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

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261–270 of 649 posts

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

#261
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.

In addition to the other comments, there's also thought to be differing impacts by infection location.

Covid in your alveoli is very bad. Covid in your throat not so much.

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

#262
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.

Variolation

"The procedure was most commonly carried out by inserting/rubbing powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from pustules into superficial scratches made in the skin. The patient would develop pustules identical to those caused by naturally occurring smallpox, usually producing a less severe disease than naturally acquired smallpox. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

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

#263
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do you even need to be an official to do that? Perhaps a newspaper could do it, to accurate news.

I saw it suggested on Twitter yesterday that the political polling firms should be doing some coronavirus polling, tracking trends in self-reported cases the same way they track public opinion.

I'm not sure if that would be scientifically useful in any way, but it sure would be interesting.

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

#264

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?

I think the rationale behind this argument was a thought/hope that the disease was primarily being spread by sneezing or coughing, and if you weren't doing that then you weren't going to spread it.

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

#265
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…

I recently completed a survey conducted by NORC which asked a series of questions that seemed to test whether I had contracted Covid-19. I received the survey invitation in the mail so it must have been randomized. We'll have to wait to see the results.

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

#266
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

That doesn't rule out a high false positive rate. The false positive rate can be even higher than the false negative rate.

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

#267

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 pop…

? You're comparing a prison to a nursing home

Another data point, ~12k healthy foreign workers in Singapore have tested positive. The city-state has only 12 deaths total (all elderly, not the foreign workers). In Singapore the foreign workers may have already been asymptomatic for weeks.

Based on NYC data, LA city data, Stanford's Santa Clara data, Singapore, Danish blood donor data, a picture is emerging that the virus is not particularly dangerous to healthy people.

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sheet is interesting. Looking at it, the IFR varies from 1.66% down to .11% and the 0.11% is for the Santa Clara, which many considered rather suspect. The 1.66%, otoh, seems reasonably in line or at least compatible with what's been observed in Korea and elsewhere. Given age is going to skew things a good deal, it seems like a picture is emerging but not that new a picture. An IFR of even 1% is pretty bad, espe…

> An IFR of even 1% is pretty bad To be clear: it would be the most dangerous general epidemic disease since the advent of vaccination, and by a significant amount. You need to go back to measles and polio to find general population outbreaks that were more lethal.

A very important thing is that % is concentrated among old and people with preexisting health conditions.

Not every death is the same - a 80 year old with weak immune system could have lived 5 years longer without corona, but a healthy 20 year-old dying from cytokine storm caused by influenza has lost potentially 60 years of healthy life - the loss is much worse.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you even need to be an official to do that? Perhaps a newspaper could do it, to accurate news.

I saw it suggested on Twitter yesterday that the political polling firms should be doing some coronavirus polling, tracking trends in self-reported cases the same way they track public opinion. I'm not sure if that would be scientifically useful in any way, but it sure would be interesting.

See my reply to GP.

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

#270

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 pop…

Want to make a bet they won't develop symptoms? Or at least please help me understand how can you compare these two populations with wildly different average ages, preexisting conditions, etc...
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