4 ms·

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

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. I suspect there's a lot more evidence that rules out the "fast and stealthy" hypothesis.

notahacker 7y ago
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.
addisonl 7y ago
SK is the exception.
sojournerc 7y ago
If the people who recover after mild/minimal symptoms do so within <5days (hypothetically), but people who have severe cases take 10 days to get severe, wouldn't that account for "would have seen deaths earlier in South Korea"?
- scott_s 7y ago
  Yes, that would. But what evidence do we have for that? I believe you're engaging in special pleading: appealing to an exception because it fits your conclusion.
tomerico 7y ago
The type of testing S Korea does require the Virus to be present in the body and only work in a certain window of time. Once a Serological survey is done, we’ll know the true extant.
thu2111 7y ago
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 cases had large queues and generally you'd only go there if you actually felt really sick because otherwise why would you expose yourself to lots of probably really sick and infectious people? So far there's overwhelming evidence that either a lot of people have the disease without symptoms, or the tests have a very high FP rate. There's also a lot of people writing like the person above, who are sure they've had the disease based on symptoms but were never tested. South Korea wasn't deploying their tests on people who were asymptomatic, they are doing the same as everyone else: testing people who present for testing or who otherwise seem to need it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- scott_s 7y ago
  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 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.
  - btilly 7y ago
    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.
dboreham 7y ago
It's possible (likely imho) that there is some missing factor that we have yet to discover that explains the funky nature of the data. Something about the people rather than a property of the disease. Almost like an allergy: peanuts are quite fine for everyone to eat, except those with severe peanut allergies. What we do know is that it can't be quite "there were zillions of people infected so when we talk about 1% IFR really it's 0.01% so everything is fine", because there are accumulating bodies in various localized places around the world. There's nothing we know to say that pattern wouldn't repeated everywhere.

notahacker 7y ago

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.

addisonl 7y ago

SK is the exception.

sojournerc 7y ago

If the people who recover after mild/minimal symptoms do so within <5days (hypothetically), but people who have severe cases take 10 days to get severe, wouldn't that account for "would have seen deaths earlier in South Korea"?

scott_s 7y ago
Yes, that would. But what evidence do we have for that? I believe you're engaging in special pleading: appealing to an exception because it fits your conclusion.

tomerico 7y ago

The type of testing S Korea does require the Virus to be present in the body and only work in a certain window of time. Once a Serological survey is done, we’ll know the true extant.

thu2111 7y ago

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 cases had large queues and generally you'd only go there if you actually felt really sick because otherwise why would you expose yourself to lots of probably really sick and infectious people? So far there's overwhelming evidence that either a lot of people have the disease without symptoms, or the tests have a very high FP rate. There's also a lot of people writing like the person above, who are sure they've had the disease based on symptoms but were never tested. South Korea wasn't deploying their tests on people who were asymptomatic, they are doing the same as everyone else: testing people who present for testing or who otherwise seem to need it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
scott_s 7y ago
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 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.
- btilly 7y ago
  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.

dboreham 7y ago

It's possible (likely imho) that there is some missing factor that we have yet to discover that explains the funky nature of the data. Something about the people rather than a property of the disease. Almost like an allergy: peanuts are quite fine for everyone to eat, except those with severe peanut allergies. What we do know is that it can't be quite "there were zillions of people infected so when we talk about 1% IFR really it's 0.01% so everything is fine", because there are accumulating bodies in various localized places around the world. There's nothing we know to say that pattern wouldn't repeated everywhere.