Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

medrxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–208 of 208 posts

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#201

Post by vmception »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #199
vmception wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the off chance that I'm wrong, it invites a proper useful rebuttal or counter-argument. Thanks for the invitation. Lets see where the goal post is here > Either the ancedotes form useful data or they don't - you can't have it both ways. In this case they do if you test for antibodies. We can't test for antibodies. It has been gaslighting from you to willingly ignore what the limitations of data are and how to so…

>> Either the ancedotes form useful data or they don't - you can't have it both ways. > In this case they do if you test for antibodies I'm not sure if this is a disagreement in framing or what. I encourage retroactive testing for antibodies, however, I do so in spite of ancedotal data failing to form useful data that suggests such tests will contradict the currently understood origins of the virus. Finding antibodie…

To recap, a lot of people think the bay area should have more deaths and more cases, similar to Seattle. The proactive stay-at-home orders are interesting but still seem to be too effective - as if maybe more people are immune already. California has failed at testing for active cases, but there also aren't many deaths in the bay area. Is it completely from the proactive lockdown, or maybe the anecdotes about similar symptoms earlier than expected have merit.

"Safe" meant "maybe we don't need a lockdown as long either" or that "a larger portion of the population than you might think doesn't need to be in lockdown" and that it loses utility to keep them in lockdown. At the very least, it would allow for the Mayors offices in bay area counties, and the Governors offices to take a holistic view at the blanket order - or FUTURE blanket orders when this flares up again throughout the year. But only after antibody tests occurred.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#202

Post by easytiger »

Retric wrote: post #20
gnulinux wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to indicate this disease infected a lot more than what we see, and maybe mortality rate is lower than what we currently assume. Maybe it's around 0.1% to 0.5%. So is it possible this disease appeared in China way before December, maybe a few months back. Then in December it reached a saturation point (i.e. infected hundreds of thousands of people, so deaths started to get noticed by respiratory specialists).…

No for several reasons. The Dimond Princess had over 100 crew of young healthy adults test positive and only 25% where asymptotic long term. Additionally South Korea has a massive effort into contact traction which demonstrated just how rapidly the disease spread. Their mortality numbers looked to be about 0.6% early on, but eventually hit 2% a month after the peak with people spending weeks in critical condition. On…

> The Dimond Princess had over 100 crew of young healthy adults test positive and only 25% where asymptotic long term

Have you got a source for that?

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#203

Post by tinus_hn »

cgb223 wrote: post #141
halliburton wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we don't. he is (perhaps unknowingly) spreading disinformation, but that's really very normal behavior. the hardest thing about this is finding real information and then accepting it.

Accusing someone of “spreading disinformation” Is a pretty hard line to take when all the facts are evolving and we’re learning more every day

For some people any statement which is not their preferred taste of doom, disaster and panic is considered misinformation. The post they are complaining about doesn’t even supply a concrete statement:

> These are people who could potentially go back into society

Nobody knows if they could go back or not but the statement that they might is somehow the most dangerous form of misinformation.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#204

Post by ummonk »

jcp2fa wrote: post #6

> Cough (7.5%), shortness of breath (1.4%), and fever (0.7%) were all uncommon among COVID-positive individuals It seems the more important point here is that the majority of the COVID-positive individuals were asymptomatic, putting another datapoint towards the conclusion that there are orders of magnitude more people that have this disease than have tested positive. We need more studies to gather data on these asym…

0.2% of nyc has already died from Covid-19. That will probably get to around 0.4% or so. This is a lower bound for lethality of the disease.

We also know from contact tracing and mass testing instances that only something like half of cases stay asymptomatic forever. It is likely that the people in this study are either asymptomatic because they no longer have the disease or because they haven’t developed symptoms yet. Also, they might just not be recognizing their symptoms. Even without covid-19, way more than 7.5% of homeless people are typically coughing.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#205

Post by ummonk »

marvin wrote: post #132
usaar333 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not plausible they caught most cases. Here's the result of randomized testing in Iceland, which also has the virus under control and has done even more testing per capita ( https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2006100?query=fe... ) Randomized testing was still finding 0.6% of the population (outside those otherwise quarantined already) actively infected. This means even in Iceland, less than half of infe…

That's a much more reasonable interpretation of the available data, although there are still plenty of unknowns here, as sibling comments are pointing out. My interpretations the last week are converging on the same ballpark figures. I'd just like to point out that this is still a far cry from the wishful thinking a lot of people are putting forth, claiming an IFR of These interpretations seem less likely to be true…

Yeah, claiming an IFR of 0.1% is laughable; it would mean everyone in NYC has been infected twice over.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#206

Post by vmception »

sjg007 wrote: post #24
pm_me_ur_fullz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why people immediately want to discredit the idea that US patient zero was not the first in US. Or that this virus was around earlier and that there are limitations in contact tracing capabilities. This seems to have the toughest aspect of gaining consensus. Need antibody tests now, and ones that work reliably.

Because it's not true.

okay, now it is true, ready for a discussion?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Autops...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/us/california-woman-first-cor...

tl;dr

first covid death (feb 6) is nearly a month earlier than previously official first US covid death (feb 26), and also from community spread. suggesting it was in the bay area at least half a month earlier than that.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#207

Post by vmception »

Daishiman wrote: post #108
pm_me_ur_fullz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why people immediately want to discredit the idea that US patient zero was not the first in US. Or that this virus was around earlier and that there are limitations in contact tracing capabilities. This seems to have the toughest aspect of gaining consensus. Need antibody tests now, and ones that work reliably.

This hypothesis has already been tested by Stanford and found to be false.

okay, now it is true, ready for a discussion?

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Autops...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/us/california-woman-first-cor...

tl;dr

first covid death (feb 6) is nearly a month earlier than previously official first US covid death (feb 26), and also from community spread. suggesting it was in the bay area at least half a month earlier than that.

Re: Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

#208

Post by [deleted] »

vmception wrote: post #207
Daishiman wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hypothesis has already been tested by Stanford and found to be false.

okay, now it is true, ready for a discussion? https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Exclusive-Autops... https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/us/california-woman-first-cor... tl;dr first covid death (feb 6) is nearly a month earlier than previously official first US covid death (feb 26), and also from community spread. suggesting it was in the bay area at least half a month earlier than that.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN