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In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

reuters.com

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Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#531

Post by igravious »

GuB-42 wrote: post #403
cies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did similar calculations, and found the institutions in charge give us very unreliable data. The term "corona case" is very, very, ambiguous and cannot the understood as such without a detailed explanation on how the counting was done. Thanks for sharing. I found the peek in all-case mortality also very interesting, because that way counting is much more unambiguous: dead is dead. They showed a clear diversion from…

Here is for Europe if you are interested. There are charts for excess morality by country, by age, and by year. https://www.euromomo.eu/ There is a very noticeable spike in the worst hit countries: Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands and the UK. The cumulative excess deaths for all Europe in the last two months matches the COVID-19 reported deaths (around 100000).

> The cumulative excess deaths for all Europe in the last two months matches the COVID-19 reported deaths (around 100000).

Where's the noticeable spike for Ireland? Where's the spike for Portugal? Where's the spike for Luxembourg? Where's the data for the rest of Germany outside of Hesse and Berlin? Where's the spike for Austria? (And this is not a criticism of them, but they only track Western Europe by the looks of things.)

Don't know where Euromomo is getting its data from but I suggest to you that it's incomplete.

This NYT article[0] (other publications like The Economist[1] have arrived at similar numbers) show that the cumulative excess deaths for France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, and England & Wales sometimes far exceeds reported Covid-19 deaths.

Of the countries you mention only Belgium is actually reporting accurately. (As is Sweden btw, a country you do not mention.) Note that both are smallish countries.

As of 14 hours ago Chris Giles (FT economics editor) tweeted[2] "A cautious estimate of the total number of UK excess deaths linked to coronavirus stands today at 42,700" (He updates this most days.) Worldometer[3] currently has the UK on 20,319 deaths. Quite a difference.

In fact, the numbers show that in Europe actual deaths are between 1.4 [Swiss] and 2.1 [British] times higher than the reported numbers for countries that are under-reporting.

Btw, you say that there are 100,000 deaths? EU 27 has 96,533 deaths as of this moment. EU+UK has 116,852 deaths as of this moment. And Europe in its entirety[4][5] has 122,568. (Am tracking these figures using a spreadsheet.)

Let's say that the adjustment we have to make is between 1.4 and 2.1 and let's ignore population size and pick 1.75 and then lower that to take into account that some countries are accurately reporting and let's err on the conservative side so let's choose 1.66… repeating as our adjustment rate, agreed? This gives us an estimated excess # of deaths for Europe of 204,280. Twice the figure you've given.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/16/tracking...

[2] https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1254105061745098752?s...

[3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe [5] https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/new/

(Europe is generally taken to extend from the Atlantic states of Ireland, Portugal, and Iceland in the West to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains in the east, from Scandinavia in the north to Italy and Greece in the south.)

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#532

Post by bshanks »

danieltillett wrote: post #361
jwlake wrote: post #137

One of the super-interesting things here, is that apparently everyone was in the specific window where they test positive for the virus. This implies the population was recently infected, had not been previously infected, and it spread almost completely within a tight window. This implies a shocking high R(effective) for that population. In 2 weeks we'll have super interesting data one way of the other on the CFR.

A prison is very much like a cruise ship from a viral perspective. We know from the cruise ship data like the Diamond Princess that most people had no symptoms initially, but overtime most people became symptomatic [1]. Of course if we are really lucky and the prison was infected with a naturally attenuated strain we should make use of it [2]. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7078829/ 2. https://www.ti…

Since the hospitalization and mortality rates vary so much with age, it would be surprising if the rate of asymptomatic cases didn't. Since prisons skew young we would expect a much higher proportion of asymptomatics to be found there than in the general population.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#533

Post by greendesk »

Are there differences in vaccination in the affected population? A noteable difference is the age group of high risk group is ~65 in Italy and ~80 in Sweden. (Citation needed, I only found secondary sources). These ages correspond to changes in vaccine regimen in the affected countries. Might the younger inmates have been vaccinated differently?

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#535

Post by gridlockd »

With those kinds or positive rates, I have to start wondering about the specificity of those tests.

The UK government recently hat to gave up on millions of antibody tests because they just didn't work.

Coronaviruses in general are endemic and almost always go without symptoms and would also eventually spread to the majority of the prison population.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#536

Post by gridlockd »

MrPatan wrote: post #229
jwlake wrote: post #137

One of the super-interesting things here, is that apparently everyone was in the specific window where they test positive for the virus. This implies the population was recently infected, had not been previously infected, and it spread almost completely within a tight window. This implies a shocking high R(effective) for that population. In 2 weeks we'll have super interesting data one way of the other on the CFR.

Exactly! What are the chances of that, compared to a gross error in the testing, like someone processing the samples was infected and not very careful?

The chances of an antibody test kit not being sufficiently specific to SARS-CoV2 as opposed to endemic coronaviruses is quite high.

Now, what are the chances that some government institution acquired tons of crappy test kits, didn't validate them before use, and then proceeded to publish the results which just so happened to be exactly what they wanted them to be?

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#538

Post by wegs »

sharken wrote: post #236
edmundsauto wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On 1), what do you consider "not that serious"? IE, what are your metrics of choice, and what are the acceptable values? Regarding the cost-benefit discussion, my perspective is that people only want to discuss the downsides from a reduced economy. Second order effects include reduced vehicle deaths, reduced deaths from pollution, etc. IE, my discussions has felt agenda driven because it considers first order effects…

We are quite a lot of people that fear the operation will be successful but the patient is dead with the Corona actions being taken. Case in point, 26.5 million americans have sought unemployment benefits ( https://vastuullisuusuutiset.fi/en/weben/women-bear-brunt-of... ). The deaths in New York are quite telling for who is at risk, see https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109867/coronavirus-deat... . Over 90% of the…

That's an accurate argument for why it'd be nice if COVID19 would be not serious. Wishful thinking doesn't make it not serious.

Deaths are telling for who is dead, not for who is at risk of lung damage, compromised immune system, or other consequences.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#539

Post by MauranKilom »

watwut wrote: post #510
djsumdog wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in prisons you spend way more time isolated. There is less freedom of travel, and I'd assume they'd be less physical contact (although maybe more if you considered shared showers).

They share cells. They move around at set times. They are not isolated. The soap is expensive, they don't have it and masks are not allowed.

I am communicating daily with a prison inmate and they are required to wear masks all the time. But yes, that won't help due to all the other aspects of prison.

Re: In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

#540

Post by gridlockd »

tim333 wrote: post #511
djsumdog wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this test sensitive to just SARS-CoV-2? What is the possibility that other corona viruses (like the ones that cause many of our colds) could create a false positive? I haven't heard anything from a reliable source on that.

PCR is pretty selective for SARS-CoV-2

I'm trying to figure out what tests they used. PCR is very specific but only works reliably in the early stages and generally has a high false negative rate.

Antibody tests only work after several days of infection, but some of them are not very specific to SARS-CoV2 and therefore have a high false positive rate.

So you really need use both tests, but you can't just OR the results together, because then a faulty antibody test will massively skew the results upward.

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