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My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

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Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#191

Post by mlyle »

fspeech wrote: post #146
themagician wrote: post #107

This helps highlight just how much of this is nothing more than FUD. The CDC counts real flu deaths and estimates infections. It doesn’t test for them. As a result you get a relatively low fatality rate. But for COVID-19 we are using only confirmed deaths and confirmed tested infections to come up with a fatality rate that seems much higher than it actually is because most infections go unreported. This is just a rea…

Read the WHO comment: Guangdong, China, tested 320000 samples with postive rate of 0.15%. So no they did not miss a lot of light cases. The death rate is real, esp for the vunerable population. Medical system will be overwhelmed if this goes unchecked.

I agree that this is likely true, but it's worth noting the big caveat: sensitivity of the tests are poor, particularly (to an unknown extent) in people with mild disease. Until we have good serological antibody testing it's going to be difficult to quantify.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#192

Post by partiallypro »

baq wrote: post #143
partiallypro wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC has undoubtedly pushed massive amounts of funds into test kits...but that has to be manufactured. It doesn't just appear instantly and out of thin air. Then you have to distribute it to clinics/ERs. Testing will gradually expand, and the requirements for testing will be loosened once supply can finally meet demand.

In the mean time, why not import test kits from Italy or South Korea? Those countries test hundreds daily, if not thousands.

I would assume because Italy and South Korea need those kits since they actually have massive outbreaks where in the US it has been very muted.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#193

Post by bitxbit »

partiallypro wrote: post #72
bitxbit wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because masks are not 100% effective doesn’t mean they’re not effective at all. The Surgeon General also dismissed masks and is spreading misinformation.

The Surgeon General dismissed medical masks, which are useless against this virus, they were not talking about masks that are sealed to your face and actually filter germs. Your post itself is misinformation.

If you think wearing a mask doesn’t reduce your risk, I have nothing to tell you. It’s so blatantly obvious.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#194

Post by Barrin92 »

vanusa wrote: post #187
Barrin92 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If this event is half as bad as all the literature out of China is suggesting, panic is the least of our worries No. The risk of dying from this disease is negligible for most American adults. The real issue with the corona virus is economic disruption and overburdening of the healthcare system. All of which is significantly exarbarated by panic.

No. The risk of dying from this disease is negligible for most American adults. Can you tell us please: (1) What your numeric definition of "negligible" is (2) And on what math this is estimate based?

current risk for healthy adults appears to be 0.1-0.2% which is comparable to a bad flu season while the chance of getting infected is lower by several magnitudes given how relatively few numbers of cases there are even if you assume there's a lot of asymptomatic cases.

If we take China as a comparison, a country with urban agglomerations of 50 million people and more and the 80k cases as rough estimate then the chance that you're even going to be infected in the US is marginal.

So unless you panic literally every time you leave your house I don't see why this is appropriate to cause a panic.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#195

Post by austhrow743 »

he0001 wrote: post #180
whatshisface wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought the media's responsibility was to take information from experts and present that information without bias to people who are not experts in the matter. The media's job is to take attention from people who are not experts in the matter and present it to advertisers.

Media which doesn’t have advertisers to care about, what’s their job?

If not advertisers, there's someone else giving them money. Everyone's job, media or not, is to appease the person who can decide they receive more or no more money.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#196

Post by lubujackson »

The reality is that containment has long been off the table, which should be obvious to anyone who understands the jist of R0, the long incubation, the reality of global travel and the lack of tests.

It is time to switch modes from quarantine to containment and stop pointing fingers. Openly tracking potential cases in realtime can help communities slow the spread so we don't get crushed with huge spikes of critical cases all at the same time.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#197

Post by jacquesm »

makomk wrote: post #81
jacquesm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, more likely: they don't actually know the real numbers. So you can treat what you do get from them as lower bounds, that's the bits they are sure about so they report them but events have possibly overtaken the authorities there to the point that their reporting is completely botched.

There's some evidence that the Iranian government knows the number of coronavirus deaths there is much higher than they're admitting to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-51673053 Of course, even just the official number of deaths implies that coronavirus is a lot more widespread there than their numbers say.

It's pretty easy actually: they report about 600 cases and 50 deaths, That means they are an outlier in the number of deaths or that their stats are seriously compromised. I would give them some leeway about that being malice though, I suspect they are simply totally overwhelmed by this.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#198

Post by fred_is_fred »

outside1234 wrote: post #158

I have a brutal cold right now with a ton of congestion and a fever. I am trying decide on if I should go to the hospital here in California - has anyone read anything that helps you make that decision? I am a Caltrain rider daily and I feel like it is not fair to subject other folks to this if it is a COVID-19 - but I don't also want to overload the health system unnecessary if there are folks with Acute symptoms.

I'm fascinated that it never occurred to you to STAY HOME and stop infecting everyone in your office with whatever you have, COVID-19, flu, or something else.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#199

Post by heyoni »

pmiller2 wrote: post #177
ImaCake wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well-equipped state or local labs can use these—or come up with their own—to produce what are known as a “laboratory-developed tests” for in-house use. But at the moment, they’re not allowed to do that without FDA approval. Wow this is frankly insane. Pretty much every biology laboratory in the USA should have the tools available to perform these tests. More than that, RT-PCR is a routine assay that any self-respect…

Yeah, I don't understand why it's literally illegal to take a swab and run a PCR against the known, published viral sequence. Forget "any self-respecting wetlab biologist," I'm pretty sure an undergrad with a year's worth of lab experience could run the test, at least under supervision. Edit: I suppose you do need a "self respecting wetlab biologist" to synthesize the primers, but running the test itself is pretty si…

Running the test is simple but getting good primers nowadays is easy because they can be bought and arrive 24 hours later. If the sequence is published, then even the lab manager can get them.

Re: My Covid-19 Story in Brooklyn

#200

Post by lubujackson »

Barrin92 wrote: post #194
vanusa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The risk of dying from this disease is negligible for most American adults. Can you tell us please: (1) What your numeric definition of "negligible" is (2) And on what math this is estimate based?

current risk for healthy adults appears to be 0.1-0.2% which is comparable to a bad flu season while the chance of getting infected is lower by several magnitudes given how relatively few numbers of cases there are even if you assume there's a lot of asymptomatic cases. If we take China as a comparison, a country with urban agglomerations of 50 million people and more and the 80k cases as rough estimate then the chan…

So you are arguing that the CURRENT risk is way less, with no consideration given to the exponential spread of the disease as we have seen in China and now South Korea, Italy and Iran? The only thing keeping the exponential spread in check is everyone literally bunkering in place for weeks, but there is no logical reason the spread won't pick up again as soon as people are forced to go out and interact again.

The virus seems to persist for quite a while so you can't simply wait a couple of weeks (or even months) for this to blow over - best case is the seasonal change will slow it considerably, but that isn't a guarantee either. Historically, viruses with these characteristics weaken over time because they don't benefit from killing their host.

So hopefully 2 years from now this will be another annoying virus that comes and goes, that is the best case natural outcome. Maybe we have some breakthrough in vaccines or luck with off-label cures like the malaria drug in trial now, but those are longshots. So it is LIKELY that this is going to be a long and unhappy situation globally.

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