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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

#541

Post by unexaminedlife »

I'm curious to know exactly what the science is behind the tests being performed currently. And how does a body typically fight a virus in the first place?

This might sound amateurish (it is), but I have been picturing this virus and how our bodies are fighting it similar to how our bodies fight cancer. Tons of people who never end up with cancer diagnosis are constantly fighting off cancer cells, it's just that the capacity of their (relatively) healthy bodies exceeds the total # of cancer cells they need to fight off.

Is it possible these tests have become too sensitive to where they're easily detecting the virus in seemingly healthy people?

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

#542

Post by gridlockd »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #349
jwlake wrote: 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.

I repeatedly point this out. There was the church choir practice where 45 out of 60 people were infected within what two hours? There is also a Korean call center where about 2/3 of the people in an open office were infected. I've repeatedly linked to CDC study that estimates r0 in Wuhan before lockdown at between 3.8 and 8.7. Median 5.8. Take away: Completely avoid being indoors with large groups of people.

That's also shown in the recent outbreak in Singapore - almost all of the cases are migrant workers housed in tightly packed dormitories.

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

#543

Post by danieltillett »

FiberBundle wrote: post #522
danieltillett wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a region in Italy they tested [1] people twice, 2 weeks apart, and found that 43% were completely asymptomatic over the course of the infection. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20053157v...

Doesn’t that mean that 57% were symptomatic?

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

#544

Post by danieltillett »

sampsonitify wrote: post #491
danieltillett wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the Diamond Princess it was about around 14. I would expect prisons to be much the same.

Do you know how that broke down by room? Is there data on that? I wanted to make a map by room of infections, because that data point should be useful, e.g. was the rate higher or lower in rooms with outside access? Crew versus passengers? I just don't know of it already exists, or how to source the data.

We seemed to have early fluffed the data out of the Diamond Princess. We aren’t even tracking how many people died - it seems once everyone got off the ship all interest in it was lost.

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

#545

Post by icebraining »

briandear wrote: post #311

> The numbers are the latest evidence to suggest that people who are asymptomatic — contagious but not physically sick — may be driving the spread of the virus That’s also suggesting that the fatality rate is nowhere near what we have been led to believe.

What have we been led to believe?

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

#546

Post by alkonaut »

jacobush wrote: post #249
alkonaut wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A crude mathematical model from Swedish authorities on the Stockholm outbreak used two parameters: 1: the fraction of undetected cases (assumed to be mild or asymptomatic) and 2: the relative infectiousness of that group compared to the “detected” group. The larger the undetected group is, the lower their relative infectiousness has to be in order to fit the observations. The best fit I believe was 1/25 detected and…

For the particular conditions in Stockholm, such as testing prevalence etc

Yes absolutely. The actual parameters would be different everywhere but they seem to indicate that the symptomatic group is more infectious (which I guess is the base hypothesis for a droplet transmitted disease).

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

#547

Post by CryptoPunk »

So it strikes me as possible that SARS-CoV-2 has a very high r value and lethality on par with flu viruses, but is killing a lot more people than flu viruses due to the lack of pre-existing immunity, combined with the rapid spread through the population claiming those most vulnerable to it all at once.

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

#548

Post by CryptoPunk »

pgsbathhouse2 wrote: post #359
k2enemy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the cutoff between "way too many deaths" and not too many deaths? I don't mean to be glib, but it is an important question that needs to be weighed against destroying all of our economic institutions.

> that needs to be weighed against destroying all of our economic institutions. No it doesn't. Like the statement alone doesn't even have any credence, let alone following through with it. Incredibly daft.

Economic institutions sustain people's lives. Declining productivity translates to loss in life expectancy.

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

#549

Post by thu2111 »

igravious wrote: post #531
GuB-42 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (around 100000). Where's the noticeable spike for Ireland? Where's the spike for Portugal? Where's the spike for Luxembourg? Where's the data for the rest of Germany outside of Hesse and Berlin? Where's the spike for Austria? (And this is not a criticism of them, but they only track Western Europe by the looks of…

There's a simple reason for that: the lockdowns are killing lots of people and will kill even more. That's not under-reporting but rather an obvious outcome of clearing the health system in expectation of a surge that never came. Probably the UK will see an extreme form of this effect as people are encouraged to see the NHS as a sort of public park that everyone has to take care of rather than a large mechanical system, as in countries with private/insurance based healthcare.

Admissions at hospitals have collapsed: in the UK they halved. Admissions due to respiratory illnesses however didn't really go up, not surprising when you consider the small absolute numbers. There is now a massive backlog of operations and diagnostics for cancer that health systems will struggle to clear in time.

There's a story with some analysis of that problem here:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/26/what-second-coro...

In the past the recommendations of epidemiologists have ended up killing a lot more than they saved, with the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic in the UK being a classic example. It's likely it will be true again this time.

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

#550

Post by thu2111 »

blago wrote: post #529
amscanne wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That chart is funny. The title is “unprecedented spike”, but it just shows that such outliers have occurred regularly.

Not at this time of the year if I am reading the chart right.

Time of year doesn't matter for his point though. What we care about is mortality, not whether it happens at the start or end of a winter.
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