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New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#51

Post by notahacker »

scott_s wrote: post #22
sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

A comment by Bradley Kuszmaul on that blog post gives a good reason why the scenario presented is not likely: > Given the amount of testing being done in South Korea, we can rule out that there are a lot more people currently infected than we know about. And if there were a lot more people recovered than we know about, we would have seen deaths earlier in South Korea, since South Korea started their testing earlier.…

South Korea is far from the only place COVID-19 is present, and most of the rest of the world tests barely anyone, even if they have symptoms and would like a test, either due to lack of resources or formal policies of only testing hospitalised cases. I can detect my infection, but statistics on the rate it is spreading in the UK can't.

It's also pretty well established that even in symptomatic cases where testing is widespread the disease has a multi-day incubation period.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#52

Post by rezeroed »

david_draco wrote: post #7
sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

From the number of deaths you can crudely infer the number of infected, assuming the mortality on the Diamond princess and in South Korea (1%). Demographic effects are in play that don't make this quite right.

Aren't cruise ships generally an older crowd?

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#53

Post by raducu »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #36
psychlops wrote: post #25

Given the ongoing statistics coming out of South Korea (which I'd suggest are the most accurate) where only one person under 50 has died. It seems that these safeguards would be best spent around those aged 60+ and perhaps those 50+ with other health issues. Those who are younger seem to be mildly affected for the most part and could go on with their lives as long as they didn't interact with the older population.

Deaths are all fine and good, but do you know statistics on hospitalizations for the under 50 crowd? Those are the resources that are important - even if the under 50 doesn't die from it but requires hospitalization that's both a resource that can't be used by the above 50's, as well as a possible death if there isn't a bed for them.

In Europe, 50% of ICU patients are under 50 or 60 years of age, so there.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#54

Post by filleduchaos »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #36
psychlops wrote: post #25

Given the ongoing statistics coming out of South Korea (which I'd suggest are the most accurate) where only one person under 50 has died. It seems that these safeguards would be best spent around those aged 60+ and perhaps those 50+ with other health issues. Those who are younger seem to be mildly affected for the most part and could go on with their lives as long as they didn't interact with the older population.

Deaths are all fine and good, but do you know statistics on hospitalizations for the under 50 crowd? Those are the resources that are important - even if the under 50 doesn't die from it but requires hospitalization that's both a resource that can't be used by the above 50's, as well as a possible death if there isn't a bed for them.

> as well as a possible death if there isn't a bed for them.

_Two_ possible deaths, if/when we get to the point that hospital systems are overwhelmed. "Under-50s survive when they get dedicated medical care and full access to medications/ventilators/etc they might need" is a _very_ different picture from "Under-50s survive without adequate medical care".

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#55

Post by anewguy9000 »

sojournerc wrote: post #4

> For every confirmed case of COVID-19, there are likely another five to 10 people with undetected infections. I wish this was reflected more in the numbers being presented by various authorities. There is just too much confidence that confirmed cases are representative of the spread of the virus. This unknown denominator can change mortality rate, and severe case rate by orders of magnitude. Because of the dearth of…

you don't need to get tested the vast majority of people (even ederly) are going to have mild flu like symptoms. stay home and get better.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#56

Post by bob33212 »

rubidium wrote: post #13
david_draco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the number of deaths you can crudely infer the number of infected, assuming the mortality on the Diamond princess and in South Korea (1%). Demographic effects are in play that don't make this quite right.

Totally agree. That’s the number I’ve been watching most to get a sense of how many total are infected for different regions e.g. 1 death today = 50-200 people were infected 2 weeks ago.

Then once you have 2 weeks of death data you can't get the transmission rate. Finally you could go to Seattle and sample 50k people to see how many were infected with a serology test to further refine the 1% assumption

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#57

Post by filleduchaos »

josephorjoe wrote: post #50
microdrum wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fear talking. Why would you want to be tested? What would you do differently? You had a virus, now you aren't sick any longer. You aren't making other people sick, either.

Well, for one thing, if people can be tested to confirm they had and recovered from the virus and therefore have some immunity to it, those people can more safely assist people who are currently ill and move about more freely in society (unless they are still at risk to transmit the virus to others, of course).

You cannot assume that recovering from the virus confers immunity, especially when "the virus" is already "two strains of virus" (and will almost definitely end up mutating more before this is over).

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#58

Post by raducu »

sailfast wrote: post #3

> Although they are thought to be only about half as infectious as individuals with confirmed COVID-19, individuals with undetected infections were so prevalent in China that they apparently were the infection source for 86 percent of confirmed cases. Figuring out how to manage this risk so we can return to society / open venues at a much lower risk of infection (while not giving all of our data to the government) is…

I've read(but can't seem to find the article) that it's estimated that 95% of wuhan population is not immune to the virus.

So I really doubt there are that many i dividual with undetected virus.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#59

Post by btilly »

scott_s wrote: post #46
thu2111 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the amount of testing being done in South Korea, we can rule out that there are a lot more people currently infected than we know about That's a very strong claim. SK has done a lot of testing relative to most places but it's still: a) A tiny amount relative to the population b) Not a random sample of the population Their tests were done at testing clinics that people had to take themselves to, which in many ca…

China tested hundreds of thousands of people in provinces with known cases, and found very little evidence of asymptomatic circulation. See my comment from a week ago, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475853 , which quotes Bruce Aylward, an assistance director general and epidemiologist for the WHO. Our current evidence points to there not being millions of asymptomatic people.

I see your HN comment from 2 weeks ago and raise you with a point in this article lifted from a recent Science paper. Namely, ...individuals with undetected infections were so prevalent in China that they apparently were the infection source for 86 percent of confirmed cases.

This is strong evidence of asymptomatic circulation.

This conclusion is not in contradiction to the evidence behind your previous comment. In mid-February with ~60k confirmed cases that would be 300-600k asymptomatic ones. Which means that China did not have millions of asymptomatic people at the time. And so it is no surprise that a broad testing regime failed to find what did not exist at that time.

However what it also means is that as the number of confirmed cases skyrockets, it WILL be true (and possibly already is) that the number of asymptomatic cases will be in the millions.

Re: New research shows social distancing a must to beat Covid-19

#60

Post by btilly »

rezeroed wrote: post #52
david_draco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the number of deaths you can crudely infer the number of infected, assuming the mortality on the Diamond princess and in South Korea (1%). Demographic effects are in play that don't make this quite right.

Aren't cruise ships generally an older crowd?

Cruise ships have a lot in the 40-60 range.

This gives them a higher median than the general population, but a lower density of the truly old. And deaths are strongly clustered among the truly old.

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