Earlier quoted context omitted.
> when you do the math on mortality due to suicide and overdose it’s not clear that containment would even save more lives in the long run. I'm waiting for people to do the analysis of mass unemployment from lockdown leading to people losing their healthcare, just in time for the pandemic to widen or return this summer or fall. You're exactly right to consider all of the externalities of our current approach.
I hadn't thought of it specifically in terms of our broken employer-based healthcare system. That's a really good point. I quit my job Feb 7, before all this unfolded. And COBRA costs me $612.54 per month. For the same reason I was able to quit my job, I will be totally fine. I have over 5 years of living expenses in liquid assets, so I will be fine. But for someone who was living paycheck to paycheck and lost their…
Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
511–520 of 679 posts
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#512Good news. Herd-immunity is growing.
Also, this means that the death-rate is far lower than reported. And this is nice too. Maybe we can save people by starting the society again.
In other news, we see that hydroxychloroquine is actually working according to doctors. But there was a very bad study that claimed that it caused 2x as many deaths. It should have said instead that it was mainly used on patients that were close to death. Here is a good analysis of that study. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLSYRqcg0wo&feature=youtu.be... Bad studies like this wide published one show that science is not immune to political agendas.
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more often they go, the more likely you encounter them.
True, but if you encounter one daily shopper, two weekly shoppers and twenty monthly shoppers, it will skew the results. Same if the numbers are reversed.
But you won't, the opposite will happen; you'll proportionally encounter way more daily shoppers than infrequent shoppers, for the simple tautological reason that the daily shoppers are going more often.
This is a sampling bias, and it's the exact same problem as if you ran a survey trying to ascertain how many people have landlines ... by calling random phone numbers.
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#514Earlier quoted context omitted.
The study is dramatically over-sampling exactly the people who have the most potential exposure to COVID-19, and dramatically over-sampling the people who don't. This could easily be way off. It's not testing the people who aren't home at all, and it has a low chance of only testing the people who leave home rarely, only when strictly necessary. It's mainly finding the people who leave home a lot.
I think the overwhelming majority of people are visiting grocery stores to buy food. (Or have someone in their household doing it) If the studied presume this then it makes more sense.
You can't assume that. I know plenty of people who haven't left their apartments in a month plus, because they're having groceries ordered in.
And you completely missed the point that people who are going outside a lot more often are both (a) more likely to have been exposed to COVID-19, and (b) more likely to be encountered by your survey. If there are e.g. 700 daily shoppers and 700 weekly shoppers going to a given store, then if you go on one day and sample every shopper you're not going to get half and half by population as you'd need to for a true random sample; instead, you're going to get 700 daily shoppers and only 100 weekly shoppers! This is a hugely biased sample!
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The study is dramatically over-sampling exactly the people who have the most potential exposure to COVID-19, and dramatically over-sampling the people who don't. This could easily be way off. It's not testing the people who aren't home at all, and it has a low chance of only testing the people who leave home rarely, only when strictly necessary. It's mainly finding the people who leave home a lot.
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Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other part, those who are more vulnerable are more aware, and are implementing more measures in their daily living, hence they are not getting infected as much, currently. Hope it stays that way.
Not sure that makes any difference. Not only are death rates sharply higher in older people, but their infection rates relative to the population are also higher as well.
Without better testing, you have no way of knowing whether older people have higher infection rates. Infection rates depend on far more variables than age. Witness what's happening on the Teddy Roosevelt.
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#517Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You are one order of magnitude too low at 150,000. It's much worse than that.
Yes, you're right.
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#518If 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…
I hope that the numbers stay at .6% and that the difference from previous estimates might even be improvements we've made in figuring out how to care for people suffering from Covid-19. But I remember being happy at how low South Korea's numbers were when their epidemic peaked and receded then watching the case fatality rate slowly climb up to the 2.2% it's at today. So I'm not counting any chickens just yet.
Be careful not to conflate CFR with IFR. CFR is the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed cases. IFR is deaths divided by total infections. It's hard to determine IFR, but CFR is almost always an exaggeration of the risk.
Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies" Should be re-written as: "Preliminary test results suggest 21% of of people approached in a crowded grocery store and who would agree to give blood have Covid antibodies" All of these tests suffer the same sample bias, and that sample bias is massive. People who are already in a grocery store (risky behavior), who are willing to give a bloo…
NYC is not suburbia. I believe a higher percentage are still working outside of their homes (and, in many cases, that also means travelling on public transport), and a smaller percentage have the financial and transport resources to significantly reduce the frequency of their shopping trips. Apartment living means a greater exposure to your neighbors whenever you do enter or exit. The sampling in NYC, while far from…
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Re: Preliminary test results suggest 21% of NYC residents have Covid antibodies
#520If 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…
It's also lower than the 3% that was predicted that people used to justify the shutdown and closer inline with the swine flu or rotovirus.
You're conflating CFR with IFR.