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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

#361
post #137

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.

A prison is very much like a cruise ship from a viral perspective. We know from the cruise ship data like the Diamond Princess that most people had no symptoms initially, but overtime most people became symptomatic [1].

Of course if we are really lucky and the prison was infected with a naturally attenuated strain we should make use of it [2].

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7078829/

2. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/12/how-would-a-search-for-a...

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

#362
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence to date that people are being re-infected. They may in the future, but to date, no such evidence exists. There are some people who tested negative before who are testing positive now, but that is much more likely to be false negatives and/or false positives. It would be pretty novel for the human immune system to clear out the disease on it's own, then a few days later forget how to do that, and b…

And there's no evidence to date that people who test for antibodies are immune to future infections.

Ah my old friend greedo. That's how it normally works, this time could be different, but we have no reason to believe that.

Generally for as long as you show antibody response you won't be re-infected because that's what antibodies do. The link I provided to the study I referenced was specifically for the purpose of, and I quote: "to assess SARS patients’ risk for future reinfection."

"To be clear, most experts do think an initial infection from the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, will grant people immunity to the virus for some amount of time. That is generally the case with acute infections from other viruses, including other coronaviruses." [1]

If you think this time is different the burden of proof is on you to provide studies and not provide unsupported, unsubstantiated conjecture.

[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/20/everything-we-know-about...

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

#363
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid-19 fatalities takes up to 2 months after infection, symptoms have a median of just over 5 days from first exposure.

Is this the new narrative/talking point to continue shutdowns? Because pretty sure the average time to symptoms was reported to be much (10X) lower

There's no need to be snarky.

It may take years for a person to know if covid will kill them. There is growing evidence that every person who has tested positive will eventually die. I wouldn't be surprised if we discover asymptomatic victims finally succombing to the disease 10, 15, maybe 20 years down the road.

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

#364
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Median of 10 days though.

Numbers I have seen where median 5.1 days from exposure to first symptoms and a median of 8 days from first symptoms to death in Italy. So, a median of ~2 weeks from exposure to death. https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period... https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/la-stampa-in-english/2020/03/... However, early estimates are going to be biased without the slowest fatalities. Further, that’s also popula…

The South Korean data suggests there is a long tail on the death rate. It seems the very old and ill die quickly, but those that are healthier it can take a month or more to die.

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

#365

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…

A question for you: If you're so sure about the severity of the virus, then I'd like you to tell me what you know about the long term rammifcations of the virus on people that exhibit symptoms. If you can't, then perhaps it might be a good idea to reconsider advocating for reopening the economy. Because for all we know, this could end up being another Chickenpox situation leading to something similar to Shingles. We…

> If you can't, then perhaps it might be a good idea to reconsider advocating for reopening the economy.

Can you prove that coronavirus didn't give me protection from some other more severe illness a la cowpox and smallpox?

No?

We can both come up with creative scenarios.

We are severely impacting the quality of life of hundreds of millions of people. We should have a reason to do so grounded in fact and educated guesses.

What reason do we have to suspect your scenario? What are the odds that it will occur? What are the odds it's going to be severe? What's the anticipated quality of life impact and with what confidence intervals?

Also: even if it did create this situation, and we know it for sure, what can we do about it?

We don't have a vaccine. We don't have effective treatments. Those are potentially years away, if they ever materialize at all.

How long, and how severe, should a lockdown be to prevent a hypothetical scenario? What are the impacts of a quarantine that's long enough to guarantee a vaccine with, say, 90% confidence?

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking? it's probably a good idea to delay opening things back up until we know the full extent of the virus, yes. If the antibodies only confer short-term protection and people could get reinfected again (as some indications have shown), it MIGHT be a bad idea to reopen the economy and pave the way for a second wave of the virus, you know? Just throwing that out there. If you think things are bad now, do…

You say it's a conspiracy theory, but you agree we should stay at home until the "full extent of the virus" is known, and long-term effects by definition aren't going to be visible any time soon. Do you have a plan for how we could discover such things faster than a year or two?

I asked the OP to tell me what the long-term effects of the virus are given that they said for most of the population, the virus is not that serious. They haven't provided that information yet, so I'm going to assume they don't have it.

I do not have that information either. Until we (and 'we' as in medical professionals) figure out the best way to deal with the virus and any potential effects in the long term then yes, we should stay at home. Because there's still a lot of unknowns.

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

#367
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8,399,000 people in NYC, 21 percent of that is 1,763,790. 1% of that is 17,000. So far as of Saturday at 6:49pm EST 16,919 have officially died in NYC. I think the anti-body test in this case is fairly close and the death rate is probably 1% more or less depending on the demographic distribution. Obviously there are a number of people in NYC who will die over the next month even if all new infections where halted rig…

You're using the death count for the entire state, not just NYC. The blood antibody test positive % for the overall state is 13, not 21. And the population is around 19.5 million.

People are going to use whatever version of the facts supports their bias.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I agree we should consider years of life lost but the figures are a bit higher than they ones you're using. 14 years on average for men and 12 for women. Not 60 years but more than 5. https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75

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

#369
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

The password you need to Google for why it happens is "antibody cross reactivity." Not necessarily other coronaviruses but I imagine they're disproportionately more likely to cause it.

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

#370
Are these antibody or antigen tests? I am extremely suspect that the antibody tests being used are not delivering false positives. There was a study that showed 800,000 people in Los Angeles likely have antibodies. This does not make sense given that the ICU admissions did not even remotely track that of Northern Italy, which shared a similar population size. I suspect that these antibody tests are picking up a positive on another another Coronavirus.
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