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In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

reuters.com

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Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#101

Post by robocat »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #56
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before the deluge of "But wait two weeks" comments, I just want to ask at what point we accept that the potentially of totally asymptomatic cases is insanely high, far higher than anyone thought? Presumably in two weeks, when we know whether more of these thousands of people go on to develop symptoms or not. Is anybody following up on stories like this? Do we have any from two weeks ago?

The asymptomatic rate being that high and that many people being infected implies three things. 1) that the asymptomatic rate for this Coronavirus is much higher than other Coronaviruses. 2) but at the same time, it's more deadly than most Coronaviruses. 3) and it's also the R0 is much higher than other Coronaviruses. Isn't it more likely there's a testing issue? This seems a lot like a person that runs a SQL query t…

> the R0 is much higher than other Coronaviruses

R0 depends on the population you measure. In a high contact, crowded place, the R0 could be very high. In a population staying at home, the R0 could be very low.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#102

Post by Terretta »

alexbanks wrote: post #2

Before the deluge of "But wait two weeks" comments, I just want to ask at what point we accept that the potentially of totally asymptomatic cases is insanely high, far higher than anyone thought?

Note that until this past week, officially, the symptoms had to be the first three defined by CDC, not the eight or so CDC have expanded now: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, repeated shaking, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell, could all appear between two and 14 days after exposure.

In the field it appears many/most of the less severe cases don’t exhibit the initial set they had defined, so patients experienced illness written off as not COVID-19.

From what I’ve heard from the field, a careful patient history finds there was typically a bout of unusual “but it can’t be COVID” illness with a set of the expanded set of symptoms in almost every “asymptomatic” patient.

It’s further speculated these variations may have to do with level of exposure and path of infection, along with the earlier noted lung health and comorbidities.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#103

Post by prox »

colmvp wrote: post #55

As a Canadian, I'm shaking my head at our officials who said "we do know that asymptomatic people are not the key driver of epidemics" as a response to concerns back in January of the potential for the virus to grow in our country via incoming travelers who came from hot spots and were not screened or forced to isolate if they expressed no symptoms. Now our long term care facilities are being overrun with cases poten…

Its the same story in Wuhan, probably quite a few asymptomatic carriers until the death toll start rising because of the exponential growth and came on the radar.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#104

Post by srl »

bobongo wrote: post #99

HN seems to have forgotten what happened in Wuhan, Bergamo, and New York in its newfound polemic of "the death rate is just like that of the flu" in the comments of the recent headlines. Either this is actually HN's denial of what's going on, or we are witnessing paid shills overwhelming actual users in the number of comments and votes.

Paid by who? Your comment would be much more interesting if you implied something concrete, instead of the more common (and boring) "people who disagree with me must be paid off by ... someone".

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#105

Post by fermienrico »

jbritton wrote: post #87
ivanhoe wrote: post #52

I've read that asymptomatic carriers are though to be less infectious than those with symptoms because of the lower concentration of virus in the saliva. Also, many virologists mentioned in recent texts that the initial concentration of the virus you receive can affect how sick you'll get - the more viruses you're exposed to, the faster they can invade the body and the more severe it will get. Can those two facts be…

I have been wondering about the effect of the degree of initial infection. I kind of assume the virus grows exponentially inside the body and would dwarf the initial constant. If a low initial dose affects the severity of the disease, I think that would be incredibly useful to know. I also wish there was info on percentage of infection via fomites vs inhalation.

I think it’s the opposite. The initial conditions have a profound effect on the exponential nature of the growth. Half the dose could mean that your immune system can suppress it. There is probably critical rate at which both growth rates match.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#106

Post by Pfhreak »

MrPatan wrote: post #80
FabHK wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that can’t be the case here, because a shockingly large proportion of people tested positive according to the article. (Thus, either the false positives are negligible, or the test employed has a an astronomical false positive rate (bad specificity)).

You're right, they get a positive result for almost all the population! Wait, does that pass the smell test? Do prisions become huge flu hotspots as well? The Diamond Princess outbreak didn't have that kind of numbers... What's more likely at this point, the numbers from the article or human error? My respects to anybody trying to do actual science with this kind of data in this kind of situation...

Densely crowded environment where people were unlikely to maintain social distancing, poor quality health care, probably poor quality sanitation. It seems reasonable to me that a prison would fare worse than a cruise ship.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#107

Post by the8472 »

partiallypro wrote: post #89
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #84

Lets not get too excited about this. Whatever the numbers, that's interesting and worth recording for planning. But whatever they are, they result in "way too many deaths". This is still a very dangerous and rapidly-spreading virus.

I think the hope is that we could be closer to herd immunity than we think.

Any herd immunity scenario is conditionnal on immunity is long-lasting, which is far from certain considering related viruses are recurring seasonally or in single-digit year intervals.

Don't bet the farm on it.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#108

Post by frereubu »

hkeide wrote: post #73
_2d30 wrote: post #42

I'd guess smoking rates are very high in prisons. It seems smokers (even former) are much better off than non-smokers.

That's the opposite of everything I've read

I think they're referring to this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french-study-s...

The idea is that nicotine may lower your chances of infection, but once established I imagine that smoking will definitely reduce your chances of survival.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#109

Post by ilamont »

96% are without symptoms yet.

There was a nursing home in Massachusetts which had 51 out of 98 residents testing positive but asymptomatic in early April. While this sounded encouraging in the sense no one was critically ill because of coronavirus, a few weeks later 19 had died and about 30 more had tested positive.

Let’s wait a month until there is a clearer picture about the impact of the virus on a particular population of people.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/04/04/coronaviru...

https://www.wcvb.com/article/85-of-patients-at-wilmington-ma...

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#110

Post by sandworm101 »

Fine non-Covid point:

>>> The United States has more people behind bars than any other nation, a total incarcerated population of nearly 2.3 million as of 2017 — nearly half of which is in state prisons. Smaller numbers are locked in federal prisons and local jails, which typically hold people for relatively short periods as they await trial.

That isn't correct. "Local Jails" hold two general populations: people serving less than a year (generally non-felony convictions) and people awaiting legal process. The infamous Rikers Island in NY is technically a "local jail". People regularly stay in these facilities for YEARS. The AVERAGE stay at Rikers is 6+ months. (Total stay, not time between appearances.)

The distinction between "jail" and "prison" in the US is academic. For purposes of disease, and certainly from the perspective of inmates, both are prisons where large populations are locked up in confined quarters for years at a time.

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