Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by taeric » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

grandmczeb wrote: post #153

taeric wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Viral load, is what this typically refers to. Akin to an allergic person seeing one cat versus a room full of them. And, of course, for some people with allergies, contact where a cat has been is enough. ;) So... Complicated. Edit: was corrected down thread that this is infection dose, not viral load.

There’s a very weak association between viral load and symptoms once you’re infected.

But that is what the thread was talking about, right?

Would be nice to see studies. My intuition is that it is weak. But my intuition doesn't count for much here.

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

#172

Post by cycrutchfield » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #152

cycrutchfield wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a different argument. I'm saying that "lockdown until we have a vaccine or great treatment" might mean "lockdown until 2030". We already see heavy economic damages, civil unrest and riots after 4-8 weeks. Make that 40, 80 or 200 weeks and the world will be very different.

[flagged]

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

#173

Post by lukeinkster » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #30

cozzyd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite conclusion. There are between 10k-15k COVID-19 associated deaths in NYC, depending on how you count (the higher rate is consistent with the excess-mortality data, I believe). That by itself produces a range of ~0.56%-0.86% if you assume 21.2 % of NYC has been infected (larger range if you allow for some error on the infection rate, obviously). Moreover, we don't know what fraction of the currently-…

0.5% comes from Cuomo’s presentation [1]. Also your 50% seems very high to me. My understanding is that 50% is about the death rate of covid patients requiring ventilation, so the overall death rate of people hospitalised for covid must be well below that. Also if you factor this timing impact, you have the same timing impact on the denominator, i.e. people who are infected but haven't developped antibodies yet. [1]…

The death rate of those requiring ventilation in NYC is closer to 88% https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765184

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

#174

Post by robocat » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #122

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…

Yes, the study is really good news for NYC. My thinking is that the state of emergency, currently in place until 5/15, will be extended at most once to 6/15. After that we'll be somewhat open for business. I imagine everyone will be advised to wear mask/gloves, to keep the social distance and to keep washing hands. Lots of people will continue to work from home, others will bike to work. Being summer, the virus will…

> Being summer, the virus will not be that contagious.

I think that is still scientifically debatable, good overview: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2239380-will-the-spread...

Certainly it is still transmissible in hot countries.

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

#175

Post by jonas21 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #59

cjhopman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but a person who goes to the store 7 times a week is ~7 times as likely to have been sampled compared to someone who goes only once a week. They are also ~7 times as likely to have contracted covid-19 at the grocery store. It's likely that they are also, in general, isolating less than the other. This sampling would have a (possibly slight, but still unknown) bias towards people who are isolating less (who you…

Unfortunately, unless you go door to door knocking... you're gonna get biased data.

Even with door to door knocking, you're going to introduce a bias -- toward people who are around to answer the door, which would tend to undersample essential workers.

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

#176

Post by m4rtink » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

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…

I would not really call the Swedish model successful - Czech Republic and Sweden have both about 10 million inhabitants.

Things moved pretty quickly to pretty comprehensive lockdown here in Czech Republic, including mandatory mask wearing. So far this seem to be effective, with combined death toll currently at 210. In comparison Sweden has almost 10x as much, 2010 dead.

Looks like if more has been done less people could have died, not to mention the alarming news about organ damage, virus resurgence and questionable long term immunity.

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

#177

Post by kgwgk » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

revnode wrote: post #129

tunesmith wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, can someone spell out how this might be good news? 21% is still a long way from herd immunity, and NYC's hospital system has been severely strained getting to this point. On top of that, the hospitalization rate still seems disproportionate to someone getting the flu - maybe it's five times as fatal, but it's > 5x the flu hospitalization rate. It's not like the virus has become less dangerous, we're just reali…

> Sorry, can someone spell out how this might be good news? It's good news because it strongly suggests that mortality is much less than previously suspected. There were numbers floating around from anywhere between 10% to 3% a few weeks back. A mortality rate < 1% is very good news because it means fewer people will die in the long run.

> mortality is much less than previously suspected

Mortality remains pretty much as suspected already two months ago:

“Based on these available analyses, current IFR estimates10,11,12 range from 0.3% to 1%. Without population-based serologic studies, it is not yet possible to know what proportion of the population has been infected with COVID-19.”

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

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

#178

Post by sacred_numbers » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #96

So, at what point can we declare the lockdown to be a harmful overreaction and start opening countries up? Will we hold anyone accountable for models which proved to be pessimistic by orders of magnitude, causing implosion of economies around the world?

I think,if anything, that this new data validates the lockdown. New York City has been hit hard by this virus (0.2% of the population; for comparison 0.3% of the US population died in WW2) and there are still approximately 80% of the population that hasn't gotten it yet. If 70% of the population of NYC ends up getting it over the next few months, that would mean something like 50k to 60k dead just in NYC. If 70% of the US population ends up getting it that would be 1-2 million dead. Locking down in the face of those numbers is not an overreaction, although maintaining lockdown until a vaccine may be an overreaction. I think we should be devoting huge amounts of resources to manufacturing face masks and testing kits so that we can safely ease out of lockdown without causing more outbreaks like we saw in New York or Italy. Ending the lockdown without a plan, though, is highly unethical in my opinion

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

#179

Post by cryoshon » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #160

cryoshon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we have absolutely no clue regarding the long-term impacts of exposure to this virus for asymptomatic people or otherwise. we cannot gamble with our future so carelessly on the basis of preliminary data. here is a vignette to explain why. once someone is infected with HIV, most people experience flu-like symptoms for a week or two which then resolve either with or without treatment. in some people, the virus is clear…

> COVID hasn't given us any indication of similar activity. but we know so very little that we can't take the risk We take that risk with other viruses and bacteria literally all the time. If hypothetical but unlikely risks become thejustification for destroying people's livelihoods and the world ecomony, we're all dead anyway.

as a former immunologist, i can assure you that with common viruses and bacteria, we have years and years of knowledge about how they perform, thereby making the risks of exposure calculable.

it is this body of knowledge which allows our society to normally function even during a typical flu season. we understand the upper and lower boundaries of the consequences, and we can make an informed judgment about what we should do to navigate the environment accordingly.

the idea of throwing open the gates to allow everyone to get infected is a dangerous fantasy. at best, it's taking a leap of faith with other people's health without knowing whether there is a long way down or not.

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

#180

Post by 8ytecoder » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

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…

(Reposting my comment again here)

This one's from a different company (BioMedomics) and it was a random test of people pulled straight off the streets. Happened at an entirely different geographical area (Chelsea, Massachusetts) as well. I don't want to be too optimistic but there are some signs that we are heavily under-counting the actual number of cases (at least in the US).

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third...