In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by greedo » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #268

newacct583 wrote: post #194

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.

You do realize that at least in the US, 30% of the population has comorbidities?

And your comment comes across as extremely crass and insensitive.

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

#472

Post by autokad » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #208

bobongo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because that way counting is much more unambiguous: dead is dead Unrealistically low death stats coming from Turkey compared to cases easily refute that argument. Dead is dead, unless the state finds a way to claim that it was not a COVID19 dead.

No. Not unless. You misunderstand what all cause mortality means. The state can count COVID19 deaths as all bungee-jumping related the number still shows up in the total death rate. If you know what is the usual statistic you can show if there is an effect. This is what “dead is dead” mean. One can argue what should count as a COVID19 case, and how exactly we are counting. There is a lot less argument over who is dea…

a family member who is a doctor at a hospital told me that any patient that dies of a respiratory illness is being marked as covid19 even if they were never tested for it. dead truly means dead. dead by covid19 does not.

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

#473

Post by greedo » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #444

joe_the_user wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are two kinds of choices that are generally considered radically different. One choice is providing some opportunity for further life beyond what's expected. That's generally considered something society likes but isn't obligated to provide. Society doesn't obligate it's member to spend money developing some miracle-extend that gives someone five more years. The other choice is taking life that would norm…

You can self isolate without quarantine measures in effect so your point isn't that strong to me and you are ignoring that one of the biggest destabilising forces in history is economic downturn. US-China relations have been bad for a while now and both sides are throwing blame at each other as a populist policy (China has a US origin story allegedly). If this pushes the economy in to a global depression who knows wh…

Self-isolating vulnerable populations is almost impossible. You're talking over 100M in the US.

And not doing anything (pretend it's just the flu) will result in 50M dead world wide. Everyone worried about a new depression should realize one is going to happen no matter what we do now. The only thing we can do is act in a humane fashion.

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

#474

Post by autokad » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #194

joe_the_user wrote: post #62

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.

or the 1957 Flu pandemic but I suppose that was not long after the polio vaccine.

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

#475

Post by ooobit2 » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

elihu wrote: post #463

Some possibilities: there is widespread infection from a common source around the same time, and many of those "asymptomatic" inmates aren't going to stay that way; the test has false positives; the population of this prison is comprised mostly of people who tend to be asymptomatic carriers (for example, if most prisoners are in their early 20's); COVID-19 has a lot more asymptomatic carriers than we thought.

We've had approximately 5 months and millions of transmissions for a virus with an RO of approx. 5-6 to mutate. I'm going to bet these people are not asymptomatic. I'm instead hedging my bet on them having a variant that causes cardiovascular damage, and they're a common cold or some other correlative health event away from a rapid decline in health.

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

#476

Post by arcticbull » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

greedo wrote: post #466

arcticbull wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing there is at all incompatible with what I had to say. In context, the WHO is saying that getting the disease once may not be a lifetime immunity to COVID guarantee and shouldn't be used as the basis for issuance of something along the lines of yellow fever prophylaxis certifications like these [1]. I agree. In fact, its highly unlikely, as with coronaviridae we've seen that the milder the disease the less like…

This is crystal clear from the WHO: ""There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection."" They were prompted to issue this because some people were touting this idea of immunity being granted perpetually and allowing people to safely return to work. "Broadly speaking, a positive test for antibodies means you're pretty likely immune a…

No greedo, that's not the correct interpretation.

There is currently no evidence of X does not mean X is not true. It just means there's no evidence of X being directly true yet. Nothing I said contradicts the WHO.

What I said was that we can reasonably infer from similar coronaviruses (including both more and less severe ones that are up to 90% genetically identical) that immunity is conferred. Also from other viruses. We shouldn't base our global health policy decisions on that until we have conclusive evidence but there's no reason for you to continue with the messaging when all evidence points to immunity being conferred for some duration of time.

Specifically what I said was that we do not have enough evidence to issue prophylaxis certificates, but that chances are good immunity is conferred based on studies of very similar diseases. I also stand by the fact it would be hugely surprising (totally novel) that any of those testing positive right now are actually re-infections due to the limited timescale involved.

Seeing smoke doesn't mean there's fire, but it means there's a pretty good chance of fire. Yeesh.

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

#477

Post by greedo » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #401

Bnshsysjab wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t prisons disproportionately have poorer health than average for several reasons?

Basic healthcare in prison is free (I believe?), and I reckon the food is comparatively less likely to give you diabetes?

Healthcare may be "free" but that doesn't mean it's any good.

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

#478

Post by danieltillett » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

justnotworthit wrote: post #436

danieltillett wrote: post #361

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…

> 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]. Your wording is too strong. Data is 50% asymptomatic at time of testing, paper models that that number dropped to 20%. > from paper on 19 February and 50.5% (320/634) on 20 February (Table). Soon after identification of the first infections, both symptomatic and as…

If you read in the discussion they reference other data sets to show that more asymptomatic become symptomatic. It is also what the Icelanders found with their data too where most people started out asymptomatic, but many later developed symptoms.

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

#479

Post by arcticbull » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

greedo wrote: post #465

arcticbull wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

We have no idea how long lived the antibodies we develop in response to SARS-CoV-2 last. And obviously, an initial infection to COVID-19 will generate antibodies that will immunize the patient, as long as the antibodies persist. Don't you think that if this was a foregone conclusion, we'd be able to demonstrate that? Isn't it odd, that with people having been infected and recovered months ago, that no one is saying h…

> It's straight from the WHO's mouth.

Nothing I said contradicts the WHO.

> Don't you think that if this was a foregone conclusion, we'd be able to demonstrate that?

I'm sorry, do we need to re-prove how the immune system works? Why re-demonstrate the utterly obvious?

> Isn't it odd, that with people having been infected and recovered months ago, that no one is saying how long the antibodies persist?

No, because it hasn't been long enough. I'm confident that research is under way.

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

#480

Post by usr1106 » Sun, Apr 26, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #403

cies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did similar calculations, and found the institutions in charge give us very unreliable data. The term "corona case" is very, very, ambiguous and cannot the understood as such without a detailed explanation on how the counting was done. Thanks for sharing. I found the peek in all-case mortality also very interesting, because that way counting is much more unambiguous: dead is dead. They showed a clear diversion from…

Here is for Europe if you are interested. There are charts for excess morality by country, by age, and by year. https://www.euromomo.eu/ There is a very noticeable spike in the worst hit countries: Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands and the UK. The cumulative excess deaths for all Europe in the last two months matches the COVID-19 reported deaths (around 100000).

> The cumulative excess deaths for all Europe in the last two months matches the COVID-19 reported deaths

This article claims that most Covid-19 hotspots have significantly more excess deaths than reported covid deaths. Suggesting that there is a lot of underreporting. NYC being a notable exception. I think several countries count only corona deaths in hospitals, but systematically miss all deaths in care facilities. https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/corona-todesfaelle-wie-v... (charts should be readable despite any language barrier)

(I don't defend either view. As the old joke goes, don't trust any statistics you haven't manipulated yourself :) Statistics and causality have always been difficult, even more so in exceptional time with imperfect short-term data only.)