Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

6sqft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 679 posts

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#131

Post by saalweachter »

rimliu wrote: post #61
Avamander wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mortality rate, case fatality rate and infection fatality rates are all different things and have different values. Infection fatality rate of the virus could be within 0.5% (because its the one that tries to take into account everyone who has been infected), mortality rate is very likely still the one WHO has published and the third, case fatality rate is ~38% in the US.

What? 38 out of 100 infected in US die?

Infection fatality rate, the big number everyone is trying to figure out, best guess is somewhere around 1% right now, with a confidence interval of something like 0.3%-2.5%

Case fatality rate, calculated as "number of deaths" / "number of known cases", usually something like 10% in most countries, although occasionally much lower or higher for the odd country that has really good or really bad testing.

Resolved case fatality rate, calculated as "number of deaths" / "number of recoveries + number of deaths", which has been around 40% in the countries that have been hit hardest for the duration of their outbreaks. Tends to go down after the curve is bent, because it takes people longer to recover than die in most of these cases.

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#132

Post by DeonPenny »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #83
tunesmith wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hospitalization rates per infection are greater for covid than for flu. What matters is hospital capacity, to protect against greater non-covid death rates.

I agree, but this is not universally believed. Many people argue that hospital capacity is not what matters, and we must continue lockdowns even if hospitals won't be overloaded to eradicate the disease.

But if that held then we'd eradicate flu and the common cold two. Quarantines don't eradicate disease they slow the spread but the area under the curve is constant. I doubt will change the number of infected is a constant regardless of the rate.

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#133

Post by cycrutchfield »

luckylion wrote: post #121
slashdev wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All things equal, it would be better to get it out of the way sooner. However, what it doesn't account for is: 1) can we flatten the curve enough that some people never get it because we get a vaccine? 2) can we flatten it until we find an effective treatment protocol, saving lives? 3) if we did nothing would the hospitals be overwhelmed leading to additional loss of life and a higher death rate? The first two are sp…

If we prolong it a lot with all the associated cost and 1 and 2 never happen, we've lost not just a large part of the economy, but also lives without anything to show for it.

I don't think you quite understand what happens to the fatality rate once hospitals become overwhelmed. That 1% IFR will quickly become 3-5% IFR.

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#134

Post by daxfohl »

slashdev wrote: post #89
daxfohl wrote: post #72

I find myself reconsidering the original proposition by England to isolate the most vulnerable for a couple months and let the virus work its course through the less vulnerable population. If death rate is substantially lower among the under 50 crowd, this could work its way through with a fairly low death toll, and result in a herd immunity within a couple months. This slow burn approach we're doing however seems po…

All things equal, it would be better to get it out of the way sooner. However, what it doesn't account for is: 1) can we flatten the curve enough that some people never get it because we get a vaccine? 2) can we flatten it until we find an effective treatment protocol, saving lives? 3) if we did nothing would the hospitals be overwhelmed leading to additional loss of life and a higher death rate? The first two are sp…

Yeah, I have less and less hope in a vaccine. We'll likely be well on the way to herd immunity before one is ready.

For #3, I agree. I'd be interested to see the math on how many under-50's need hospitalization, ventilation, and how severe of an additional effect would that have. It may be that it requires less medical capacity to support a high percentage of the healthy population contracting the virus, than a far lower percentage of the general population (including over-50 crowd) contracting it. Or it may require vastly more capacity. I have no idea.

The other thing to take into account is the effect dragging this out has on developing economies. It seems like this is shutting down international supply chains and food shortages could result. So that's what's got me feeling like more aggressive action should be considered.

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#136

Post by myth_drannon »

core-questions wrote: post #104
chasd00 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's crazy to me, what are the demographics of NYC? Is the population more susceptible to dying of Covid19 somehow? I still can't get my head around why NY has suffered so disproportionately.

There are many close-knit communities in NYC and the surrounding area where people live much more densely (i.e. large family in a single house) and congregate more often with one another than do West Coast types. Jewish communities in New York seem to be especially hit by this; not sure if this is because they did not follow social distancing guidelines, or if they're not possible to follow given unavoidable physical…

Yes, if you look at Israel and Montreal, Ultra-Orthodox communities were hit very hard. Based on infections numbers, not deaths(since it's mostly very young population). Lack of communication and distrust of local authorities (only praying to G-d will help...)

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#137

Post by Retric »

ineedasername wrote: post #98
ccleve wrote: post #17

This study doesn't appear to suffer from the same methodology problems as the Stanford study of a few days ago. In that study, they recruited people through Facebook, and reported an infection rate that was low enough that it could have been caused by false positives. Here, it's closer to a random sample, but more importantly it shows really high rates. Those rates overwhelm any error due to false positives. Also, it…

I couldn't find any detailed write up about their selection methods for participants, only the basics of where they found them. Without that, it is very hard to determine whether or not there's some flavor of selection bias: If it is voluntary, and they do not screen out people who report having had cold/flu symptoms, then they run the risk of attracting a disproportionate number of people who volunteer because they'…

Flu is generally well under 0.1% of those infected on average. If you’re comparing them you want to either include or exclude asymptotic people from both populations. “Symptomatic Illnesses” https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

As to NYC deaths, many people currently infected will die in the future. You can make various estimates to account for this but a reasonable first approximation is to double current deaths based on NYC’s infection curve vs South Korea’s.

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#138

Post by cycrutchfield »

glofish wrote: post #39

Well, it looks like in the end that much-criticized imperial model might be right on transmission rates but way off on the fatality rate and with that predicted deaths. It pretty much looks like none of the epidemiological models are reasonably accurate on both, case numbers and fatally rates

How are they off on fatality rates? Also note that the fatality rate is an input to the model, not a prediction of the model.

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#139

Post by credit_guy »

nicoburns wrote: post #103
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a small state with a lot of people packed next to each other. Lots of people use public transit... subways are less than six feet apart.

If the NY subway is anything like London, people will be less than 6 inches apart at rush hour. I imagine that will have played a big part in the spread in both of those cities.

Yes, the subway is the correct answer. That's how this virus spread like wildfire in NYC. Second reason could be the elevators in the tall buildings (there are plenty of those).

Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies

#140

Post by cm2187 »

Reedx wrote: post #118
daxfohl wrote: post #72

I find myself reconsidering the original proposition by England to isolate the most vulnerable for a couple months and let the virus work its course through the less vulnerable population. If death rate is substantially lower among the under 50 crowd, this could work its way through with a fairly low death toll, and result in a herd immunity within a couple months. This slow burn approach we're doing however seems po…

Sweden didn't lockdown and might have herd immunity in weeks, according to their chief epidemiologist. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the long run. “In major parts of Sweden, around Stockholm, we have reached a plateau (in new cases) and we’re already seeing the effect of herd immunity and in a few weeks’ time we’ll see even more of the effects of that. And in the rest of the country, the situation…

It might be herd immunity. If might also be that this disease is seasonal. Either way it is an interesting metric.
Post reply on HN