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

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

#281

Post by wtvanhest »

mrb wrote: post #183

If this study is accurate, then 1.8 million NYC resident are infected. So 15 411 deaths (as of today, including 5 121 probable deaths) suggests COVID-19 has a fatality rate of MINIMUM 0.9% which is in line with previous estimates (between 0.5 and 1.6%) and this is MINIMUM 9 times more fatal than the flu (0.1%). Edited to add "MINIMUM", as there is a lag between case detection and death (I should have known better to…

The study is biased in that it pulled samples from a grocery store based on people opting in. If I walk in to a grocery store and someone offers to give me this test, I am going to say no for 2 reasons:

1) I have not been sick since last fall

2) I don't want to take additional risk getting bloodwork done by someone who is testing people for covid19 antibodies. I want to take a little risk as possible and return home to my family.

So basically this test only possibly grabs people who are willing to risk going to the grocery store rather than having food delivered, and who are willing to take on additional risk of getting tested. It is even less likely that a person not taking risk, who never had any symptoms would get tested than a person who had had symptoms.

The entire premise that this represents the population as a whole is completely flawed.

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

#282

Post by dchichkov »

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…

What is the percentage of people with innate immunity to COVID-19?

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

#283

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

ineedasername wrote: post #102

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'…

Do you have a source for the CFR of 0.1 for H1N1? I could only find this[1], which is a much smaller number.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8406723.stm

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

#284

Post by ummonk »

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.

Mid single digit percentage mortality rates were the numbers for case fatality rate, not infection fatality rates. Infection fatality rates have consistently been around 1%.

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

#285

Post by watwut »

cm2187 wrote: post #12
CubsFan1060 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as people shopping, not people that work there. So folks who are out-and-about, but are not in the more likely to have it groups (healthcare workers or people working at the grocery store). You're right about older and sick people.

No that's what I meant. People shopping and therefore not at work. Therefore intuitively I would expect the population tested to be less contaminated than the population not tested (because at work).

People who work also shop. People who work in stores also shop in stores. At that time, they could be randomly tested like non-workers.

So workers are not excluded from study.

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

#286

Post by legulere »

djrogers wrote: post #93
vkou wrote: post #24

If this study is accurate, and is not just working on garbage data, and if these antibodies actually mean long-term immunity, this means one of two things: 1. If the lockdown is lifted, we will see another ~60,000 to 100,000 deaths in NYC, before it will hit herd immunity. 2. Or, the lockdown will continue. The accuracy of antibody studies has been called into doubt, and as far as I know, nobody has ever followed up…

The purpose of the lockdown isn't to hide until the virus magically disappears, it's to flatten the curve and allow the virus to spread slowly enough that it doesn't overwhelm the healthcare system in any given place. Maintaining a lockdown will not lower the number of people who get the virus, it will merely extend how long it takes to get there.

Flattening the curve until there is a vaccine might be the right plan for a influenza pandemic. For COVID-19 we can go further: we can bring down infection rates so much that contact tracing becomes feasible again.

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

#287

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

cryptonector wrote: post #208

At 21% it would be time to end the shutdown. EDIT: Read the comments below.

I'd think it'd be decided based upon the new cases and hospitalization and death rates, not an estimate of population with exposure.

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

#288

Post by ummonk »

cmurf wrote: post #197
rocha wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A counter argument is that the same didn't happen (or hasn't happened yet) in cities that also have massive public transportation systems like Tokyo or Seoul. There is probably many confounding factors, such as mask use, no talking on the subway, etc, to make pointing to one particular factor very hard. EDIT: typo

Those cities see more widespread use of masks generally. And specifically once COVID-19 was common knowledge, so was the use of masks. Widespread mask usage doesn't happen in NYC, same as the rest of the U.S. It's very recent this is practiced in the U.S., whether voluntarily or by order of a handful of local governments. And in my local area where it's not mandatory I only see about 3 in 4 using masks.

And Japan has a culture of talking quietly which greatly reduces droplet transmission even beyond the practice of wearing masks.

NYC has a culture of yelling.

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

#289

Post by zucker42 »

kgwgk wrote: post #177
revnode wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

The princess cruise ship study also gave an IFR (for China) of 0.5%, and an early epidemiological modeling study put the symptomatic CFR at 1.4% which would imply 0.7% IFR assuming it's 50% symptomatic.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0822-7

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20031773v...

0.5% to 1% has been the most plausible for at least a month, and this NYC study seems to exactly line up with that.

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

#290

Post by Slartie »

treis wrote: post #166
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 isn't supported by any facts and is totally wrong. Our ability to treat viral pneumonia is very limited. We aren't saving 60-90% of patients that otherwise would die which your numbers imply. We can move the needle a bit and maybe save 20% of them. As an example, 90% of patients that go on ventilators still die. Even in a situation where hospitals are getting overwhelmed it won't make much difference. Much of th…

> As an example, 90% of patients that go on ventilators still die.

That’s in New York, and probably because they only put the really worst cases on ventilators because there weren’t enough ventilators. In Germany, that number of deaths on ventilators is at around 30%. This shows that this quota is entirely useless to make your argument, and that maybe you should curb your intuition a bit when it comes to estimating percentages of potentially saveable people, especially if those estimates are then used to effectively sentence people to certain death.

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