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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

#131

Post by asveikau »

bobongo wrote: post #93
cies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did similar calculations, and found the institutions in charge give us very unreliable data. The term "corona case" is very, very, ambiguous and cannot the understood as such without a detailed explanation on how the counting was done. Thanks for sharing. I found the peek in all-case mortality also very interesting, because that way counting is much more unambiguous: dead is dead. They showed a clear diversion from…

> because that way counting is much more unambiguous: dead is dead Unrealistically low death stats coming from Turkey compared to cases easily refute that argument. Dead is dead, unless the state finds a way to claim that it was not a COVID19 dead.

I would add that it doesn't have to be a malicious government purposefully undercounting. It's very easy to undercount or misdiagnose even with competent and well meaning people. Specifically every pneumonia death, heart attack, stroke is a potential undercount, and people aren't "bad people" or evil for making the wrong conclusion about the ultimate cause, especially when testing is less available and frequent than it should be. Also I have heard that there are a significant number of people dying of COVID19 in their homes and that those are more likely to be undercounted vs. a death in a hospital.

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

#132

Post by vanniv »

cjlars wrote: post #24
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?

I'll venture a guess that by Wednesday the news cycle will be deep in the implications of very high asymptomatic case count... Assuming we don't start seeing contradicting evidence.

Nah, that has too much risk of admitting that eternal house arrest isn't a good solution, so we can be certain that won't be the media narrative.

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

#133

Post by antonvs »

tempestn wrote: post #88
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…

Agreed 100%. Here in BC, public health wasn't even saying, "It's not known whether asymptomatic carriers can spread the virus," but actually, "Evidence suggests asymptomatic carriers can not spread the virus." Something that as far as I can tell was never actually true. This was reported in public briefings, was repeated by public health nurses on the call-in lines, and was distributed as the government's official po…

> "Evidence suggests asymptomatic carriers can not spread the virus."

I don't understand this. How would that even work? If you're infected, what would stop you from shedding virus like anyone else? Is there a precedent for this, for respiratory viruses?

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

#134

Post by tarsinge »

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.

Not expert but I think if the initial constant can be several orders of magnitude different (I guess a few when airborne vs billions in a droplet) then it can impact the delay of the infection and give time for the immune response.

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

#135

Post by rjtavares »

cies wrote: post #30
marcell wrote: post #3

I've been tracking the antibody study results in a spreadsheet, and they are suggesting a 10-20x undercount of cases in the official "confirmed" numbers. You can see the data I've collected here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTla...

I did similar calculations, and found the institutions in charge give us very unreliable data. The term "corona case" is very, very, ambiguous and cannot the understood as such without a detailed explanation on how the counting was done. Thanks for sharing. I found the peek in all-case mortality also very interesting, because that way counting is much more unambiguous: dead is dead. They showed a clear diversion from…

Outliers such as this one are not uncommon in the winter. They are in April. According to that chart there isn't a single point outside of winter months as high as this year.

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

#136

Post by vanniv »

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...

A cruise ship under quarantine is dramatically more socially isolating than a prison.

You would expect spread to be absurdly more efficient in a prison. Less physical separation, less hygiene, less everything.

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

#137

Post by jwlake »

One of the super-interesting things here, is that apparently everyone was in the specific window where they test positive for the virus. This implies the population was recently infected, had not been previously infected, and it spread almost completely within a tight window.

This implies a shocking high R(effective) for that population. In 2 weeks we'll have super interesting data one way of the other on the CFR.

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

#138

Post by thendrill »

jessaustin wrote: post #12

Our prisons do not reduce crime. All of these people should have been released months ago. [EDIT:] Apparently these propositions are not self-evident to all HN downvoters. They follow directly from several other propositions that really should be obvious. USA imprisons vastly higher percentages of its population than other nations. Yet it still has higher crime than those other nations. QED. [EDIT:] 'thendrill you ap…

You have to keep in mind that the majority of HN are Pc-babies working in IT.

Basically nerds and useful idiots with hi iq...

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

ck2 wrote: post #86
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…

how do you ever make antibodies if you are perpetually asymptomatic though? do you carry it forever? does it attack eventually? what happens if you are an asymptomatic carrier and get a vax?

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by raverbashing »

ptrincr wrote: post #58
garmaine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have huge false positive rates though.

Not sure why you are being downvoted: https://www.oxfordbiosystems.com/COVID-19-Rapid-test "In order to test the detection sensitivity and specificity of the COVID-19 IgG-IgM combined antibody test, blood samples were collected from COVID-19 patients from multiple hospitals and Chinese CDC laboratories. The tests were done separately at each site. A total of 525 cases were tested: 397 (positive) clinically confirmed…

I wonder what's the process through which false positives happen in this case. Previous infection by milder Coronaviruses?

Edit: I'm looking at the reddit post but I have a lot of reservations with the "prevalence 0.06", unless we'll use the test to test absolutely everybody and not only people who are suspect. Has that calculator been validated as well?

If the test was 12 false positives in 128 negatives, how come they can claim the false positive rate is 60%?

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