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

reuters.com

451–460 of 544 posts

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

#451
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to compare the deaths you need to count them in the same way, and you haven't done so here.

Well it’s fair to say that neither has the government, if anyone dies in possession of COVID they’re automatically a COVID death, pretty much even if they get hit by a truck. That’s not true of the flu is it?

From what I've read the CDC has told med facilities to code any death that is even suspected to be C19 as C19. No test? Doesn't matter. Patient had other serious conditions? Doesn't matter.

With broader testing limited and deaths from being inflated the IFR should be suspect.

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

#452
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…

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…

Where? Outside of NYC, hospitals are laying off doctors and nurses because they cancelled all their elective work and have nearly no cases at all.

I think there have been eight cases in my entire county, which has three hospitals.

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

#453
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dutch testing policy is acknowledged by national bodies to not be representative at all. Moreover, so is our death rate. We have a lot of hidden deaths of elderly people who decide not to go through the trauma of an ICU stint and instead decide to die at home. I don't recall exact numbers but think it was estimated the true death toll is about 50 to 100 percent higher.

The middle part is an interesting point. A study of the first 50 hospital patients in Heinsberg (worst affected region in Germany) found that of 8 who had died, 4 had rejected ICU treatment.

In Sandinavia we see a lot of covid-19 related deaths at elderly care homes. These are older people, often with a lot of underlying deceases in addition to their old age. Very seldom these patients are moved to a hospital, so they die at the home with only palliative care. I guess in many cases they are not in any position to decline or accept ICU at all due to dementia.

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

#454
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though my understanding is that the survival rate of a covid19 patient once he requires a ventilator is around 50%. If that's true, at worst, if we ran out of ventilators, the death rate would double. That's bad and we should avoid it but the doubling of a tiny number will still be a small number. Which is why I am still confused by the ratio of 1:10 that the White House has shown between the death toll under lockdow…

We've been on lockdown because approx 1% of the US population has tested positive. That means 99% are not. How can we come out of lockdown when we are effectively still where we started. We're not even close to herd immunity.

Not sure I agree with your numbers but I agree with your point, we are very likely quite far from herd immunity.

Which means another 18 months in lockdown if we want to stay well within the current ICU capacity until a vaccine is mass produced. Which means an economic downturn not only worse than 2008 (it will be worse already assuming we leave lockdown in a few weeks), but many times worse.

Or we can swallow this thing. It will mean more deaths. Trump says 10 times more. What I am saying is that I don’t understand how he gets there. If it is “only” two times more, then we need to have an adult conversation on how many lives are worth saving vs our society going through something akin to the great depression.

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

#455

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?

They're currently mostly empty so it matches.

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

#456
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the virus spreads exponentially, you would expect most cases to be presymptomatic at any given time.

Not when the amount of people is limited. Exponential spread in isolated group of 3000 people necessary becomes non exponential at some point.

> becomes non exponential at some point

From some simple calculus, becomes the (a) logistic curve.

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the virus spreads exponentially, you would expect most cases to be presymptomatic at any given time.

Even an exponentially spreading virus is only in its exponential stage when the number of infected is significantly lower than the total population.

Right, e.g., follows the (a) logistic curve.

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

#458
post #408
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Though my understanding is that the survival rate of a covid19 patient once he requires a ventilator is around 50%. If that's true, at worst, if we ran out of ventilators, the death rate would double. That's bad and we should avoid it but the doubling of a tiny number will still be a small number. Which is why I am still confused by the ratio of 1:10 that the White House has shown between the death toll under lockdow…

> But lockdown still requires to build herd immunity, we are only slowing it down. So the same number of people will get infected ultimately.

Yes. I've been saying that, too.

So, in blunt terms, currently we are trying to keep people alive until we can get therapeutics and/or vaccines that confer immunity so that we can get to herd immunity with fewer infections and deaths.

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

#459
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone had AIDS and died of pneumocystis pneumonia, the latter is the cause of death, and the former is the cause of the latter.

So, if there was an epidemic of pneumonia going around, would you count that as a death due to pneumonia, and then use that statistic to help justify lock downs and enforced social distancing? Because that is what is happening when you take an extremely sick person who finally died and slap a "death by covid-19" label on them.

There wouldn’t be an epidemic of pneumocystis pneumonia without an epidemic of immunodeficiency so I’m not sure that applies. But I see what you’re getting at. And, yes, e.g. if a COPD sufferer died of pneumonia of the pandemic strain I would call that a death attributable to the pandemic, noting that the COPD probably made them more susceptible.

When influenza deaths are estimated each year, the models assume that a lot of people will die due to the virus but the cause will be recorded as heart failure or pneumonia without etiology. From the perspective of the epidemiologist, they are influenza deaths, even if they were old and frail with bad hearts.

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

#460
post #90
post #40

Adding to that, Netherlands' study of antibodies in blood donors' samples shows about 10x difference between the number of reported / tested cases and actual cases in the general population (i.e. a lot more people got it and were not sick): https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/16/world/europe/16re... ?

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…

Similar case with the Ruby Princess. It currently accounts for 10% of Australia's known cases (~600) and 30% of the deaths (20).
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