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

• alexbanks 7y ago
  Before the deluge of "But wait two weeks" comments, I just want to ask at what point we accept that the potentially of totally asymptomatic cases is insanely high, far higher than anyone thought?
  • taeric 7y ago
    I also want to add that this doesn't make the virus less deadly. It just gives it a very population varied IFR. It appears far more deadly for some populations. Near harmless for others. But no clear way to confine it to the harmless crowd.
    • vmception 7y ago
      > But no clear way to confine it to the harmless crowd. That won't be what the public policy decisions will be based around if the asymptomatic and already exposed rate is so high. We don't know enough to make that decision yet, but testing more broadly was the first step. Remaining steps: - Do they get sick in two weeks? - Skip testing for current sickness, and test for antibodies instead. - Get a better antibody test that is more accurate - Understand how well antibodies work, and for how long and then we can make decisions, even if they are as simple as "this is a systemwide over the air update, some people will get bricked" it's becoming clear that we might end up with a society where the average BMI is under 24.9 simply due to the lower oxygen and resource requirements to support those body systems.
      • taeric 7y ago
        Not sure I follow. I confess I'm biased in thinking we could have locked down nursing homes and shaved a large chunk of deaths. Catch is, we should have done that in January.
        • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
          > locked down nursing homes // How would you do that without locking down the rest of the population? You're going to isolate all nursing home workers?
          • taeric 7y ago
            We could have done dedicated housing for them for cheaper than what we have currently done. So, maybe?
            • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
              I'm in the UK, I can't see this being accepted: it would be pretty hard for every care home to have space found near it to create temporary housing for all the workers. And basically imprisoning workers just because of their current job wouldn't be popular with the population -- if they quit, how do you replace them? Who would sign up? Confining people to their own home, and locking them in their workspace are markedly different. I'm not sure there's a better solution; financial incentives and let the workers decide if they want to do it? Care home workers have their own families and dependents too, but that could make it possible for many of them without having to lock them up against their will.
              • taeric 7y ago
                Apologies, my thought was it would not have to have been Draconian. We could have basically done a tight job on funneling access to them. Would have been expensive, but so is everything we have been doing. Which is a large part of my point/question. Would it have been more effective than what we have been doing? This is frustrating with a lot of news coming out that it had been spreading longer and faster than thought. Conceivable that much of the peak in deaths is the highest risk crowd having hit a saturation.
        • vmception 7y ago
          My post is just a blueprint for letting us know what to do at all. Its the plan for making a plan.
  • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    Like with the death rate, I expect we'll seamlessly transition from "this isn't proof, in 2 weeks you'll see" to "this isn't news, everyone always believed that so it doesn't imply any changes in strategy".
    • wegs 7y ago
      Well, it isn't proof. It is evidence, though. And in two weeks, we will have a lot more evidence. A lot of this is like Russian Roulette -- there's a huge amount about this virus which we don't know, and it could be super-bad or not-that-bad. It could also be there are bad and not-so-bad strains. Or it could be bad down-the-line. Until we do have proof, I'm advocating being conservative. In 2 weeks, we'll know if people are turning up in ERs or in morgues. In a few months, we'll know about lung damage, immune system damage, strokes, or a lot of the other potential consequences. In a year, we'll know about vaccine and long-term immunity. I think the key problem here is failure to understand risk management. I can believe one think, but act another way just in case I'm wrong. Or I can be unsure. And so on. That nuance is lost in the right/wrong discussions.
      • Zach_the_Lizard 7y ago
        > A lot of this is like Russian Roulette -- there's a huge amount about this virus which we don't know, and it could be super-bad or not-that-bad. I think at this point we know enough to say: 1) For most of the population, the virus is not that serious 2) For a subset of the population the virus is seriously deadly. For example, ~20% of NY state coronavirus deaths were from nursing homes, ~37% are 80 or older. By contrast, there were 2 people under the age of 10 at the time of this post. [0] > I think the key problem here is failure to understand risk management I think another key problem is a failure to be frank about the cost-benefit of our actions. I have had to make stronger cases about changing the color of a button or optimizing a backend call than I've seen presented by authorities who are shutting down or reopening or anywhere in between. [0] https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Track...
  • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > Before the deluge of "But wait two weeks" comments, I just want to ask at what point we accept that the potentially of totally asymptomatic cases is insanely high, far higher than anyone thought? Presumably in two weeks, when we know whether more of these thousands of people go on to develop symptoms or not. Is anybody following up on stories like this? Do we have any from two weeks ago?
    • onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      The asymptomatic rate being that high and that many people being infected implies three things. 1) that the asymptomatic rate for this Coronavirus is much higher than other Coronaviruses. 2) but at the same time, it's more deadly than most Coronaviruses. 3) and it's also the R0 is much higher than other Coronaviruses. Isn't it more likely there's a testing issue? This seems a lot like a person that runs a SQL query that overturns all established data at a business, and instead of first assuming that their query is wrong, they instead assume everyone at the business is wrong. I'm not saying the tests are inaccurate. I'm saying when you get highly conflicting data that has critical implications, you shouldn't jump to conclusions. And you should prepare for the worst case, not assume the best.
      • whiddershins 7y ago
        If the asymptomatic rate is higher, then it is less dealt, no?
      • robocat 7y ago
        > the R0 is much higher than other Coronaviruses R0 depends on the population you measure. In a high contact, crowded place, the R0 could be very high. In a population staying at home, the R0 could be very low.
      • marcosdumay 7y ago
        > instead of first assuming that their query is wrong, they instead assume everyone at the business is wrong All those 3 numbers you cite are taken from the same small set of models where the rate of asymptomatic cases is an input. So, no, that's not right.
  • tyingq 7y ago
    There's also the nuance of US state prison care quality. "Without symptoms" could just mean "not obviously gasping for air".
    • londons_explore 7y ago
      "Not dead yet"
      • DoreenMichele 7y ago
        "Just their usual whining because that's what prisoners do. These are not the symptoms you are looking for. Move along."
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • Pfhreak 7y ago
      This is absolutely my reading. That someone is not really observing or listening to prisoner symptoms with much care either because of distrust between the prisoner and the medical technicians or because prisoners receive such poor care.
    • code_duck 7y ago
      Sure, in New Mexico there are routinely lawsuits against the state and county’s for completely ignoring inmates’ communicated medical needs (or worse). https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/what-happened-to-carmela-devargas-in-santa-fe-county-jail/article_a28399c5-3e98-5e4b-a211-b2f2ccf450e2.html https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/what-happe...
    • lostlogin 7y ago
      Amnesty International campaign against this and are currently calling for the release of ICE detainees. Judging by a skim of their releases even those obviously gasping for air don’t necessarily get the care they need. It’s a truely massive system which in itself is part of the problem, though the exceptionally low bar for the care of prisoners is Amnesty’s primary angle. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/usa-covid19-pandemic-authorities-must-release-immigration-detainees/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/usa-covid19-p...
  • sroussey 7y ago
    It’s always high on these antibody tests, low on tests approved by the FDA.
  • cjlars 7y ago
    I'll venture a guess that by Wednesday the news cycle will be deep in the implications of very high asymptomatic case count... Assuming we don't start seeing contradicting evidence.
    • vanniv 7y ago
      Nah, that has too much risk of admitting that eternal house arrest isn't a good solution, so we can be certain that won't be the media narrative.
      • code_duck 7y ago
        I’m confused about this version of events that some are supporting. In your view, why does the media have a motive to engage in a secret conspiracy to not present any solutions other than an endless shutdown? How would that benefit ‘The media’?
        • vanniv 7y ago
          I don't really have enough karma to be able to waste responding, but I'll make an exception for you, since you asked more politely than most. First, there's not much secrecy involved. It isn't a secret at all that, Hollywood, the American mainstream media, and the political left are all on the same side. It's been obvious for 30 years now. What we are currently living through is a left-authoritarian consolidation of power. Like other similar consolidations in the 20th century. That is why, within 24 hours of the first house-arrest orders, propaganda about how our old lives of freedom are gone forever because they were "irresponsible", and how we must all get used to "the new normal" began. Dr. Fauci says that physical human contact is a thing of the past ("nobody will ever shake hands ever again"), governors, especially those of "blue states" have all acted to either make their house-arrest orders indefinite (like in CA) or to declare that they will continue for multiple years (as VA announced yesterday, for example). Enforcement is gradually increased everywhere, and citizens are increasingly encouraged to snitch. Political protests are banned. Even organizing them online is being locked down, with states pressuring Facebook and Google into deleting people's accounts if they even mention the existence of a protest. The thing is, it takes time to take a society used to freedom and fully consolidate it. The house arrest orders are the start -- now, when the government eventually let's people out of their houses, but only on conditions (like wearing a tacking wristband, showing your papers to any government official, having to have "a legitimate purpose"), people will be so desperate to leave home that they'll agree. With "contact tracing" apps and "mandatory isolation", the government will be able to declare any person they need to silence as "contaminated", and they go back to imprisonment, with no recourse, no due process, no burden of proof. Even better, having communicated with a "contaminated" person automatically adds you to the list of the unpersoned. The economic disruption has already made 1 in 4 Americans dependent upon government handouts to survive. Every week, another 4-5% join them. An authoritarian government needs it's people to be dependent for survival, in order to ensure cooperation. Meanwhile, the food supply is being turned off. We already have a third of our food production offline, and are most of the way toward driving all independent farmers and ranchers into bankruptcy. We are pretty much guaranteed to have widespread hunger by the fall. This will leave the way for a government takeover of food production. But, in order for the consolidation to work, they have to keep us all imprisoned willingly until they finish consolidating enough power to make it permanent, or we will all just go back to our lives as free people, the economy will recover, and people won't be dependent upon the would-be dictators for their continued survival. The next 3-6 months are critical to breaking the back of the capitalist system and soften everyone up to accept the new freedomless world. It will take that long to drive enough people to poverty, hunger, and desperation for them to be willing to go to the authoritarians and beg to be ruled. This isn't a secret, and it isn't really new. It's more or less how every current left-authoritarian state was formed -- only with more technology and fewer guns.
  • ouid 7y ago
    You have to account for events like the Diamond Princess, if you want to run with that story.
  • FabHK 7y ago
    It’s not like this is the first population that has been nearly exhaustively tested. There was the cruise ship, there was the navy ship, etc. Those have shown between <20% (among the elderly cruise ship demographic) to 60% (among healthy soldiers) asymptomatic. This certainly adds another data point, but I wouldn’t throw conventional wisdom out the window yet.
  • Terretta 7y ago
    Note that until this past week, officially, the symptoms had to be the first three defined by CDC, not the eight or so CDC have expanded now: fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, repeated shaking, muscle pain, headache, sore throat and new loss of taste or smell, could all appear between two and 14 days after exposure. In the field it appears many/most of the less severe cases don’t exhibit the initial set they had defined, so patients experienced illness written off as not COVID-19. From what I’ve heard from the field, a careful patient history finds there was typically a bout of unusual “but it can’t be COVID” illness with a set of the expanded set of symptoms in almost every “asymptomatic” patient. It’s further speculated these variations may have to do with level of exposure and path of infection, along with the earlier noted lung health and comorbidities.
    • FrojoS 7y ago
      Very interesting point. If this is how symptomatic was defined, yours should be the top comment of the thread.
  • alkonaut 7y ago
    > at what point When at least one large studied group has an outcome (symptomatic recovered, asymptomatic recovered, or dead). So for this group I guess a few more weeks.
  • fzeroracer 7y ago
    When we know the full extent of the virus? It's an easy question to ask, but an incredibly hard one to answer. For example, they've been finding that the virus can trigger strokes in otherwise healthy individuals. That's individuals that either exhibit no symptoms or minor symptoms. So while they may otherwise be asymptomatic, we can't know unless we do a full extensive test to see if they're also suffering from unseen clotting issues.
• marcell 7y ago
  I've been tracking the antibody study results in a spreadsheet, and they are suggesting a 10-20x undercount of cases in the official "confirmed" numbers. You can see the data I've collected here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTlad1jnQZ9W7p_P_yS-0D6j1-8 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16onEUBWIV5IqN1RCvTla...
  • bb2018 7y ago
    I think antibody tests will soon become more useful for tracking disease progression in a population than the viral tests. The collection methods may skew things but they still are much more close to a random sample than the viral tests which have lots of issues with test shortages and people unable to get tested (or not wanting to go to the hospital with mild symptoms).
    • garmaine 7y ago
      They have huge false positive rates though.
      • taeric 7y ago
        Do we know the rates already?
        • amluto 7y ago
          There’s preliminary data: https://covidtestingproject.org/ https://covidtestingproject.org/
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • danielfoster 7y ago
        And false negatives.
        • 7y ago
• kortex 7y ago
  Maybe we can institute a work-recovery program where inmates can do high-exposure work (once they are truly recovered). give them experience and a feeling of duty and purpose. Nah, they'll probably just keep using em for slave labor.
• OrgNet 7y ago
  I wish I could get an anti-body test done because I had flu-like symptoms before any tests were available
• adamnemecek 7y ago
  No, they will develop symptoms. Test again in two weeks.
  • DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I'm in a high risk category with an incurable respiratory condition. I'm convinced I've already had it and I'm mostly recovered now. I was mostly asymptomatic. The biggest thing going on was that I was very tired, which was also something easily explained by other things going on, so I was basically already on the mend before I concluded I must have had it. I believe we are barking up the wrong tree. We are looking for respiratory distress because it leads to low oxygen levels. I think we need to be looking more at what it does to the blood. Fortunately, some doctors are looking in that direction, but I think not enough, probably. My symptoms were similar to anemia. It's easily missed because you mostly lack energy. Again, there can be lots of reasons a person has low energy. It can be quite hard to say "Clearly, this symptom is indicative of Coronavirus." So I suspect a lot of people will never be overtly symptomatic in the ways the world is looking for with its huge focus on lung issues.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • nradov 7y ago
      Doctors are already seeing blood clots in many COVID-19 patients. Strokes, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolisms appear to be much more common than with other forms of viral pneumonia. Some hospitals have incorporated blood thinners into their treatment protocols.
      • DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Yeah, I'm aware. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22883260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22883260 I also had an interesting discussion with someone who is apparently some kind of medical researcher about zinc and blood stuff. This was very helpful to me and my sons in trying to recover our energy levels, which also firms up my suspicions that a. we had the infection and b. my mental models are less wrong than some of what is out there.
• lettergram 7y ago
  People can test positive and are most contagious before they show symptoms. As opposed to influenza where people with symptoms are most contagious. The delay in the onset of symptoms is why this is a very difficult virus to contain. Further, the accuracy of our tests is questionable and hopefully improving. Finally, viral shedding has been seen up to 35+ days since symptom onset. Meaning if they showed symptoms a month ago, they may still test positive. https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/onset-of-covid-19-symptoms.html https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/...
• jessaustin 7y ago
  Our prisons do not reduce crime. All of these people should have been released months ago. [EDIT:] Apparently these propositions are not self-evident to all HN downvoters. They follow directly from several other propositions that really should be obvious. USA imprisons vastly higher percentages of its population than other nations. Yet it still has higher crime than those other nations. QED. [EDIT:] 'thendrill you appear to be hellbanned.
  • thendrill 7y ago
    You have to keep in mind that the majority of HN are Pc-babies working in IT. Basically nerds and useful idiots with hi iq...
• pcdoodle 7y ago
  Hope they didn't give them the batch that arstechnica reported contaminated.
• nodesocket 7y ago
  Isn't this a bit of promising news, means herd immunity is probably much deeper and larger than we are currently aware.
  • DanBC 7y ago
    WHO says we can't assume previous infection means future immunity. https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19 https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-p...
    • drstewart 7y ago
      That doesn't mean it doesn't, it just means it isn't scientifically proven yet.
    • theferalrobot 7y ago
      No-one is assuming - we are weighing evidence and there is far more evidence that it does provide at least some immunity than none - it seems oddly disingenuous of WHO to make statements like this because they know how it will be interpreted.
    • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      The WHO says that we can't assume someone is 100% guaranteed to be immune when they have antibodies. That's true, and it's an important flaw in the idea of immunity passports that they're tackling - you couldn't send people with immunity passports into quarantined nursing homes or allow them to attend potential superspreading events. Herd immunity doesn't require perfect immunity or a 100% guarantee of it. No reasonable expert doubts that herd immunity is possible, although some argue it's too costly.
    • nodesocket 7y ago
      Not sure why I am getting downvoted, I guess covid-19 shaming is a thing. From what I've read people who appear to get it again is actually just a relapse of the original infection[1]. [1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/491988-fauci-recovered-coronavirus-patients-will-likely https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...
• azakai 7y ago
  It doesn't appear to mention what type of test was done. Were they checking for current active infection, or for antibodies which would indicate if the person has ever been infected? (if the latter, they may have had symptoms back then)
  • ImaCake 7y ago
    I am not willing to even consider these results until more details about testing are revealed. There has already been so much misinformation about testing and results that I am incredibly skeptical of any results now.
    • djsumdog 7y ago
      Same here. Is there any chance the viral load test is also testing positive for other coronaviruses that are not SARS-CoV-2? Because I can't find any information addressing that.
• mkagenius 7y ago
  The test seems so freaking flawed to me, if you test isolated ISS astronauts, you would get half of them infected. Or probably aliens are infected too. Maybe some people who are dead for million years are infected as well. No one freaking talks about the test being flawed (rtpcr).
• booboolayla 7y ago
  You can almost see the pain in 50% of comments here - it's almost like their pet disease might not last until November elections!
• w3mmpp 7y ago
  > by throwaway888abc Pretty funny, good enough for reuters but not for HN it seems...
• Brendinooo 7y ago
  I don't know a lot about the antibody tests. Is the novel coronavirus novel enough that they know exactly the kind they're testing? Is it a specific test for SARS-CoV-2?
  • FabHK 7y ago
    There are many antibody tests. The one I’ve read about (from the Charité in Berlin) was designed (or found) to also test positive for the “original” SARS, and for very closely related bat viruses (neither of which should present an issue when testing humans today), but not for other corona viruses (such as the common cold etc.). That test has also very carefully been validated, with excellent sensitivity (=few false negatives) and specificity (=few false positives). Not sure all available tests have gone through quite so thorough validation.
  • maxerickson 7y ago
    The Ohio prison system is probably testing for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not antibodies. That testing is specific to the virus (the type of test can respond to multiple viruses, but being specific to the target is one of the design criteria). An antibody test should also generally be well targeted.
• creddit 7y ago
  I'd guess smoking rates are very high in prisons. It seems smokers (even former) are much better off than non-smokers.
  • hkeide 7y ago
    That's the opposite of everything I've read
    • frereubu 7y ago
      I think they're referring to this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french-study-suggests-smokers-at-lower-risk-of-getting-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french-study-s... The idea is that nicotine may lower your chances of infection, but once established I imagine that smoking will definitely reduce your chances of survival.
      • samatman 7y ago
        Well, it lowers your chance of being listed as an infected person. Presuming this is true (lots of evidence but still much too early to be sure), there's two possibilities: nicotine makes a person less likely to be infected, or nicotine makes it less likely that the infected will develop any symptoms. No symptoms, no test, that's been the rule until quite recently. If it's the latter, it could explain what's going on here. I doubt that's the explanation, but it's possible.
        • creddit 7y ago
          There seems to be a reasonable path to effect regarding regulation of ACE2 which is the primary receptor molecule for COVID. https://www.qeios.com/read/article/571 https://www.qeios.com/read/article/571
        • hkeide 7y ago
          A couple more possibilities could be that smokers are less likely to notice any symptoms they might have, or are less likely to report those symptoms and get a test. Smokers are probably less conscientious on average - it's almost the definition of lack of conscientiousness.
• MrPatan 7y ago
  Does anybody know the false positive rate of the test? Could this be an artifact of that plus low actual incidence like: - False positive rate of 10% - 100 tests - 1 true positives. All with symptoms - 9 false positives. All without symptoms (duh!) Headline: "90% asymptomatic!" Truth: "Shitty test procedure!" Yes, yes, I know you know this. Do you think people doing tests and writing headlines know this? What is the false positive rate?
  • hutzlibu 7y ago
    " Do you think people doing tests know this?" Probably. " Do you think people writing headlines know this?" Maybe, but unlikely that they care, if the result is a flashing headline.
  • FabHK 7y ago
    No, that can’t be the case here, because a shockingly large proportion of people tested positive according to the article. (Thus, either the false positives are negligible, or the test employed has a an astronomical false positive rate (bad specificity)).
    • MrPatan 7y ago
      You're right, they get a positive result for almost all the population! Wait, does that pass the smell test? Do prisions become huge flu hotspots as well? The Diamond Princess outbreak didn't have that kind of numbers... What's more likely at this point, the numbers from the article or human error? My respects to anybody trying to do actual science with this kind of data in this kind of situation...
      • Pfhreak 7y ago
        Densely crowded environment where people were unlikely to maintain social distancing, poor quality health care, probably poor quality sanitation. It seems reasonable to me that a prison would fare worse than a cruise ship.
      • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
• IAmEveryone 7y ago
  Plugging the 96% into New York numbers results in 155,000 / 4 * 100 = 3,875,000 infected people in NYC, or about half the population. This is assuming that tests in NYC currently include every infected and symptomatic person. Considering the official advice for people with mild symptoms is to stay home (and not seek a test), that assumption is ... optimistic. It also wouldn't fit with the anti-body tests that have been done in NYC that showed figures closer to 15-20%. So I'd expect about 1/2 to 2/3 of these 96% to develop symptoms within the next week. The other possibility is the prison population not being representative of the general population. That's probably true in terms of fatality rates, because they are younger. I'm not entirely sure if that age imbalance is just as strong for any symptoms as it is for risk of hospitalisation and death.
• ivanhoe 7y ago
  I've read that asymptomatic carriers are though to be less infectious than those with symptoms because of the lower concentration of virus in the saliva. Also, many virologists mentioned in recent texts that the initial concentration of the virus you receive can affect how sick you'll get - the more viruses you're exposed to, the faster they can invade the body and the more severe it will get. Can those two facts be combined into a theory that asymptomatic carriers are more likely to produce more mild and asymptomatic cases? Don't know if it makes any sense (probably not), but it would certainly explain how in some closed environments there's a prevalence for mild cases, while in others there's a plenty of very sick people, regardless of the age.
  • toshk 7y ago
    These were exactly the assumptions of the RIVM in the Netherlands end Februari and March causing it to completely spiral out of control.
    • johnchristopher 7y ago
      > Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu > Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment > The Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, is a Dutch research institute that is an independent agency of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. RIVM performs tasks to promote public health and a safe living environment by conducting research and collecting knowledge worldwide.
    • Peter-Jan 7y ago
      > causing it to completely spiral out of control. I live in the Netherlands and I think you could say that we actually have it quite under control (relatively speaking of course). We never reached peak ICU capacity and the ICU occupancy has been steadily declining for more than two weeks now[1]. Our schools for children between the ages of 4 and 12 are scheduled to partially open again on the 11th of may[2]. [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2331720-coronacijfers-van-25-april-rivm-ziet-nog-altijd-dalende-lijn.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2331720-coronacijfers-van-25-april-ri... [2] https://nos.nl/artikel/2331460-kabinet-wil-basisscholen-voor-zomer-weer-helemaal-open.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2331460-kabinet-wil-basisscholen-voor...
• FabHK 7y ago
  Would be nice if they had specified what test (PCR from throat swap, from sputum, from stool; antibody test; …).
• eblah 7y ago
  Does anyone know if there's been any studies on those who have taken no medications at all in past X days vs those that take any (either OTC or otherwise) and those with and without symptoms? I ask because I'd assume drug use would be lower in prisons, and among those in poorer countries. I'm just wondering if a particular set of drugs could accelerate/make this worse? That said, I'm not sure this is even possible to obtain metrics on, it'd just be interesting to see if there's any type of correlation to rule out. I realize there's been conflicting studies on whether certain heart meds may accelerate, but I've not been able to find anything about any drugs use whatsoever.
• colmvp 7y ago
  As a Canadian, I'm shaking my head at our officials who said "we do know that asymptomatic people are not the key driver of epidemics" as a response to concerns back in January of the potential for the virus to grow in our country via incoming travelers who came from hot spots and were not screened or forced to isolate if they expressed no symptoms. Now our long term care facilities are being overrun with cases potentially because we waited until deaths piled up before testing asymptomatic caretakers for the virus.
  • hazeii 7y ago
    There's asymptomatic and presymptomatic (a very rapid spread could give lots of positive results before symptoms appear).
    • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
      So, in two weeks, if these prisons are still 96% asymptomatic - then what? I hope that’s the case, everyone should. I have yet to see a single indication this is worse than than anyone’s projections. I think that’s a dangerous scenario for the next time a virus comes along. If there is any perceptionat all of overreacting, it’ll be a cry-wolf scenario with a lot of people.
      • Symmetry 7y ago
        Then that would be really weird given other closed groups we've observed and tested closely like the Diamond Princess and would probably be evidence for a significant mutation.
  • tempestn 7y ago
    Agreed 100%. Here in BC, public health wasn't even saying, "It's not known whether asymptomatic carriers can spread the virus," but actually, "Evidence suggests asymptomatic carriers can not spread the virus." Something that as far as I can tell was never actually true. This was reported in public briefings, was repeated by public health nurses on the call-in lines, and was distributed as the government's official position to daycare workers, presumably among others. Really mind-boggling to me. I can only assume somewhere along the line lack of evidence got confused for evidence of lack, and just kept getting parroted from there.
• aazaa 7y ago
  No mention of what kind of test was performed. And this article is not alone - most don't bother. The kind of test matters. A qPCR tests the presence of an active infection. Antibody test determines past exposure. Each has different expectations for symptoms, communicability, and prognosis. It's not a lot to ask - just report the kind of test that was done, and do so with in the first two paragraphs. Then let me draw my own conclusions about what the study means. That's a minimum. Ideally, an article would mention the exact brand of test that was performed. If heterogeneous testing methods were used, report that as well.
  • shawnz 7y ago
    If it were an antibody test then I don't think it would be correct to say that they "tested positive for coronavirus", and also it wouldn't make sense to talk about their symptomaticity
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Lets not get too excited about this. Whatever the numbers, that's interesting and worth recording for planning. But whatever they are, they result in "way too many deaths". This is still a very dangerous and rapidly-spreading virus.
  • partiallypro 7y ago
    I think the hope is that we could be closer to herd immunity than we think.
    • the8472 7y ago
      Any herd immunity scenario is conditionnal on immunity is long-lasting, which is far from certain considering related viruses are recurring seasonally or in single-digit year intervals. Don't bet the farm on it.
      • nradov 7y ago
        Even if infection doesn't confer permanent total immunity, subsequent reinfections are likely to be less severe as the immune system is primed to respond. So herd immunity is still a viable strategy.
      • FrojoS 7y ago
        Maybe, but this particular virus is believed to not mutate much.
  • k2enemy 7y ago
    Where is the cutoff between "way too many deaths" and not too many deaths? I don't mean to be glib, but it is an important question that needs to be weighed against destroying all of our economic institutions.
    • pgsbathhouse2 7y ago
      > that needs to be weighed against destroying all of our economic institutions. No it doesn't. Like the statement alone doesn't even have any credence, let alone following through with it. Incredibly daft.
• H8crilA 7y ago
  This is actually not such a bad thing. It means that the true case rate is much much higher, and thus the true fatality rate is much much lower.
  • JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    The total fatalities are still unsupportably high. The #1 cause of death in the US, and its been around just a month or two. The rates are interesting data. But don't make the leap to "not dangerously infectious"
  • finolex1 7y ago
    A disease where only symptomatic people tend to be infectious would be far easier to manage and cause lower total damage even if it were deadlier.
  • spikels 7y ago
    On the other hand this means it is much more infectious and there are many more infective asymptotic carriers. This will almost certainly make it impossible to contain using traditional public health means such as contact tracing and quarantining.
• bobongo 7y ago
  HN seems to have forgotten what happened in Wuhan, Bergamo, and New York in its newfound polemic of "the death rate is just like that of the flu" in the comments of the recent headlines. Either this is actually HN's denial of what's going on, or we are witnessing paid shills overwhelming actual users in the number of comments and votes.
  • srl 7y ago
    Paid by who? Your comment would be much more interesting if you implied something concrete, instead of the more common (and boring) "people who disagree with me must be paid off by ... someone".
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• ilamont 7y ago
  96% are without symptoms yet. There was a nursing home in Massachusetts which had 51 out of 98 residents testing positive but asymptomatic in early April. While this sounded encouraging in the sense no one was critically ill because of coronavirus, a few weeks later 19 had died and about 30 more had tested positive. Let’s wait a month until there is a clearer picture about the impact of the virus on a particular population of people. https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/04/04/coronavirus-cases-wilmington-nursing-home/ https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/04/04/coronaviru... https://www.wcvb.com/article/85-of-patients-at-wilmington-massachusetts-nursing-home-test-positive-for-coronavirus/32087000 https://www.wcvb.com/article/85-of-patients-at-wilmington-ma...
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • kfrzcode 7y ago
    Is it indicated how long ago these inmates were tested? Seems like that's a key component in this mystery and I can't find it.
    • sharken 7y ago
      In Marion Correctional Institution, Ohio it could look like the tests were conducted in mid-april according to https://drc.ohio.gov/Portals/0/DRC%20COVID-19%20Information%2004-19-2020%20%201305.pdf https://drc.ohio.gov/Portals/0/DRC%20COVID-19%20Information%.... But as of 25-04-2020 at least 4 inmates have died to Corona virus according to https://eu.marionstar.com/story/news/local/2020/04/24/coronavirus-ohio-17-prisoners-now-dead-4-marion-correctional/3019337001/ https://eu.marionstar.com/story/news/local/2020/04/24/corona.... There are 2,564 inmates (https://drc.ohio.gov/mci https://drc.ohio.gov/mci).
      • XorNot 7y ago
        As a note on sample size, given those numbers the general fatality rate would imply eventually 25 deaths.
• sandworm101 7y ago
  Fine non-Covid point: >>> The United States has more people behind bars than any other nation, a total incarcerated population of nearly 2.3 million as of 2017 — nearly half of which is in state prisons. Smaller numbers are locked in federal prisons and local jails, which typically hold people for relatively short periods as they await trial. That isn't correct. "Local Jails" hold two general populations: people serving less than a year (generally non-felony convictions) and people awaiting legal process. The infamous Rikers Island in NY is technically a "local jail". People regularly stay in these facilities for YEARS. The AVERAGE stay at Rikers is 6+ months. (Total stay, not time between appearances.) The distinction between "jail" and "prison" in the US is academic. For purposes of disease, and certainly from the perspective of inmates, both are prisons where large populations are locked up in confined quarters for years at a time.
• sergiotapia 7y ago
  >“It adds to the understanding that we have a severe undercount of cases in the U.S.,” said Dr. Leana Wen, There it is! Now can we get back to normal. Of those 4% with symptoms, what tiny percentage need advanced hospitalization? Of that tiny percentage, what tinier percentage still, die?
• robocat 7y ago
  If the virus moves fast through a population (like we might expect in a crowded prison) then all the population in one provision will have a single strain. However, this is 4 prisons: do staff or inmates move between prisons more often than say every week? It is possible (although unlikely) the virus strain is less spdangerous.
• jwlake 7y ago
  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.
  • Retric 7y ago
    Covid-19 fatalities takes up to 2 months after infection, symptoms have a median of just over 5 days from first exposure.
    • hartator 7y ago
      Median of 10 days though.
      • Retric 7y ago
        Numbers I have seen where median 5.1 days from exposure to first symptoms and a median of 8 days from first symptoms to death in Italy. So, a median of ~2 weeks from exposure to death. https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period... https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/la-stampa-in-english/2020/03/19/news/covid-19-causes-death-after-a-median-of-8-days-study-shows-1.38612578 https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/la-stampa-in-english/2020/03/... However, early estimates are going to be biased without the slowest fatalities. Further, that’s also population specific.
        • danieltillett 7y ago
          The South Korean data suggests there is a long tail on the death rate. It seems the very old and ill die quickly, but those that are healthier it can take a month or more to die.
    • covidSurvivor19 7y ago
• 8note 7y ago
  From what I can tell, this makes a strong suggestion that were much further through infecting the whole population than we think. Anyone with some bayesian ideas on by how much?
• crazygringo 7y ago
  Every article I see about people testing asymptomatic is followed by comments insisting they were asymptomatic when tested, with no idea of whether they stayed asymptomatic or whether virtually all of them had symptoms a few days later, thus basically invalid. But this doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve, folks. Is nobody bothering to follow up with the asymptomatic people a week later? Just take their mobile phone number, and text them en masse with a quick Y/N question as to whether or not they got sick? This stuff baffles me. This is literally a matter of life-and-death, and yet the most basic questions seem to be unanswered. (Or are these follow-up surveys being done but the media just refuses to report them because it now feels like week-old news? I'd love to know.)
  • lukevdp 7y ago
    Yes, one study when the diamond princess was tested it was originally 50% asymptomatic and then later on that had gone down to under 20%
    • graeme 7y ago
      A lot of the asymptomatic cases had pneumonia in their lungs too. They were however still able to expel CO2 and so did’t feel shortness of breath.
      • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        I've heard this more recently that it's a characteristic which means that people who think they're getting better will then suddenly have a turn for the worse, because they don't feel as sick but their blood oxygen level is actually quite low -- they try to exert themselves, go upstairs say, and then faint. Happened that way to a close friend of mine.
        • Symmetry 7y ago
          And this can also happen if there's a liquid nitrogen or liquid helium spill in a place without sufficient ventilation. As happened to an acquaintance of mine. If that happens get out even if you don't feel any shortness of breath.
• randyrand 7y ago
  Do states have an legal obligation to prevent the spread of disease in prisons? It seems like prison does not provide enough space to stop people from dying from diseases. I wonder if you can sue.
• kgin 7y ago
  Alone, this doesn't show anything. But following this population for 3 weeks should tell us a alot.
• vrtx0 7y ago
  I posted the following comment on a very similar Reuters article about asymptomatic rates on an aircraft carrier 8 days ago (on a Friday): - - IMHO, this article is intentionally misleading. The incubation period is currently estimated to be 2-14 days (mean is 5.6 days per CDC, similar per WHO). The article doesn’t mention any dates or time frames, but does mention: ”Roughly 60 percent of the over 600 sailors who tested positive so far have not shown symptoms of COVID-19” — note how “so far” is ambiguous in that sentence. It also states, “The Navy’s testing of the entire 4,800-member crew of the aircraft carrier - which is about 94% complete...”, which seems to indicate nowhere near enough time has elapsed to draw any sort of conclusion. This paper [1] found that testing of all pregnancy patients in a hospital yielded 34% asymptomatic cases. That number drops to 8% “shortly after discharge”, and could be lower than 8% (Again, no timeframe is stated). [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589933320300483 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258993332... - - If you just s/navy/prisons/ and s/[navy figures]/[prison figures] (and forgive my oversimplification of RegEx captures), I think that comment works just as well here. At the risk of sounding paranoid, does this seem like a campaign of misinformation by omission? Or perhaps I’m being overly critical? The key issue I take with both articles is that they speculate a lot, but gloss over the fact that no timeframes are provided to determine what percentage could actually be asymptomatic and never develop symptoms vs. simply being pre-symptomatic at the time of testing. If the article were focused on how quickly this virus can spread in closed quarters, that would be one thing. But this rather lengthy article only has one sentence in the middle that even mentions asymptomatic cases eventually developing symptoms: “Some people diagnosed as asymptomatic when tested for the coronavirus, however, may go on to develop symptoms later, according to researchers.” Also, this article mentions testing asymptomatic prisoners (universal testing), but it doesn’t say why these specific prisons where chosen first. Perhaps some had at least one positive test result? If so, wouldn’t the close quarters explain most of the relatively high rates of asymptomatic positives reported, given the (initially) exponential curve of spread over time?
• codecamper 7y ago
  I've read there are over 10,000 strains of the virus, some more deadly than others! https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coronavirus-mutations-affect-deadliness-strains-chinese-study https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3080771/coro...
• Munky-Necan 7y ago
  The cruise ships were a great Petri dish and so far it is believed that asymptomatic patients comprise 15-20%, but more research is needed. https://www.niid.go.jp/niid/en/2019-ncov-e/9417-covid-dp-fe-02.html https://www.niid.go.jp/niid/en/2019-ncov-e/9417-covid-dp-fe-...
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  Two questions: 1. How good is this test? Maybe people have no symptoms because the test is wrong? 2. Is there some reason prisoners would deny having symptoms even if they did?
• kensai 7y ago
  Ioannidis was right all along.
• stevespang 7y ago
  "The United States has more people behind bars than any other nation, a total incarcerated population of nearly 2.3 million as of 2017 — nearly half of which is in state prisons. Smaller numbers are locked in federal prisons and local jails, which typically hold people for relatively short periods as they await trial." More than N.Korea, Myanmar, Communist China, Russia, you name it. "LAND OF THE FREE !"
• konschubert 7y ago
  One potential cause: We habe hints now (Charité Study) that previous infections with other, less harmful corona viruses may provide some degree of immunity (unconfirmed). Maybe one or more these other coronaviruses made rounds in this prison earlier this year?
• empath75 7y ago
  The nature of exponential growth is such that no matter when you test, 50% will have gotten it within the last doubling period. If it’s doubling every three days, half have caught it in the last 3 days, 75% in the last 6 days, 86% in the last 9 and so on. Given the long incubation period it makes sense that the vast majority are currently asymptomatic. I think that will be the case at every point during exponential growth, even if the ultimates fatality rate is quite high.
• covidSurvivor19 7y ago
  At this point only thing I can ask is, forget the shutdowns, when we'll we recognize the most viral thing about COVID was the histeria? Having lived closely through the swine flu, it was quite a bit worse, affected people under 60 which tend to be more socially active and no shutdowns were required. In fact one of the learnings/facts of that crisis were that masks are mostly useless to prevent contagion.
• lerpapoo 7y ago
  who cares, they are prisoners?
• briandear 7y ago
  > The numbers are the latest evidence to suggest that people who are asymptomatic — contagious but not physically sick — may be driving the spread of the virus That’s also suggesting that the fatality rate is nowhere near what we have been led to believe.
  • icebraining 7y ago
    What have we been led to believe?
• finolex1 7y ago
  To add another data point, Singapore has been testing foreign workers living in dormitories extensively, uncovering about 10,000 cases (about 80% of the country's total cases). These are relatively fit individuals between the ages of 20 and 40. However, the number of people in the ICU has remained remarkably consistent at about ~20 people in the past 10 days (Fingers crossed it remains that way). https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/46-more-cases-discharged-618-new-cases-of-covid-19-infection-confirmed https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/46-more-cases...
  • reddothomme 7y ago
    Many migrant workers in Singapore are the only breadwinners for their families back home in Bangladesh/India/Myanmar. One of the reasons the Singapore government has done extensive testing way beyond global standards is that many of these foreign workers are financially disincentivized to seek medical help the moment the first symptoms appear. The fact that Singapore's leader has publicly promised stable incomes for this affected group speaks volumes of the government. As a fellow south east asian, I am deathly afraid of the under-reporting and testing in other ASEAN countries. Singapore. A 2017 statista study of migrant worker populations in South East Asia (https://www.statista.com/statistics/711513/asean-number-of-migrant-workers-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/711513/asean-number-of-m...) shows that Malaysia and Thailand have much larger migrant worker populations than Singapore. Their living conditions are either on par or worse than the ones living in Singapore, yet there are apparently no Covid-19 clusters among migrant populations in other ASEAN countries. This is extremely alarming.
    • tim333 7y ago
      Thailand just yesterday reported some.
    • _-___________-_ 7y ago
      It would be extremely alarming if there were large numbers of deaths or hospital admissions occurring among the Singapore workers who are testing positive. Given that there are virtually none, the lack of testing in other ASEAN countries is hardly extremely alarming. A lack of data is less concerning if you wouldn't do anything differently if you had the data.
• leon1717 7y ago
  Whether a conspiracy or a fuck-up, the more weaknesses of democracy exposed by this virus, the more benefits the survivals will have in the long run. DT be like:"Kill all those intouchables, so I'll have another 4 years sitting on the bloody throne!"
• rsuelzer 7y ago
  Are these antibody or antigen tests? I am extremely suspect that the antibody tests being used are not delivering false positives. There was a study that showed 800,000 people in Los Angeles likely have antibodies. This does not make sense given that the ICU admissions did not even remotely track that of Northern Italy, which shared a similar population size. I suspect that these antibody tests are picking up a positive on another another Coronavirus.
• williesleg 7y ago
  Why are they testing the major news networks staff? What a waste!
• m3kw9 7y ago
  Yet elsewhere, hospitals are flooded and body bags piled.
  • thatsenough 7y ago
    Because people with the worst symptoms go to the hospital.
• OrgNet 7y ago
  Georgia's actions don't seem so dumb now...
• giardini 7y ago
  The Reuters article is not useful. It doesn't tell us the type of tests being done, and certainly says nothing about false positives. Like most other articles, this article is what I call "bullshit" but John Ionnidis calls: "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science": https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-da... Dr. Ioannidis on Why We Don't Have Reliable Data Surrounding COVID-19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUvWaxuurzQ&feature=emb_logo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUvWaxuurzQ&feature=emb_logo
  • djsumdog 7y ago
    I was doing stuff with the Johns Hopkins data and it has all kinds problems with it (not to mention the format is terrible; time series as columns?!). They also tacked on the retroactive New York cases to the end to the time series data. I did a post on it: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/fighting-with-the-data/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/fighting-with-the-data/
• puskavi 7y ago
  Mutation or less harmful strain?
• bouncycastle 7y ago
  Maybe the virus has evolved (through natural selection) to not to kill its hosts?
  • travbrack 7y ago
    People who die from the virus usually infect many others before death. There isn't really any selection pressure for keeping the host alive.
    • bouncycastle 7y ago
      Sure, but people who don't show symptoms can infect more! So in that case, the less potent one becomes more dominant, no? Meanwhile those who show symptoms are more likely to stop infecting as soon as they're isolated. That said, I'm not sure if there has been any different stands identified yet?
• luckydata 7y ago
  96% asymptomatic FOR NOW. We’ll see later.
  • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Will we though? Or more likely we’ll never hear about stats from these four state prisons again?
• ageofwant 7y ago
  An asymptomatic presentation would not include a chest x-ray. People with visible lung lesions and 60% oxygenation levels doe not exhibit any symptoms. The body's warning system is wired to C02 concentrations, and C02 gets evacuated so people report feeling fine while they have significant lung damage.
• ping_pong 7y ago
  Is there the possibility that these test results are wrong? The spread is far wider than what would be expected and that means that quarantining and contact tracing would be eseentially useless. But we've seen that both are very useful.
  • Ascetik 7y ago
    Look up Dr. Andrew Kaufman on Youtube. Medicamentum Authenticam.
• elihu 7y ago
  Some possibilities: there is widespread infection from a common source around the same time, and many of those "asymptomatic" inmates aren't going to stay that way; the test has false positives; the population of this prison is comprised mostly of people who tend to be asymptomatic carriers (for example, if most prisoners are in their early 20's); COVID-19 has a lot more asymptomatic carriers than we thought.
  • greedo 7y ago
    It's 4 prisons. The odds of there being one Typhoid Mary is unlikely.
  • ooobit2 7y ago
    We've had approximately 5 months and millions of transmissions for a virus with an RO of approx. 5-6 to mutate. I'm going to bet these people are not asymptomatic. I'm instead hedging my bet on them having a variant that causes cardiovascular damage, and they're a common cold or some other correlative health event away from a rapid decline in health.
  • redis_mlc 7y ago
    Or, you know, stop rejecting data that doesn't reinforce your view that the sky is falling. Because it isn't. Around half of SF has been exposed to corona at this point, yet the hospitals are basically empty and the governor gave away 500 ventilators last month because we don't need many. HN is about as accepting of scientific data as Fox news at this point. If you're one of the sheeple that believes the falsehood that corona is the end of the world, please ask me some questions. AMA.
    • AlexCoventry 7y ago
      Were the tests described in this article PCR- or antibody-based?
    • sadfklsjlkjwt 7y ago
      Where do get the idea that half of SF has been exposed?
• laufj 7y ago
  I'm curious how they determined if inmates were asymptomatic. If it was just asking, the symptoms may be under reported. In prison, you try and appear invincible, your survival depends on it, so I could imagine many people saying they are asymptomatic when they are not.
  • Meckin 7y ago
    So many assumptions, I highly doubt from my time being in prisons others would think... Oh man that guy has the cold.. He must be weak.
  • gjs278 7y ago
    lol. just lol. yes i’m sure they lied to the doctors one on one and were able to hide the coughing. maybe a little less intellectual curiosity would help you.
• atmosx 7y ago
  Same thing happened in a Greek “hot spot”, a prison for refugees. These places were build to host X number of inmates but in reality they host close to 50X. The population were infected at nearly 100% without symptoms.
• greendesk 7y ago
  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?
• DeathArrow 7y ago
  Is there a an explanation for why US has the highest prison population in the world?
• gridlockd 7y ago
  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.
• anticensor 7y ago
  They should be conscripted to the war front with symptom-suppressing medication, to prevent further contamination of inmates.
• unexaminedlife 7y ago
  I'm curious to know exactly what the science is behind the tests being performed currently. And how does a body typically fight a virus in the first place? This might sound amateurish (it is), but I have been picturing this virus and how our bodies are fighting it similar to how our bodies fight cancer. Tons of people who never end up with cancer diagnosis are constantly fighting off cancer cells, it's just that the capacity of their (relatively) healthy bodies exceeds the total # of cancer cells they need to fight off. Is it possible these tests have become too sensitive to where they're easily detecting the virus in seemingly healthy people?
• CryptoPunk 7y ago
  So it strikes me as possible that SARS-CoV-2 has a very high r value and lethality on par with flu viruses, but is killing a lot more people than flu viruses due to the lack of pre-existing immunity, combined with the rapid spread through the population claiming those most vulnerable to it all at once.
• freeflight 7y ago
  One of the more interesting differences between US prison populations and others is that smoking tobacco is way more prevalent: > Estimated smoking prevalence among inmates was approximately 50% in 2003–2004, compared to 21% among noninstitutionalized adults. [0] Which might play a major role in the spread and the actual severity of COVID-19 as French researchers are speculating that nicotine could be responsible for blocking the ACE2 receptors that COVID-19 uses to get into cells, which could explain why there's such a low incidence of tobacco smokers among patients, far below what should be expected [1]. There's nothing really concrete yet, for now they want to experiment with nicotine patches as treatment. But in that context, prison populations could make for an interesting control group: Maybe the prevalence of smoking is what keeps the virus less severe, due to reduced viral load reaching cells, and thus fewer carriers are symptomatic? [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5100810/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5100810/ [1] https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574 https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574
  • acconrad 7y ago
    I could see this making sense for tobacco users that don't smoke (e.g. chewing tobacco) but for people that smoke...I mean this is a respiratory illness. If you have compromised lungs this seems like it would be a nightmare for smokers. Are you concerned at all with the veracity of these claims?
    • freeflight 7y ago
      Not at all, I'm merely sharing information that might be interesting to this situation. Nowhere did I declare anything as fact, I even called something "speculation" by researchers when they don't consider it much one themselves: > There are however, sufficient scientific data to suggest that smoking protection is likely to be mediated by nicotine. SARS-CoV2 is known to use the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor for cell entry[14-16], and there is evidence that nicotine modulates ACE2 expression[17]which could in turn modulate the nicotinic acetyl choline receptor (manuscript submitted). We hypothesize that SARS-CoV2 might alter the control of the nicotine receptor by acetylcholine. This hypothesis may also explain why previous studies have found an association between smoking and Covid-19 severity[1, 9, 10]. As hospitals generally impose smoking cessation and nicotine withdrawal at the time of hospitalization, tobacco (nicotine) cessation could lead to the release of nicotine receptors, that are increased in smokers, and to a “rebound effect” responsible for the worsening of disease observed in hospitalized smokers. In that context, it really doesn't matter if this is a "respiratory illness", as nicotine can be applied in a number of ways, like patches. So even tho it might seem counter-intuitive, this could be part of a plausible explanation why smokers are so underrepresented among COVID-19 patients not just in France, but also in the US and China.
• Jemm 7y ago
  Reuter’s website is a shit show of moving popping, sliding gizmos. Makes it unreadable. I can’t imagine using a screen reader with that. It is like constantly rearranging the furniture while a blind person is in the store.
• barli 7y ago
  how is this related to hacking?
• ineedasername 7y ago
  News articles from around April 10 indicate that mass testing hadn't begun, or was just beginning (1 example here [0]) Reporting on 96% without symptoms is misleading without mentioning this: It gives the impression that the # of coronavirus infections could be up to 24x higher than the known positives cases. But symptoms can take 2-14 days to develop, meaning it is entirely too soon to tell if these are all asymptomatic cases, or merely pre-symptomatic. [0] https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200410/coronavirus-in-marion-prison-rsquoweve-never-experienced-anything-like-this-beforersquo https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200410/coronavirus-in-marion...
• ineedasername 7y ago
  I see a lot of people dismissing the shared air space & HVAC systems as possible vectors of infection besides close contact, but you have to remember a very important factor: Droplets exist in a continuum, not a binary of big == fall to ground, small == stay in the air. There's a range, and as they get smaller they stay in the air longer. Large droplets (>50 μm in diameter) settle on the ground almost immediately, and intermediate-sized droplets (10–50 μm) settle within several minutes. Small particles (<10 μm), including droplet nuclei from evaporated larger particles, can remain airborne for hours and are easily inhaled deep into the respiratory tract. [0] As such, while particles that stay aloft longer may not exists in sufficient quantities when it is just one infected, or a few infected inmates, that changes with the # of infected. With each infected inmate the concentrations of those small particles will increase. Let's say that normally the small particles exist at 3% the necessary quantity to infect another person. Then 33 inmates and staff get sick through close contact, and all of a sudden the concentrations of small droplets is sufficient to infect people. You hit a critical mass, and each additional infection only makes it worse, creating a rapid downward spiral. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4147198/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4147198/
• railing1650 7y ago
  So a nobel prize winning scientist giving his opinion is banned? Keep bending over buddy.. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23062531