Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through postpandemic period(science.sciencemag.org) |
Projecting the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 through postpandemic period(science.sciencemag.org) |
But, now actual data is starting to come in - such as the extremely interesting serum testing in Scotland (1) - which suggests that the infection rate is much much higher than previously supposed. The Scotland serum testing shows that around 35000 people were infected at a time when only 110 cases were known officially, and strongly suggests that at least 10%-20% of the country have been infected by now.
Similar data has been suggested by the Danish serum testing.
So I'd be interested to see what comes out of this Harvard model if they put in the numbers suggested from serum testing.
1. https://figshare.com/articles/Serological_analysis_of_1000_S... )
Regarding models, it seems 0.15% is the new basis [2].
Even on the optimistic end of the range (0.1% fatality), with 13k deaths, that's 20% of the UK population infected, a long way from achieving herd immunity.
The other thing is that I invite people on hackernews to better control their anxiety. It is not so long ago that pointing that case fatality ratios in jurisdictions that didn't do mass testing and where there seemed to be many unreported cases with mild symptom was overestimating the fatality rate would get you treated of conspirary theorist. South Korea had been measuring a fatality ratio in that range (~0.6%) over a month ago and that was probably already an upper bound (due to not testing 100% of the population).
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/124944656101010637...
[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/AmeshAA/status/124902067755179622...
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d...
What you can't do - statistically - is say "oh there were just 6, that means it all could just be a coincidence and the prevlence is actually very low".
Especially when - if you dig into the numbers they make sense. First, they were spread over a 2 week period, with all the positives being in the second cohort - which is what is expected if there's an exponential explosion of cases going on. Secondly, 4 of the 6 positives are in the Edinburgh area which is the most internationally connected and affluent area of Scotland.
So I really don't think it can be breezily dismissed just because you don't like the data. But as you say, we'll have a lot more serological data before long so lets see.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/14/health/coronavirus-antibo...
Wow -- seems very unlikely to happen though.
I wonder if anybody has thought to research using these viruses as part of an innoculation strategy at least for high-risk groups. After all the first 'vaccine' ever developed in the 18th century (really an innoculation) was to intentionally give people cowpox in order to give them immunity to smallpox.
Maybe it's too risky though for some reason? I dunno.
However, I'm in favor of ending lockdown and letting corona virus run its course, just like the flu every year. That's the fastest way to get herd immunity.
It is fully expected people will be able to get the disease again in years.
But it might be much sooner. And when you get it a second time it might not be as easy as the first. Your third winter and third time getting it might be death.
This variable turns SARS-CoV-2 from it's current media accepted 'mild' to very serious, and we don't know what it is, these 3 months into the disease.
Ok link talking about some of the issues -
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immun...
Chances are, some region will decide against doing that, and their outcome will provide a clear incentive for everyone else to be more rigorous about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/sweden-coronav...
Of course, some right-wing media outlets have still been touting this as a success and a model for a less economically-damaging approach— this article is from nine days ago, but it's not hard to find other similar ones:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-...
It's probably much too early to say one way or another, but I guess there is some value in having multiple approaches be tried. Particularly in a world where guys like Glenn Beck have gone on record saying they'd "rather die than kill the country."
I used to have a poster along these lines in my office. https://despair.com/products/mistakes
this will likely cause more business failures than a prolonged shut down. Starting up and shutting down a business is not free. There are legal costs and you need to source materials for operations. In the case of restaurants in particular, there will be loss due to spoilage
What about Sweden vs Norway -- sure, the data is 4X worse for Sweden, but we are only talking thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. Maybe this can't scale to bigger countries though.
The early pointing to South Korea’s CFR as low turned out to be misleading in the end due to I guess some issues relating to the data (probably because many cases were ongoing and the persons had neither died nor recovered).
It doesn't matter if the number is 5% with a low infection rate, or 0.5% with a very high infection rate: both will lead to very large numbers of dead people unless we take severe action early on.
And so far they've been right. Covid-19 is causing huge amounts of excess mortality, even when compared to a really bad flu year.
And that’s with elective procedures being cancelled and everyone scared to go to the hospital for any reason. Here’s some new data indicating that half of the excess mortality in England might not be caused by COVID-19 itself: https://archive.is/2eKCW
The data might turn much worse, but right now I don't think it's bad for Sweden.
But they validated their results with a second step, the "pseudotype neutralisation assay". This test is highly specific for SARS-CoV-2 - as I understand it, they essentially introduce the virus to the hypothetically immune blood samples and then test that it is indeed neutralised by antibodies.
So, I think this Scottish serology test is pretty robust and accounts for these issues with cross-reactivity and specificity of the testing. In addition - they used a control sample from December 2019 none of which tested positive.
They will not revolt. They won't take power. They don't even vote today.
Secondly if they were false positives, I would expect them to be randomly distributed. Not concentrated in the affluent capital city, and not solely in the second cohort with none in the early march cohort (as you would predict if exponential growth is occurring).
Your second two points are fairly compelling.
Who else here remembers learning that AIDS patients (people with acquired immunodeficiency) can die from the common cold, in school? Is it not common knowledge that old folks can die from a cold, too?
It isn’t just some new common cold that we don’t have herd immunity for. Different viruses have different lethality; common cold corona viruses are far milder than SARS-Ncov-2 which is in turn far milder than MERS.
When you have a mortality rate of 66% to 90% for something tha isn't a hemorrhagic fever, it's the ventilator.
Like the flu, you don't die from the flu, but really it's the last straw on top of other issues that pushes people over the edge.
But the flu is far more deadly than the common cold, it's misleading to talk about them together like that.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655081/
> Twenty-two percent of all subjects with isolated coronavirus were hospitalized, but in the population aged ≥60 years this increased to 73%. While our study design precludes the determination of exact hospitalization rates as a result of coronavirus infections, the hospitalization rates were similar to those for influenza.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4181476/
> The high proportion of non-influenza infection in this study (72%) underscores the importance of non-influenza viral infection in contributing to severe illness necessitating hospital and ICU admission in adults, as has been found by others.
The ventilator from what people are saying doesn’t seem to help as much as was hoped, but it’s not like hospitals are killing the patients by putting them on a vent, which is what your comment seems to imply?
https://ltccovid.org/2020/04/12/mortality-associated-with-co...
> Key findings:
> Official data on the numbers of people affected by COVID-19 is not available in many countries
> Due to differences in testing availabilities and policies, and to different approaches to recording deaths, international comparisons are difficult
> Data from 3 epidemiological studies in the United States show that as many as half of people with COVID-19 infections in care homes were asymptomatic (or pre-symptomatic) at the time of testing
> Data from 5 European countries suggest that care home residents have so far accounted for between 42% and 57% of all deaths related to COVID-19.