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

#341

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

TheCowboy wrote: post #320

formercoder wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time I try and make counterpoints to lockdowns or even logical evaluations of them online the downvotes and hate start flowing. There is a huge bias among those in our circles towards locking down as long as possible, because all of us can work from home and aren’t worried about feeding our families.

Arguing it's a matter of bias sidesteps the reasoning for lockdowns. This is like when someone dismisses someone for possessing a political bias---that's not an argument. And framing it as lockdown vs. being able to feed your family is a false dichotomy. It seems like a waste to even get into the finer details if this is where you're coming from, but keep calling it hate while ignoring the criticism.

No, it's a very real dichotomy. People won't literally starve in the US, but waiting in a bread line for hours is very different than feeding your family through your own money and effort.

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

#342

Post by zucker42 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

glofish wrote: post #60

cma wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exaggerated in that the California study predicted a flu like IFR (Ioannidis, one of the authors, has been pushing that as his pet theory for over a month). This shows it is more likely several times that.

it doesn't contradic Ioannidis at all. He might be right in the end, and that would be an incredibly bitter pill to many. We are getting closer and closer to the flu fatality rate. from 5% to 3%, then 1% now 0.5% - smart money (and common sense) would bet that the rate will continue to drop, I would expect that people living in healthier environment than NYC will fare even better. No way NYC IFR is the upper bound fo…

I'm sorry but 0.1%-0.2% directly contradicts 0.6%-0.9% (or higher because that doesn't account for the lag between infection and death). That's a 3 to 9 times higher death rate.

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

#343

Post by nikolay » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #334

aazaa wrote: post #317

> In his press conference today, Governor Cuomo revealed the preliminary results of a first-phase antibody test that surveyed 3,000 New Yorkers over two days in 19 counties at 40 locations that included grocery and big-box stores. The sample suggests that 13.9% of New York State residents have the antibodies, meaning they had the virus at one point and recovered. Of the regions tested–Long Island, NYC, Westchester/Ro…

The death rate of 0.5% falls right in the range of what modelers have been using, by the way. Not exactly very positive news.

Yeah, still 150,000 death toll if everybody gets infected. And this is not considering the permanent lung and other tissue damage that's getting reported from "recovered" patients.

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

#344

Post by guscost » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

cryoshon wrote: post #155

taeric wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like fear talking. As more data comes in, we are seeing more people with no affects. Not just mild, but nigh non existent. It is agreed that something gives people severe cases. Severe includes death and recovered with damage. We don't seem to have data letting you know who or what would land there.

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…

> we cannot gamble with our future so carelessly on the basis of preliminary data. here is a vignette to explain why.

Yes we can, and will. We’re gambling with every choice we make about how to respond to this, and anyone claiming that their plan is 100% “based on science” is full of shit. For example, every country enforcing a lockdown is gambling that it won’t lead to civil war.

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

#345

Post by newacct583 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #334

aazaa wrote: post #317

> In his press conference today, Governor Cuomo revealed the preliminary results of a first-phase antibody test that surveyed 3,000 New Yorkers over two days in 19 counties at 40 locations that included grocery and big-box stores. The sample suggests that 13.9% of New York State residents have the antibodies, meaning they had the virus at one point and recovered. Of the regions tested–Long Island, NYC, Westchester/Ro…

The death rate of 0.5% falls right in the range of what modelers have been using, by the way. Not exactly very positive news.

Right. Really this study is just confirming (with higher error bars than we'd like) what we already strongly suspected.

Note that as others are pointing out, that 0.5% isn't really extrapolated correctly. The tested case deaths are looking like they're only 70% of the total or so. Also using a current death count with contemporary infection counts is a mismatch, because it forgets that ~35% of the people currently in the hospital won't ever leave, which is about 5k more deaths.

So a better calibrated CFR might be 1% or so, which is even closer to the range we've all been assuming.

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

#346

Post by shironineja » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #317

> In his press conference today, Governor Cuomo revealed the preliminary results of a first-phase antibody test that surveyed 3,000 New Yorkers over two days in 19 counties at 40 locations that included grocery and big-box stores. The sample suggests that 13.9% of New York State residents have the antibodies, meaning they had the virus at one point and recovered. Of the regions tested–Long Island, NYC, Westchester/Ro…

So if 100% of the USA gets it at 330 M people that amounts to:

1,650,000 deaths.

It is unlikely 100% will catch it from a single wave however.

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

#347

Post by zucker42 » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #181

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…

The rates being this high actually casts doubt on the study. It’s very very implausible, and suggests almost surely a selection bias in the sample towards a population much more likely to have contracted it.

Why is it implausible? The resulting fatality rate seems close to other scientific results I've seen.

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

#348

Post by TheBlight » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

aazaa wrote: post #317

> In his press conference today, Governor Cuomo revealed the preliminary results of a first-phase antibody test that surveyed 3,000 New Yorkers over two days in 19 counties at 40 locations that included grocery and big-box stores. The sample suggests that 13.9% of New York State residents have the antibodies, meaning they had the virus at one point and recovered. Of the regions tested–Long Island, NYC, Westchester/Ro…

Sure all of these studies are potentially flawed but they're all generally pointing in the same direction. There are many more infections than we know about and the CFR is not anywhere close to the actual IFR.

NYC is an outlier with a 21% infection estimate but for the rest of NY (outside NYC metro/Westchester/LI) the estimate is 3.6%. Santa Clara estimate was 3%. LA County estimate was 4%. Seems like a trend is developing.

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

#349

Post by hcknwscommenter » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #334

aazaa wrote: post #317

> In his press conference today, Governor Cuomo revealed the preliminary results of a first-phase antibody test that surveyed 3,000 New Yorkers over two days in 19 counties at 40 locations that included grocery and big-box stores. The sample suggests that 13.9% of New York State residents have the antibodies, meaning they had the virus at one point and recovered. Of the regions tested–Long Island, NYC, Westchester/Ro…

The death rate of 0.5% falls right in the range of what modelers have been using, by the way. Not exactly very positive news.

It is very positive in that we can be more confident that our assumptions are close to reality. 0.5%*330M still equals 1.65M deaths, or (very roughly) 5M ICU beds. Spread out over 52 weeks, that's a lot of ventilators and ICU beds and PPE, but it is a target. A very big juicy target that we can and should aim directly at, and HIT.

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

#350

Post by wvenable » Thu, Apr 23, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

klmadfejno wrote: post #204

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…

I've been making many posts arguing against the efficacy of lockdowns (and been getting shat on by points I find mostly naive). I think something like this is probably the best approach because it minimizes economic harm while also trying to minimize hospitalization rates among the elderly. But even if we pretend we could implement a perfect bubble for everyone over 50, they're not especially safe when the lockdown i…

> But even if we pretend we could implement a perfect bubble for everyone over 50, they're not especially safe when the lockdown is lifted for them. The virus will still exist, and people over 50 tend to spend time with people over 50 (see: homophily).

The point of the lock down is to prevent the spread of the virus from happening too fast and overwhelming the healthcare system. It is not to prevent people from ever getting it as that's clearly not possible. You seem to be missing that point in your argument.