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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

#421
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keyword "up to". The most common fatal case seems to be roughly: 1 week without symptoms, 1 week of mild symptoms, 1 week of severe symptoms, death. That's 3 weeks. In rare (1/10000) cases, incubation time can reach 14 days, that's where the 14 days quarantine recommendation comes from. But the median is closer to 5 days. Time to death can be much longer, the virus can cause all sorts of damage to the body, including…

> In rare (1/10000) cases, incubation time can reach 14 days What's the cite for that number? I'd be very suspicious of anything claiming a 5-significant-figure result in a disease that has only (heh) 3M known cases. In fact there's significant supposition that the incubation time and asymptomatic contagious state can last much longer than originally guessed. This would go a long way to explaining the difficulty of d…

> What's the cite for that number? I'd be very suspicious of anything claiming a 5-significant-figure result in a disease that has only (heh) 3M known cases.

You are totally right about that. I misinterpreted the following paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32150748

The actual number is more like 1/100. The 1/10000 number is the probability for someone who has a 1/100 chance of being infected to develop symptoms after 14 days.

Uhm... too late to fix my original post, sorry.

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

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that compare, with other high IFR diseases, didn't they also have deaths skewed towards older people?

The 1918 flu was notable for having a high fatality rate for young children. That does not seem to be the case for flu in general.

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

#423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.ti…

> A prison is very much like a cruise ship from a viral perspective. Prisons are much worse. Chow line with men almost heel to toe. Commissary line. Med line. Recycled air. Big crowds in small spaces.

That’s a cruise

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it’s the opposite. The initial conditions have a profound effect on the exponential nature of the growth. Half the dose could mean that your immune system can suppress it. There is probably critical rate at which both growth rates match.

I don't think my response is 100% correct. The rate of change (derivative) of an exponetial function is another exponential function. d/dx(2^x) = (2^x)*ln(2). And if the base is e, then d/dx(e^x) = e^x.

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

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you go around to people's homes, you'll oversample people who aren't out during the lockdown. There's no silver bullet here.

It's almost like you need to do your random sample based on a list of all residents, and not just go out and try to find people at various locations.

There is no such list. No US state has a master list of all residents. The DMV has a fairly high percentage but even that tends to miss children, older people, undocumented immigrants, etc.

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

#426
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.

> I kind of assume the virus grows exponentially inside the body and would dwarf the initial constant.

That assumes your immune system wouldn't kick in during the asymptomatic phase or a time close to exiting the latter. But your immune system would actually kick in as soon as it detects the infection, which would plausibly be much earlier. That would effectively buying you time to figure out which antibodies to produce before things become out of control.

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

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 gue…

The main reason why we are severely impacting the quality of life for millions of people is because our government is not willing to act to either provide some sort of basic income, supplies or guarantee survival for small businesses. As I've mentioned in other posts here, we're remarkably lucky that COVID-19 isn't something currently far more threatening. Considering attitudes such as yours would easily lead to mass…

The economy is not some magic genie that will give us what we want if we ask nicely. It is simply impossible to leave major sectors shut down for months. Most members of the medical community lack the necessary understanding of economics to make informed, rational trade-offs on this issue.

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

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost like you need to do your random sample based on a list of all residents, and not just go out and try to find people at various locations.

You say "almost like", but scientific studies rarely sample the population this way because researchers generally don't have access to a list of all residents.

That's definitely relevant to the question of why it's difficult to do such a study. However, it's not relevant to the question of whether such a study is necessary to make strong inferences about the population as a whole. The difficulty of making the right study does not change our ability to draw inferences from the wrong study. (We can't.)
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