crew of the aircraft carrier - which is about 94% complete...”, which seems to indicate nowhere near enough time has elapsed to draw any sort of conclusion.

This paper [1] found that testing of all pregnancy patients in a hospital yielded 34% asymptomatic cases. That number drops to 8% “shortly after discharge”, and could be lower than 8% (Again, no timeframe is stated).

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258993332...

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

#352

Post by soperj » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:09 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #347

system2 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

So far Covid has killed 34,000 not 10,000 in the States.

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

#353

Post by iso947 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

D-Coder wrote: post #198

henrikschroder wrote: post #141

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…

> death numbers and hospitalization numbers don't lie. 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.

UK deaths for week ending 3rd April was 60% above normal for that week. The rest of the year uk deaths was slightly below normal.

Only 1/3 of those excess deaths were put down to covid.

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

#354

Post by fzeroracer » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

sfj wrote: post #256

jeremyjh wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so tiresome. Someone has cancer for six months, gets COVID and dies 17 days later and now Tucker Carlson is here telling me not to count that death. How often do you really think it happens that someone is hospitalized with COVID (otherwise, they'd not even be getting tested most places in the world) and dies of something else a week later? I'm sure it has happened a few times, but what has also been happenin…

> Someone has cancer for six months, gets COVID and dies 17 days later and now Tucker Carlson is here telling me not to count that death. If someone has cancer and then gets a bad cold and dies, what should the cause of death be? Or what if they fell, etc.?

The cause of death would be the cold, yes. That's how tallying these statistics work and yes, people can die from the cold.

If someone ends up catching pneumonia because their immune system was compromised as a result of immunotherapy, pneumonia was the direct cause of death and the cancer lead up to pneumonia.

The fact that we have to have this argument about basic death statistics is depressing. If you really wanted to play around with the numbers like what you're suggesting, you could easily make it so covid-19 causes zero deaths just by looking far back enough to find a contributing factor. Like age, immune system issues, other injuries, obesity etc.

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

#355

Post by iso947 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:14 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #141

TylerE wrote: 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…

I don’t believe either of those countries has been doing statistically random testing, not mass antibody testing.

Testing large numbers of self selecting population means you can’t draw any conclusions.

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

#356

Post by thesz » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:16 AM UTC

Let me cite full abstract of the research on CT scans of symptom-free COVID-19 patients [1]

Purpose

To evaluate the chest CT findings in an environmentally homogeneous cohort from the cruise ship “Diamond Princess” with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Materials and Methods

This retrospective study comprised 104 cases (mean age, 62 years ± 16, range 25-93) with COVID-19 confirmed with RT-PCR. CT images were reviewed and the CT severity score was calculated for each lobes and the entire lung. CT findings were compared between asymptomatic and symptomatic cases. Results

Of 104 cases, 76 (73%) were asymptomatic, 41 (54%) of which had lung opacities on CT. Other 28 (27%) cases were symptomatic, 22 (79%) of which had abnormal CT findings. Symptomatic cases showed lung opacities and airway abnormalities on CT more frequently than asymptomatic cases [lung opacity; 22 (79%) vs 41 (54%), airway abnormalities; 14 (50%) vs 15 (20%)]. Asymptomatic cases showed more GGO over consolidation (83%), while symptomatic cases more frequently showed consolidation over GGO (41%). The CT severity score was higher in symptomatic cases than asymptomatic cases, particularly in the lower lobes [symptomatic vs asymptomatic cases; right lower lobe: 2 ± 1 (0-4) vs 1 ± 1 (0-4); left lower lobe: 2 ± 1 (0-4) vs 1 ± 1 (0-3); total score: 7 ± 5 (1-17) vs 4 ± 2 (1-11)].

Conclusion

This study documented a high incidence of subclinical CT changes in cases with COVID-19. Compared to symptomatic cases, asymptomatic cases showed more GGO over consolidation and milder extension of disease on CT.

[1] https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/ryct.2020200110?fbcli...

One with asymptomatic illness very probably (3/4) will get lungs damage.

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

#357

Post by lbeltrame » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

goblin89 wrote: post #302

ineedasername wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everyone I've heard talk about it that had it without being hospitalized still said it was the worst they've ever felt.

Don’t you think that anyone who got the “slight sore throat, dry cough and mild fever” or milder symptom variation would be unlikely to get tested or talk about it? The disconnect between the definitions of “mild” as in “passing without hospitalization” and “mild” as in “easy to bear for most people” is part of what grants weight to the message that the new virus is extremely bad even in the mild version. It could be…

> Don’t you think that anyone who got the “slight sore throat, dry cough and mild fever” or milder symptom variation would be unlikely to get tested or talk about it?

That's my opinion, as well, there's clearly under-reporting of these cases, and that's why specific serological tests are important.

Anecdata: a partner of an acquaintance of mine had fever (but rather mild) for a couple of days, then developed anosmia. The doctor told him to stay at home and that's it. He was never tested so the doubt lingers (happened well over a month ago, so one can't discount a flu, either).

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

#358

Post by dx034 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:18 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #113

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…

My current bet is younger healthy people are more likely to be asymptomatic. And older people much less so. Theodore Roosevelt with likely a young population, most are asymptomatic. Diamond Princess much older population most are symptomatic.

It might also not only be age. Sailors on the Roosevelt are likely to be less obese than average, more fit, maybe lower rates of smokers (not sure) and certainly lower rates of other pre-existing conditions. That all puts them in lower risk groups. Just the higher share of men increases risk somewhat. But overall they certainly don't represent the average US population.

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

#359

Post by innomatics » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:19 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #316

innomatics wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Euromomo data is really interesting to me because of these two points: 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 2) this year's flue season spike was low compared to recent years. Maybe due to a warmer summer? One interpretation could be that a large number of vulnerable people escaped death from regular ILIs this European season, only to s…

When looking at a single region like Bergamo, the death toll is four times higher than normal... Absolutely nothing like a normal flu season spike. See graph in http://archive.is/AaJ76 If you look at the euromomo information for a country it is averaged across all regions, that includes those regions that started lockdown before severe outbreak, so the spike averages down to be small. I.e. you can’t look at the count…

Agree with your points although the link was blocked for me.

Do you think that a very mild flu season could possibly have made this outbreak worse?

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

#360

Post by misja111 » Fri, Apr 17, 2020, 6:19 AM UTC

This is not news. The same was already reported one month ago in the Italian village of Vo, where the entire population was tested for Corona. Summary is here: https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m1165

"In an open letter to the authorities in the Tuscany region,1 Romagnani wrote that the great majority of people infected with covid-19—50-75%—were asymptomatic, but represented “a formidable source” of contagion."

In the same report was another interesting paragraph as well:

He noted that Romagnani’s findings appeared to contradict a WHO report based on covid-19 in China.2 This suggested that “the proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.”

edit: really, downvoted? Because of the mentioning of China?