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Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

reuters.com

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Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#301

Post by beerandt »

capkutay wrote: post #271
sharemywin wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention. There's a giant filter called basic training which going to skew the numbers. you have a bunch of kids running around in the best shape of there lives and hey what do you know they handle the virus better than average.

What about pregnant women? They're known to be more vulnerable to certain types of illnesses (especially viral infections), yet 29 out of 33 pregnant women who tested positive of COVID-19 in NY were still asymptomatic: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85965

2 ways of looking at this:

1) The main cause of infant death due to coronavirus seems to be complications from early labor and the baby being premature. Also related to hypertension in the mother. But it's only the leading cause due to lack of other causes, not necessarily because it's common.

2) Pregnant women also have a non-standard, somewhat suppressed immune system, since they're basically tolerating a (half-)foreign 9-month infection of sorts. It also explains, as you mention, being vulnerable to various types of infections.

But if one of the causes of death for covid is cytokine storm, which is basically an over-responsive immune system failing to regulate itself, then it makes sense that pregnant women, with an over-regulated immune system, might have less risk from that aspect of the disease.

More info on it if you look at theories on placental development and why women are more susceptible to autoimmune diseases. Pretty fascinating stuff.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#302

Post by goblin89 »

ineedasername wrote: post #224
lbeltrame wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any data on the severity of the symptoms? From what I've gathered, but without any hard data, in non-severe cases (i.e. not needing hospitalization) they can vary from a slight sore throat, dry cough and mild fever, to the same with a high fever and general sense of exhaustion.

Pretty much everyone I've heard talk about it that had it without being hospitalized still said it was the worst they've ever felt.

Don’t you think that anyone who got the “slight sore throat, dry cough and mild fever” or milder symptom variation would be unlikely to get tested or talk about it?

The disconnect between the definitions of “mild” as in “passing without hospitalization” and “mild” as in “easy to bear for most people” is part of what grants weight to the message that the new virus is extremely bad even in the mild version.

It could be worth applying the falsifiability check here. What are the chances you could hear a message contradicting this observation?

I’m going to imagine a possible counter-message and its optics. “I was exposed and got sick, symptoms seemed to match up but they were really weak and not enough to get tested”—this would be unlikely to gain any positive attention. On facts it’d be very unspecific by the nature of it, on emotional level it might seem unfair to the suffering of other patients, from social/mass media point of view it’d just not be news- (or share-) worthy at all. Even if this case was much more common, the message has virtually no chances of ever being expressed and heard under current circumstances.

This line of thought, of course, should not lead to a conclusion that the prevailing variation of the virus is really mild. It only points out that the accounts we get the chance to hear may not be enough to judge the general severity of the symptoms.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#303

Post by innomatics »

riffraff wrote: post #294
matthewdgreen wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to ask what phenomenon causes an exponential increase in deaths/day and does not increase ICU utilization. The answer I’ve seen seems to be “yes, the disease is killing a steadily growing number of people but they’re older and aren’t going to the ICU before they die.” This is where Italy was at one point; they just got there much later.

As someone pointed out to me, the euromomo website is useful for this, it tracks the total mortality rate across Europe and compares it with the historical data. By ignoring the hospitalized/homestuck difference one can have a clearer idea of what is happening. Sadly I don't know of a way to get the data for the whole world.

Euromomo data is really interesting to me because of these two points: 1) the spike in death rate caused by Covid-19 this year is of the same magnitude as the normal flu season spike in 2016 2) this year's flue season spike was low compared to recent years. Maybe due to a warmer summer?

One interpretation could be that a large number of vulnerable people escaped death from regular ILIs this European season, only to sadly succome to this pandemic.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#304

Post by postalrat »

Lewton wrote: post #124
Mikeb85 wrote: post #35

All the data points to the fact that coronavirus is more widespread and less deadly than most outlets are reporting (after all, increase the denominator, the % goes down). The countries with the lowest death rates are also the countries that did the most comprehensive testing. Ditto for this aircraft carrier. Of course governments and outlets are fearmongering lest they be accused of not doing enough, but this thing…

No amount of lowering the IFR will change what has happened and is happening in New York, Italy and Spain

http://www.euromomo.eu/

Looks like they are catching up from 2 years of mild flu seasons.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#305

Post by jmckib »

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #300
jmckib wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also don't know yet (or at least I don't) how easily asymptomatic people are able to transmit the infection, which is why I'm perplexed by this quote from the article. > “With regard to COVID-19, we’re learning that stealth in the form of asymptomatic transmission is this adversary’s secret power,” said Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the Navy.

The know that presymtomatic people are highly contagious.

I don't doubt it, but where did you hear that?

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#306

Post by radioactivist »

three_seagrass wrote: post #129
pesfandiar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those death rates in US are optimistic in my opinion. What if the actual rate is higher because of worse health in impoverished demographics, or the simple fact people might avoid healthcare because of its prohibitive costs?

Lots of people in NYC are getting dragged out of their homes in body bags that will never get tested. https://www.yahoo.com/news/teams-retrieving-280-bodies-day-1...

They are now including many of the suspected (but untested) cases in their reported numbers now. It increased the total from New York by a significant amount, see [1].

The increase is roughly in line with similar estimates from excess mortality [2], so I would guess they are catching most of the deaths with the new reporting scheme.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/corona...

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#307

Post by NamTaf »

TylerE wrote: post #130
ImaCake wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the asymptomatic thing is more wishful thinking in places where infection control has failed. Other countries have shown that you can contain the spread of Covid19, even if there are asymptomatic (or more realistic, low symptom severity) cases.

How do we KNOW it's controlled? Asymptomatic people are not, as a rule, tested, so actual infection rates could be massive.

I don't agree with that. If you look at how many negative results are returned, that is a good indicator of whether you're sufficiently testing. For example, the average here in Australia is that 1.7% of tests yield positive cases. That suggests that you're probably testing enough, especially considering if people are self-selecting to be tested when they think they have symptoms. In that case, you'd expect there to be minimal additional asymptomatic cases, or you'd be catching them in the negatives.

Compare that to some states in the US, where it's a full 30% positive rate, and it's obvious the testing there isn't sufficient.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#308

Post by vrtx0 »

capkutay wrote: post #271
sharemywin wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention. There's a giant filter called basic training which going to skew the numbers. you have a bunch of kids running around in the best shape of there lives and hey what do you know they handle the virus better than average.

What about pregnant women? They're known to be more vulnerable to certain types of illnesses (especially viral infections), yet 29 out of 33 pregnant women who tested positive of COVID-19 in NY were still asymptomatic: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85965

The NEJM letter [1] this article is summarizing is only talking about their condition while in the hospital (that is, of the 215 tested, the 33 who tested positive didn’t show symptoms before being discharged (median length of stay is 2 days).

That letter cites an article[2], which found that of the 43 pregnancy patients who tested positive, 14 (32.6%) were asymptomatic when admitted. However, 10 of them developed symptoms during their stay in the hospital or shortly after being discharged. It doesn’t say how long they tracked patients, but at most, 4 of the 33 could have been asymptomatic.

IMHO, the letter is confusing at best, but more likely intentionally misleading. FWIW, I probably would have come to the same conclusion had I not spent ~45 minutes digging through citations...

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316?cookieSet... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258993332...

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#309

Post by philwelch »

sharemywin wrote: post #217
btilly wrote: post #27

This figure does not surprise me. It is in line with Iceland finding that 50% of people they tested were asymptomatic. However as https://www.propublica.org/article/what-we-need-to-understan... notes, in other samples about 75% of people who were asymptomatic at the time of the test went on to develop symptoms. So the fact that these sailors are currently asymptomatic does not mean that they will remain so. See https…

Not to mention. There's a giant filter called basic training which going to skew the numbers. you have a bunch of kids running around in the best shape of there lives and hey what do you know they handle the virus better than average.

Not just basic training, but recruitment standards that eliminate most known comorbidities.

Re: Coronavirus clue? Most cases aboard U.S. aircraft carrier are symptom-free

#310

Post by misun78 »

bhouston wrote: post #104
ImaCake wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that the asymptomatic thing is more wishful thinking in places where infection control has failed. Other countries have shown that you can contain the spread of Covid19, even if there are asymptomatic (or more realistic, low symptom severity) cases.

We need widespread antigen testing in a place like Italy or NYC or Sweden. Would be so informative.

Doesn't even have to be widespread, a randomized set of say 1,000 New Yorkers tested for antibodies across age and demographics could give us invaluable insights into the infection rate of this virus. It's infuriating seeing politicians pass the buck by pointing to a world of widespread testing, which we know will not happen anytime soon.
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