10 ms·

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 popul

• Retric 6y ago
  Covid-19 fatalities takes up to 2 months after infection, symptoms have a median of just over 5 days from first exposure.
  • hartator 6y ago
    Median of 10 days though.
    • Retric 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
    Is this the new narrative/talking point to continue shutdowns? Because pretty sure the average time to symptoms was reported to be much (10X) lower
    • lurquer 6y ago
      There's no need to be snarky. It may take years for a person to know if covid will kill them. There is growing evidence that every person who has tested positive will eventually die. I wouldn't be surprised if we discover asymptomatic victims finally succombing to the disease 10, 15, maybe 20 years down the road.
      • dumbfounder 6y ago
        There is definitely a lot of evidence that people who test positive will eventually die. It might take 50-100 years, and they might die of something else, but yes they will definitely die. Plenty of evidence of that. But seriously, what is this evidence you speak of?
        • lurquer 6y ago
          Evidence?! My grandma tested positive two months ago. They CLAIMED she recovered. But. two days ago she had a stroke while getting her chemo treatment for pancreatic cancer. On her 97th birthday no less. If only she had kept her mask on instead of briefly taking it off to blow out the candles. THtis virus is s killer, and you can downvote me all you want, but this is NOT the flu and if estimates of deaths found on Hacker News two months ago seem hysterically absurd, it's only becaue we've yet to count the hundred of throusnds dead people undiscovered in their apartments and homes.
          • Tepix 6y ago
            I find your joke to be in poor taste.
      • riskneutral 6y ago
        Wow. Just wow.
  • not_a_moth 6y ago
    Only if you develop a severe case in the first place, which you would know about within 2 weeks average. Incubation on average is 3-5 days, severe symptoms then start in the second week. After you're hospitalized, yes you might or might not then have a month long battle for survival.
  • GuB-42 6y ago
    Keyword "up to". The most common fatal case seems to be roughly: 1 week without symptoms, 1 week of mild symptoms, 1 week of severe symptoms, death. That's 3 weeks. In rare (1/10000) cases, incubation time can reach 14 days, that's where the 14 days quarantine recommendation comes from. But the median is closer to 5 days. Time to death can be much longer, the virus can cause all sorts of damage to the body, including secondary infections. And if the patient is strong enough to resist the primary infection but not enough to recover, it can take a long time.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • newacct583 6y ago
      > In rare (1/10000) cases, incubation time can reach 14 days What's the cite for that number? I'd be very suspicious of anything claiming a 5-significant-figure result in a disease that has only (heh) 3M known cases. In fact there's significant supposition that the incubation time and asymptomatic contagious state can last much longer than originally guessed. This would go a long way to explaining the difficulty of detecting early outbreaks (basically nowhere in the world was able to contain before community spread was happening) and the anomalously low rate of new case decline post-peak. But there's no good science on this, and probably won't be in time for it to be useful.
      • Retric 6y ago
        South Korea had a very rapid decline post peak. 1062 cases on 2/29 to 114 cases on 3/11. With an average of just under 10 cases per day for the last week. Also, the number I have seen was ~1% of cases where asymptotic for 14 days. https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/09/coronavirus-incubation-period...
        • _-___________-_ 6y ago
          Do note that rapid decline in the day-to-day increase of case numbers is not necessarily indicative of rapid decline in transmission rate. Transmission rate could have declined gradually over the course of a week or more, and the rapid decline in day-to-day increase of case numbers could have just been detection catching up with existing infections.
• MrPatan 6y ago
  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?
  • gridlockd 6y ago
    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?
• Symmetry 6y ago
  SARS, MERS, and now SARS-2 are all known for super-spreader events where occasionally one person just infects a ton of other people. And we know from testing that the amount of live virus in a person's phlegm can vary by many orders of magnitude so I guess that isn't surprising. There are a lot of people who infect just one other person but the overall R(effective) is substantially driven by the long tail.
• Gibbon1 6y ago
  I repeatedly point this out. There was the church choir practice where 45 out of 60 people were infected within what two hours? There is also a Korean call center where about 2/3 of the people in an open office were infected. I've repeatedly linked to CDC study that estimates r0 in Wuhan before lockdown at between 3.8 and 8.7. Median 5.8. Take away: Completely avoid being indoors with large groups of people.
  • suzzer99 6y ago
    Especially if they're singing or talking non-stop.
  • gridlockd 6y ago
    That's also shown in the recent outbreak in Singapore - almost all of the cases are migrant workers housed in tightly packed dormitories.
• danieltillett 6y ago
  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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7078829/ 2. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/12/how-would-a-search-for-a-natural-attenuated-sars-cov-2-strain-work-in-practice/ https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/12/how-would-a-search-for-a...
  • cameldrv 6y ago
    I think that. depending on the air conditioning system, it might be quite a bit worse. The density of people is huge, air flows freely between cells, prisoners eat packed together at communal tables. I bet R is like 10-20.
    • danieltillett 6y ago
      On the Diamond Princess it was about around 14. I would expect prisons to be much the same.
      • sampsonitify 6y ago
        Do you know how that broke down by room? Is there data on that? I wanted to make a map by room of infections, because that data point should be useful, e.g. was the rate higher or lower in rooms with outside access? Crew versus passengers? I just don't know of it already exists, or how to source the data.
        • danieltillett 6y ago
          We seemed to have early fluffed the data out of the Diamond Princess. We aren’t even tracking how many people died - it seems once everyone got off the ship all interest in it was lost.
    • 6y ago
• darkerside 6y ago
  I'm looking for this in the article and not seeing mention of a specific window. Can you help me find what you're referring to?
  • icegreentea2 6y ago
    The sensitivity of PCR tests to SAR-COV-2 varies over time from time to infection. I think the the OP is overestimating how narrow this window is though. It's not like you need to test within a few days or a week to be positive - it's just that viral load is maximum for only a few days (roughly the +/-3 days around onset of symptoms). Even after the viral load in the upper respiratory tract drops off, there's still lots of virus around. You'll likely test positive -1/+2 weeks around onset of symptoms.
    • darkerside 6y ago
      Depending on the nature of the virus and how the PCR test works with it, I couldn't rule out that it could be much longer than that. Virii are not my area, but there are bacterial diseases that result in positive PCR years after infection. Disclaimer: microbiology is also not my area.
      • icegreentea2 6y ago
        Yes, it all depends on how the agent infects the body and how the immune system is able to clear it. Our belief (based on how other coronaviruses behave) is that the body is pretty good at clearing it out, and that the virus doesn't really have a mechanism for forming a reservoir within the body. The expectation is that PCR negative is roughly correlated with fighting off the disease in the short term, and basically perfectly correlated in the long term.
    • djsumdog 6y ago
      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.
• laufj 6y ago
  We don't know if infection provides immunity, so they could be repeat infections, or even viruses that never cleared.
  • adwi 6y ago
    Why is this being downvoted? Yesterday the World Health Organization said: "There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection." https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/25/844939777/no-evidence-that-recovered-covid-19-patients-are-immune-who-says https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
• andrei_says_ 6y ago
  Are these tests covid-19 specific or are they based on IgM/IgG? > The results of the tests for IgG, IgA, and IgM levels are usually evaluated together. Abnormal test results typically indicate that there is something affecting the immune system and suggest the need for further testing. Immunoglobulins testing is not diagnostic but can be a strong indicator of a disease or condition. There are a number of conditions that are associated with increased and decreased immunoglobulins.
• qznc 6y ago
  We will also see if they are asymptomatic or presymptomatic.
• misja111 6y ago
  >> .. that apparently everyone was in the specific window where they test positive for the virus. The data comes from 4 prisons. It is theoretically possible that all 4 of them happened to be in the same window after an initial infection, but it doesn't seem very likely. I guess the only way to be sure is to do follow up tests every week or so, hopefully that will happen.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ineedasername 6y ago
  The CFR will be an interesting (though tragic) data point, but I wouldn't generalize too much from it. The demographics of the inmates are probably not representative, and the health care that prisoners receive is absolutely not of the same quality that civilians may receive. The Princess cruise was a good indicator of CFR for a specific demographic range when they tested early, often, and had access to quality care. If the CFR of this prison will tell us anything, it will be a counterpoint to such information showing what happens when quality of care is greatly diminished.