4 ms·
There are similar high infection rates from other semi-randomized samples. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.
by sxp 7y ago
There are similar high infection rates from other semi-randomized samples.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316
> Between March 22 and April 4, 2020, a total of 215 pregnant women delivered infants at the New York–Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center . All the women were screened on admission for symptoms of Covid-19. Four women (1.9%) had fever or other symptoms of Covid-19 on admission, and all 4 women tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (Figure 1). Of the 211 women without symptoms, all were afebrile on admission. Nasopharyngeal swabs were obtained from 210 of the 211 women (99.5%) who did not have symptoms of Covid-19; of these women, 29 (13.7%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2. Thus, 29 of the 33 patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at admission (87.9%) had no symptoms of Covid-19 at presentation.
- dmitriy_ko 7y agoSo 15% infection rate among pregnant women. I would assume pregnant women would be more careful than average about avoiding getting infected. So overall infection rate in New York City must be even higher.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> So 15% infection rate among pregnant women. I would assume pregnant women would be more careful than average about avoiding getting infected. Pregnant women would seem to be much less able to avoid certain activities that involve transmission (like visiting medical facilities and associated close contact with people who also work in hospitals with inadequate and improvised PPE), so that’s probably not a great assumption.
- usaar333 7y agoNYC has 30x the per capita death rate of Santa Clara county. Santa Clara county only being 15% as infected is not consistent.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoWhat if there are other, undiscovered factors that could explain the difference? Such as NYC populace having had exposure to some other virus that predisposed them to a greater vulnerability. Or perhaps, air pollution exposure predisposing them to greater vulnerability.
- JamesBarney 7y agoWe have two possible hypotheses. There is an unknown quality about New York that causes the virus to be 4 times more severe. A self-selected group from the internet demonstrated self-selection sampling bias. I know where I would put my money.
- mlyle 7y agoI think there's significant error bars all around. Note that the New York data is older than the SCC data, so there's delay related effects, too. We can quibble a whole lot with exact effect magnitudes and data analysis techniques, but... In any case, we have a whole lot of data (Iceland RTPCR, Gangelt RTPCR, Switzerland RTPCR, Netherlands blood donation serology, Santa Clara County serology) that indicates infection rates likely exceed case rates by 10x or more in areas with relatively good testing availability.
- notforever 7y agoJust a hypothesis, but if being more frequently exposed makes it more likely that the disease will be more severe, then this is plausible. There is some evidence that e.g. doctors/nurses were more likely to die compared to their age cohort, possibly because of higher viral load.
- JamesBarney 7y agoI don't think virologists thing frequency of exposure is very important to lethality. But there is evidence that dosage and stress play a roll which will both be higher in medical personnel.