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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

#411

Post by djannzjkzxn »

fyp wrote: post #170
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…

Even with worst-case scenario of bias, this is still extremely good news. My worry was always with super spreaders who refuse to isolate but the data is suggesting that those spreaders will still soon achieve herd immunity among themselves. As long as the rest of the society behaves we will still hit zero cases relatively quickly. (which wasn't always clear to me before since I initially predicted that this will take…

While this dynamic may exist in some form, I don’t think it’s a powerful enough affect to stop the spread. There is not a firm dichotomy of spreaders vs. isolators and the composition probably changes over time, such that the virus still has many opportunities to spread to previously-isolated groups.

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

#412

Post by badfrog »

chasd00 wrote: post #58
brandmeyer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was astonished by your 1/1000 figure and had to look it up... If anything, its too low . 15k deaths (proven+probable) in 8M people is almost 2/1000. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

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.

> I still can't get my head around why NY has suffered so disproportionately.

Compared to California, NY locked down much later and did it in slow, incremental steps.

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

#413

Post by TheBlight »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #401
TheBlight wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deve…

> Sure all of these studies are potentially flawed but they're all generally pointing in the same direction That's unfortunately not the way statistics works. Combining multiple bad tests just makes the results incorrect or highly uncertain; the devil often is in the details. The Stanford/Santa Clara County study is a good example of how the details can really undermine a study. Things do indeed seem to be converging…

We don't have perfect studies and perfect data but calling these tests "bad" seems slightly unfair. They give us an imperfect but useful snapshot of what's going on. But thanks for the condescension. I'd expect nothing less on HN.

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

#414

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

cryptonector wrote: post #354
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sorry, but that's dumb. If 1/5th of the population has been exposed, then you know the total strain on the healthcare system is extremely unlikely to top an additional 4x what it has been, but not only it has 1/5th the population being exposed not in fact been enough to overwhelm the healthcare system, as more of the population is exposed you begin to get herd immunity, so in fact the total strain on the healthcare s…

We don't know that actually 21% have been exposed - hence the use of "preliminary" and "suggest". We need actual positive results that aren't based upon hiding behind the repeated use of "extremely unlikely". It seems like a bad idea to gamble based upon an initial suggestion.

The only actual good indicator we have is the rate of change of deaths and hospitalizations.

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

#415

Post by badfrog »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #64
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.

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.

I don't think that fully explains it. There are plenty of European cities of similar density to NYC that haven't been hit nearly as hard. Naples Italy, for example.

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

#416

Post by zaroth »

vannevar wrote: post #383
zaroth wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the CDC, the estimated prevalence of symptomatic flu last year was 45 million illnesses and 61,000 deaths. For NY, assuming it’s evenly distributed, that would translate into 13.8% of 20 million = 2.8m symptomatic flu cases and 3,753 deaths. COVID appears to be significantly more prevalent (roughly twice as prevalent in just 3 months as flu gets all year despite incredible efforts), and roughly 2-3x as f…

According to the CDC web site, those numbers are 35.5M flu cases and 34,200 deaths ( https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html ), giving an IFR of more like 0.1%. Which would put COVID-19 at more like 5-6x more fatal than the flu. Combine that with the virtually complete lack of natural and vaccinated resistance compared to the flu, and it's clear that the potential fatality totals for COVID-19, absent dras…

It seems the CDC has different data depending on where you look. The 45 million / 61,000 numbers are here, for the 2017-2018 season, see Figure 2:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

And on the page specifically for 2017-2018 season, they have different numbers still;

"CDC early estimates indicate that more than 900,000 people were hospitalized and more than 80,000 people died from flu last season."

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlights/press-conference-2018-19....

I agree 100% it will be significantly more prevalent, due to the nature of the virus combined with the total lack of natural or vaccinated immunity.

However, it's not clear at all what our "drastic action" is achieving, aside from 20 million unemployed and trillions of dollars spent trying to hold everything together. 20% prevalence doesn't exactly speak volumes towards the efficacy of social distancing.

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

#417

Post by Scipio_Afri »

jnbiche wrote: post #374
TheBlight wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deve…

The CFR will be much higher than the IFR. For example, approximate flu IFR is 0.05%.

Exactly, CFR is always expected to be higher than the IFR. Most people getting sick don't go to the doctor. The CFR is an indication of how many people feel they need to go to the doctor and get treatment due to how severe the illness is. And of those that seek treatment how many die.

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

#418

Post by monadic2 »

TheBlight wrote: post #348
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 deve…

> Sure all of these studies are potentially flawed but they're all generally pointing in the same direction.

How on earth could you differentiate this from the sample bias?

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

#419

Post by guscost »

badfrog wrote: post #394
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…

> New York City had the highest positive rate at 21.2%. The potential good news to come to light is that the death rate may be far lower than some estimates, at 0.5%. How do they get to 0.5%? According to NYC data if you include "probable" cases, 15,400 people, or 0.18% of the population, are already dead. Wouldn't that imply 0.9% fatalities if the whole city was infected?

It would not be ruled as a significant factor leading to death in many of those cases, and for the rest, NYC residents might be more at risk due to higher average viral dose (subways). Also there is a lag in IgG antibody production, the test has imperfect sensitivity, and some portion of exposed people may never develop detectable antibodies. Some of these confounding variables are probably baked into the estimate.

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

#420

Post by TheBlight »

monadic2 wrote: post #418
TheBlight wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 deve…

> Sure all of these studies are potentially flawed but they're all generally pointing in the same direction. How on earth could you differentiate this from the sample bias?

All three studies created their sample groups differently. Are all three methods flawed in some way? Sure. Is it more reasonable to completely ignore the picture all three are painting or to consider there might be something to the trend?
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