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

reuters.com

241–250 of 649 posts

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

#241
post #214

Every article I see about people testing asymptomatic is followed by comments insisting they were asymptomatic when tested , with no idea of whether they stayed asymptomatic or whether virtually all of them had symptoms a few days later, thus basically invalid. But this doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve, folks . Is nobody bothering to follow up with the asymptomatic people a week later? Just take their mobile…

> Just take their mobile phone number, and text them en masse with a quick Y/N question as to whether or not they got sick? I've been wondering why this isn't just being done for everyone in the country, every few days? "The main symptoms of COVID-19 are X, Y, Z. If you think you may have COVID-19 please respond "Yes" to this text message. This is free. Your response is private and used to understand the spread of CO…

Vague and/or non-comparable data provides decision deniability and narrative flexibility in many possible futures. Open-source analysis and watchdogs provide one level of defense.

https://covidtracking.com/blog/weve-launched-a-new-state-gra...

> We're rolling out a new, more rigorous system for grading the public health data each state reports.

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

#242
post #182

Every article I see about people testing asymptomatic is followed by comments insisting they were asymptomatic when tested , with no idea of whether they stayed asymptomatic or whether virtually all of them had symptoms a few days later, thus basically invalid. But this doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve, folks . Is nobody bothering to follow up with the asymptomatic people a week later? Just take their mobile…

It's truly disorienting. We need good data, badly, and we have an entire world as our Petree dish and yet can't seem to get it. You'd think the CDC would be sending out questionnaires, forms, coordinating such tests, giving guidelines, collating results etc.. Literally the worst economic shock maybe ever and we can't count marbles to save ourselves.

CDC don’t seem to have permission to communicate with the public

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

#243
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt situation was discussed here several days ago. At this time about 60% of the crew who tested positive are still asymptomatic. Enough time has passed that we can be confident they aren't just presymptomatic. Numbers are pretty solid since they were all quarantined and tracked. Infection fatality rate was about 0.1%, however that's probably not representative of the general population.

Also, how should we weight the validity of the data, given the political leadership issues surrounding this situation.

The data is valid, at least to the extent that the tests are accurate (there will be some false results). The Navy has openly published their numbers. If they didn't want us to know they would simply classify everything as a matter of operational readiness instead of lying.

https://navylive.dodlive.mil/2020/03/15/u-s-navy-covid-19-up...

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

#244
post #214

Every article I see about people testing asymptomatic is followed by comments insisting they were asymptomatic when tested , with no idea of whether they stayed asymptomatic or whether virtually all of them had symptoms a few days later, thus basically invalid. But this doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve, folks . Is nobody bothering to follow up with the asymptomatic people a week later? Just take their mobile…

> Just take their mobile phone number, and text them en masse with a quick Y/N question as to whether or not they got sick? I've been wondering why this isn't just being done for everyone in the country, every few days? "The main symptoms of COVID-19 are X, Y, Z. If you think you may have COVID-19 please respond "Yes" to this text message. This is free. Your response is private and used to understand the spread of CO…

In the uk at least we have an app that you can update with your current health status/feelings and they can track the Wuhan flu with that. They are encouraging users to report in once a day even if you have no symptoms.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/covid-symptom-tracker/id150352...

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Typhoid Mary was a real thing. No matter the precedent for a particular class of virus, this is still a different virus that has clearly evolved higher virulence, and better safe than sorry. In this case, we're sorry

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

#246
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, one study when the diamond princess was tested it was originally 50% asymptomatic and then later on that had gone down to under 20%

A lot of the asymptomatic cases had pneumonia in their lungs too. They were however still able to expel CO2 and so did’t feel shortness of breath.

I've heard this more recently that it's a characteristic which means that people who think they're getting better will then suddenly have a turn for the worse, because they don't feel as sick but their blood oxygen level is actually quite low -- they try to exert themselves, go upstairs say, and then faint.

Happened that way to a close friend of mine.

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

#247
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...Let's also ask if the tests have a high false positive rate?

Dr. David Katz was just in Bill Maher’s show indicating the test has a high false negative rate

It may have both for all we know. I really do think relatively little is known about this virus at the moment. We learn a lot everyday I'm sure, but it's still somewhat of a mystery. We don't like mysteries, which I'm pretty sure is what generates all the fear around the virus.

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

#248
post #182

Every article I see about people testing asymptomatic is followed by comments insisting they were asymptomatic when tested , with no idea of whether they stayed asymptomatic or whether virtually all of them had symptoms a few days later, thus basically invalid. But this doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve, folks . Is nobody bothering to follow up with the asymptomatic people a week later? Just take their mobile…

It's truly disorienting. We need good data, badly, and we have an entire world as our Petree dish and yet can't seem to get it. You'd think the CDC would be sending out questionnaires, forms, coordinating such tests, giving guidelines, collating results etc.. Literally the worst economic shock maybe ever and we can't count marbles to save ourselves.

The CDC, AIUI, just advise medics and governments? It's up to the politicians to enable it - eg by putting medics in charge!?

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you read that? Superficially that might make sense - less virus particles == less obvious symptoms - but there are a wide variety of virus responses that show virulence and infectiousness aren't necessarily correlated. If anyone wants to read more about this I can't recommend highly enough the book Spillover by David Quammen, which was published in 2012, and covers zoonotic (animal-to-human transmission) vi…

A crude mathematical model from Swedish authorities on the Stockholm outbreak used two parameters: 1: the fraction of undetected cases (assumed to be mild or asymptomatic) and 2: the relative infectiousness of that group compared to the “detected” group. The larger the undetected group is, the lower their relative infectiousness has to be in order to fit the observations. The best fit I believe was 1/25 detected and…

For the particular conditions in Stockholm, such as testing prevalence etc

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

#250
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Right, it could literally be as dumb as: all the tests were processed by one person, and that person is infected with covid-19. Drawing signal out of the noise right now is very, very difficult.

That's it, you nailed it.

What's more likely, a population that gets all infected all at the same time, or one person infected being careless with samples?

Then there's more: given how many tests of similar populations are getting done, what are the chances that some have a careless infected tester?

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