California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges • Hacker News Board

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#111

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 12:46 AM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #41

jhowell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all signs point to meanginful immunity and virtually no signs point to the opposite. Here is a story from CNN via the Mercury News about 3 teachers sharing a classroom. Anecdotal, but makes me think these are signs of a lack of immunity. A positive, negative, positive test. > A month after they caught the virus that killed their colleague, Martinez and Skillings are still struggling. > Martinez says fatigue is ling…

Right, when millions and millions of people become infected with an illness there will be a wide range of edge cases. But if reinfection within 6 months was anything other than exceptionally rare it would be obvious by now. Now if you had a peer reviewed study to link instead of media reports, I would be very interested.

People like to act like this is the end of the world. It's easy to blame media here, as media is taking a handful of cases out of millions and making sweeping (end of the world) claims.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#112

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 12:48 AM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #107

standardUser wrote: post #3

California shut down very hard and fast. When they reopened, nearly 100% of the population was still susceptible to the virus, so it spread like wildfire. Especially since the reopening was not exactly slow. Compare this to the Northeast and much of Western Europe where the virus spread too quickly until lockdowns reduced the spread. Now, keeping the transmission rate low in those areas has become comparatively easy,…

It's easy to be misled by the nature of exponential growth. In most people's vocabularies these days, the term seems to mean just "very fast", but correctly understood, it's more specific and more complex than that. Exponential growth, in this context, means that the rate of new infections is proportional to the number of existing infections. This cuts both ways: when the number of existing infections is large, the r…

> The point is, even though we here in CA started the lockdown relatively early, we've never gotten the case numbers down to a manageable level. I'm not sure why not.

Because we started reopening just as the curve was flattening, without bending the numbers down much.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#113

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 1:33 AM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #69

DataWorker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was all middle ground strategy from day one. The national lockdown was timed to the nyc wave and that was a probably a mistake depending on how you view the purpose of the lockdown. If it was to flatten the curve, outside of nyc, we did too much too soon and are now reaping the effects of “precaution fatigue.” It’s a marathon rather than a sprint, but each region, has its own race to run on it’s own timeline, it’s…

Or maybe it's just that the places where it spreads are indoor dining and bars, and people just won't stop overanalyzing it.

[deleted]

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#114

Post by irq11 » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #81

standardUser wrote: post #3

California shut down very hard and fast. When they reopened, nearly 100% of the population was still susceptible to the virus, so it spread like wildfire. Especially since the reopening was not exactly slow. Compare this to the Northeast and much of Western Europe where the virus spread too quickly until lockdowns reduced the spread. Now, keeping the transmission rate low in those areas has become comparatively easy,…

I'm not a virologist, but it seems like even in NYC the antibody test was "only" ~20% positive. ~30% if you drill down to certain subgruops: https://www.6sqft.com/new-york-covid-antibody-test-prelimina... I think it would mean, even in NYC, its current "herd immunity" would reduce the so-called R value by only 20%. That doesn't sound enough to explain the difference between NY and CA.

There have been multiple publications in the last month suggesting that a substantial fraction (i.e. 40% or more) of the population could have some level of cell-mediated immunity to the virus.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/t-cells-found-covid-...

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.29.174888v1

On top of that, the threshold where growth slows is substantially lower than the “herd immunity threshold” that is naïvely calculated from R0. The flu almost never infects more than 10-15% of the population, despite an R0 of around 1.8, and a corresponding “herd immunity” threshold in the 50% range. A recent Science paper suggested a more reasonable herd immunity threshold of 43% for Sars-CoV2.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/06/22/scie...

Between the two, it’s not inconceivable that NYC has reached the point where virus transmission is substantially self-limited. It’s not even a remote possibility - it’s likely.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#115

Post by Rebelgecko » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #32

AlexandrB wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that's the case in Ontario. Mask wearing is also now mandatory indoors. I guess the question is why did California rush to re-open fully?

The governor's been clear that's part of the intended strategy; counties will be allowed to rush forwards as long as infection rates remain low, and then pull back if infections rise. He's consistently warned that some rollbacks should be expected.

I was happy when the state released clear metrics for what would allow a county to move onto Phase 2.5 and Phase 3 of the reopening.

Initially one of the key metrics is that the county have 0 deaths and no more than 10 new coronavirus cases per 100k residents over a 2 week period.

Then the number became 25 cases per 100k residents.

Then it became 100 cases per 100k residents.

Then my county was permitted to mostly reopen with 300+ new cases per 100k residents, in conjunction with a few hundred deaths per week. To me it's clear that we've strayed from the original emphasis on "science based" metrics.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#116

Post by fragmede » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

Bahamut wrote: post #37

Xavdidtheshadow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deaths (the more important number) One of the more interesting things I've been reading is that we shouldn't think about this as a total binary. There are reports that survivors exhibit have long-term effects, such as neurological issues [1] and lung damage. So yes, it's good that fewer people are dying! But that doesn't mean everything is simply great now. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-…

My guess is that the deaths probably would maintain roughly the same rate for the true number of infected, which is a number we do not know because of asymptomatic cases. That numbers of people testing positive is going up doesn’t mean that the overall rate is going up given we do not know the true infected rate, but number of deaths provides a reasonable proxy for that.

We understand the disease a bit better, and have better treatments (eg dexamethasone) than we had in March, so I'd expect the true fatality to go down somewhat. (read carefully, this is not in contradiction with the CDC raising their estimate of the IFR). Better treatments are of no use if hospitals are overwhelmed, unfortunately.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#117

Post by cma » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #81

standardUser wrote: post #3

California shut down very hard and fast. When they reopened, nearly 100% of the population was still susceptible to the virus, so it spread like wildfire. Especially since the reopening was not exactly slow. Compare this to the Northeast and much of Western Europe where the virus spread too quickly until lockdowns reduced the spread. Now, keeping the transmission rate low in those areas has become comparatively easy,…

I'm not a virologist, but it seems like even in NYC the antibody test was "only" ~20% positive. ~30% if you drill down to certain subgruops: https://www.6sqft.com/new-york-covid-antibody-test-prelimina... I think it would mean, even in NYC, its current "herd immunity" would reduce the so-called R value by only 20%. That doesn't sound enough to explain the difference between NY and CA.

If you look at the subgroup of most socially connected people most likely to come into lots of contact with other people, they probably hit really high numbers. And then those "hub" people being immune could have an outsized effect on reducing further spread. I have no idea of he numbers though and if it is playing a large role.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#118

Post by fragmede » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #101

woeirua wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misinterpreting it. It says that for every 1 fatality there are 19 covid patients that have longlasting complications. It doesn't state though how many mild, uncomplicated cases there will be for every 1 hospitalized, i.e. what the denominator is. For example, if there are 1000 cases for every hospitalized case, then 19/1000 isn't that high.

I’m still confused. We know the fatality rate is ~1% (0.6% as per CDC’s latest). So for every death there are 99 other cases. There is no way that 19 of those have permanent disabilities. That would means several million Americans are seriously disabled by the virus.

The Quora link cites sources if you doubt the math.

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#119

Post by refurb » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #118

refurb wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m still confused. We know the fatality rate is ~1% (0.6% as per CDC’s latest). So for every death there are 99 other cases. There is no way that 19 of those have permanent disabilities. That would means several million Americans are seriously disabled by the virus.

The Quora link cites sources if you doubt the math.

They are funky. The source of the “19% had heart damage” is 19% of those hospitalized.

We know that approximately 10-20% of all cases are hospitalized. So that 19% is actually 2-4% (19% of 10-20%).

Re: California imposing sweeping rollback of reopening plans amid case surges

#120

Post by EricE » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 3:35 AM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #3

California shut down very hard and fast. When they reopened, nearly 100% of the population was still susceptible to the virus, so it spread like wildfire. Especially since the reopening was not exactly slow. Compare this to the Northeast and much of Western Europe where the virus spread too quickly until lockdowns reduced the spread. Now, keeping the transmission rate low in those areas has become comparatively easy,…

Sweeden didn't lock down at all: https://youtu.be/z34ILhFs-xs?t=182

There is little evidence the lockdowns did a damn thing.