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

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

#251
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.

[deleted]

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

#252
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The evidence shown is a false negative rate of 30% based on a study of 1,000 patients with the virus. So there’s at least some preliminary evidence.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85717...

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

#253

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…

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%

Someone else mentioned those numbers in a cousin thread but as far as we can tell there's no source for that. Do you happen to have one?

See the comment thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22981423

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

#254
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious - do you have any sources for this? I've heard it a few times and just looked it up - I found a paper [1] from March 12 that used "statistical modelling" to predict ~20% asymptomatic after a delay, but several articles 1-2 weeks after 12th indicating that they were still seeing ~50% (e.g. [2]). I think all the articles with that 50% number were based on the same test, but couldn't find anything suggestin…

You might be right that that statistical estimate from a month ago was the source of the 20% number. I also can’t find any good follow-up sources. I probably saw that factoid hyped up in multiple media stories which misconstrued the original paper. If anyone knows of more reliable recent sources about this, it would be great to clear it up.

It says around 40% in this tweet: https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1252356183077208082

Also lots of information in the comments.

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

#255
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 is working on this, for example

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/04/cdc-launches-studies-to-...

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of this is like Russian Roulette -- there's a huge amount about this virus which we don't know, and it could be super-bad or not-that-bad. I think at this point we know enough to say: 1) For most of the population, the virus is not that serious 2) For a subset of the population the virus is seriously deadly. For example, ~20% of NY state coronavirus deaths were from nursing homes, ~37% are 80 or older. By con…

On 1), what do you consider "not that serious"? IE, what are your metrics of choice, and what are the acceptable values? Regarding the cost-benefit discussion, my perspective is that people only want to discuss the downsides from a reduced economy. Second order effects include reduced vehicle deaths, reduced deaths from pollution, etc. IE, my discussions has felt agenda driven because it considers first order effects…

>On 1), what do you consider "not that serious"?

Death rates, hospitalization rates, etc.

As mentioned before, 20% of NY deaths are nursing home patients. 37% are 80 or older.

I'm on mobile and a bit lazy, but check out death rates for the flu in younger populations and compare them to this virus. The virus has a higher mortality rate but not enough to be worth worrying about in younger populations.

>Regarding the cost-benefit discussion, my perspective is that people only want to discuss the downsides from a reduced economy.

While keeping the benefits in mind is an important part of this analysis, the fact is the pre-quarantine deaths were already accepted as "worth it" given that there was no political will to reduce them.

But yes, we should tally the reduction in deaths, pollution, etc.

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

#257
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anybody following up on stories like this? The best follow-up we have is from the cruise ship, where at the time of testing more than half of those who tested positive were asymptomatic, but ultimately something like 80% of the confirmed infected ended up with symptoms.

Just curious - do you have any sources for this? I've heard it a few times and just looked it up - I found a paper [1] from March 12 that used "statistical modelling" to predict ~20% asymptomatic after a delay, but several articles 1-2 weeks after 12th indicating that they were still seeing ~50% (e.g. [2]). I think all the articles with that 50% number were based on the same test, but couldn't find anything suggestin…

In this study they tracked 104 patients from the cruise ship, from Feb 11 to Feb 25. Started with 43 asymptomatic (41%), went down to 33 asymptomatic (32%).

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.18.20038125v...

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who is still confused by what they're finding in these antibody tests? Are they looking for antibodies that attach to specific features unique to SARS-CoV-2? Because I'm pretty sure even HCoV-NL63 enter lung cells through ACE2 as well. How can they tell antibodies for these viruses apart? Also aren't antibodies effectively developed in a sort of random process?

I am confused as can be about all of it now. First it was stay locked in, then heard immunity, now they say heard immunity may not happen.

you're not wrong to be. I think the problem is that there's this perception that you must be authoritative to get people to do things, and also this perception that science is authoritative. As a former scientist I think both are wrong, and especially science under duress is likely to be even wronger, for many reasons. We don't live in star trek where you can boop boop a console and magically get answers.

I wish we had leaders that had the chutzpah to say things like, "look the science is inconclusive, so we won't arrest you, but please do the right thing and wear masks". But we don't. And also we have people spouting completely non-evidence based assertions like "if you don't force people to wear masks, then they won't". Which of course fuels assholes to flaunt not wearing masks, because now it's not about doing the right thing, it's about freedom.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any evidence that would convince you 20% of NYC was exposed and developed immunity?

How about an actually randomly sampled test, for starters?

It's the "for starters" that concerns me. A lot of us were always saying that official case counts are much too low, and antibody surveys were supposed to be the definitive proof that we were responsibly waiting for. Now they're starting to come out, and still nobody believes it. I worry it's a moving goalpost, and no evidence will ever be enough to make people start reconsidering their beliefs.

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

#260
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These were exactly the assumptions of the RIVM in the Netherlands end Februari and March causing it to completely spiral out of control.

> causing it to completely spiral out of control. I live in the Netherlands and I think you could say that we actually have it quite under control (relatively speaking of course). We never reached peak ICU capacity and the ICU occupancy has been steadily declining for more than two weeks now[1]. Our schools for children between the ages of 4 and 12 are scheduled to partially open again on the 11th of may[2]. [1] http…

We, the Netherlands, got it under control because we went into stricter lockdown against the advice of the RIVM. Above assumptions led to advice against a lockdown.

Only under pressure of the IC doctors on Sunday the 15th of march did the prime minister close all schools and restaurants. (A high school is like a festival every day)

The policy and advice of RIVM has been wrong and misleading from the end of February. For many of us it was already clear they lost control beginning of March.

There was one hero in the North of the Netherlands who went against RIVM and the Minister of health: https://eenvandaag.avrotros.nl/item/het-gelijk-van-microbiol....

This article in the Volkskrant describes how the RIVM was panicking beginning of March, but the prime minister wanted to present "good weather", and they also send their stock of masks to China beginning februari: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/nederland-stuur...

Even now they are not testing healthcare people with symptoms in elderly homes and also not providing any sort of masks. Claiming the available masks are not of sufficient quality, they prefer to send healthcare people to work without masks then to get high quality masks even if it is without the preferred certificate.

Last point. Under control is relative. The IC capacity reached a higher number then we ever anticipated, still more IC beds are occupied by corona patients then we had in total beginning of 2020. https://stichting-nice.nl/

For most of the hospitals in the Netherlands most operations and treatments are still postponed. For instance for many cancer patients the date of their treatment is still not sure: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/chemo-uitgestel...

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