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There are several downvoted comments here attempting to express the common idea that this virus has impacted different regions in very different ways. That obse

There are several downvoted comments here attempting to express the common idea that this virus has impacted different regions in very different ways. That observation alone is not an argument against there being only a single strain of this virus, but it is a valid observation in its own right. There are plenty of half-explanations that rely on cultural differences (hand shaking, masks), climate (heat, humidity), and various other factors, but so far no one has proven precisely what factors make the biggest differences. That piece of information is one of the most valuable things in the world right now and we do not have it. The other big factor is the different government responses, but these are all over the map. Specifically, the lack of a lockdown does not always equal a high rate of transmission, and the presence of a lockdown does not always result in a low enough rate of transmission to avoid a crisis. This is something we should all be curious about.

ekianjo 7y ago
> lockdown does not always result in a low enough rate of transmission to avoid a crisis. On that topic, Cuomo just declared that among the last batch of infected people in NY, more than 80% were apparently respecting the lockdown and staying at home and we have no idea how they were even contaminated. Puzzling.
- usaar333 7y ago
  That's a bit of a stretch of what he said (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocki...). * Hospitalizations, not cases and not infections. That skews old/out of the workforce. * The stat is that 66% live at home and 84% not working. * That doesn't mean they are 100% to the letter respecting social distancing. Nor does it mean they don't have housemates that aren't working. (That could be the case, but there's no data).
- aeyes 7y ago
  Do you have a link? With incubation periods of up to two weeks and cases without symptoms everything is possible.
- rb808 7y ago
  That makes sense to me. The lockdown has reduced people getting infected from being out. There are still people getting infected and that is people in institutions (care homes, prisons, hospitals) and people in houses. Ie if one person in a house of 4 gets the virus and passes it on to the rest of the family 75% of people infected were staying at home.
- gpapilion 7y ago
  Generally lockdown in the US has been pretty loose. Many people have left their homes, and had the opportunity to be exposed. I also think there is a likelihood that between presymptomatic/asymptomatic transmission, and the possibility of 2 week incubation this seems like a nightmare to track transmission. A friend who had SARS-cov2 was sick for 30+ days. So it’s not clear to me that a mild infection would be over in 14 days.
  - stronglikedan 7y ago
    > Generally lockdown in the US has been pretty loose. I'd like to see the same study done outside of NY, because the NY lockdown was one of the most stringent in the country, from what I've read.
    - usaar333 7y ago
      Was it? It reads about the same as the Bay Area's, possibly even a bit looser.
  - kl4m 7y ago
    If it's a mild infection, by definition, the immune system has squashed it. If it didn't, the virus would take hold; it's not a latent viral infection like herpes. Edit: okay, okay, I didn't specify "a mild infection that stays mild and goes away". We know complications can arise and the infection can progress into severe symptoms. Plenty of examples.
    - smaddox 7y ago
      The evidence does not support this viewpoint. Also, things are complicated by the evidence that the worst symptoms are caused by cytokine storm, i.e. an auto-immune response.
      - kl4m 7y ago
        Which evidence? Are you referring to the "lag" in immune response in the initial stage of infection?
- ebiester 7y ago
  I've worried about apartments for that reason. If air circulation is shared, wouldn't it be possible to transmit from apartment to apartment? I think it would be worth a test, at least.
  - Vysero 7y ago
    No, the virus doesn't just float around in the air, at least, not for any appreciable amount of time. It's much more likely that people in these apartments are touching the same elevator buttons and then wiping their eyes and contracting the virus.
    - tgflynn 7y ago
      > No, the virus doesn't just float around in the air I'd be interested in any references you can point to that explain why that doesn't happen. A priori I would expect virus particles to be able to remain airborne indefinitely. Viruses are very small, much smaller than pollen grains that I believe are well known to remain airborne over long distances so I would think Brownian motion from collisions with air molecules would suffice to keep them aloft.
    - markbnj 7y ago
      > No, the virus doesn't just float around in the air, at least, not for any appreciable amount of time. Here is a pretty approachable summary of how transmission happens that contains a review of some specific cases where airflow was critical to transmitting the infection: https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-.... None of these occurred in isolated spaces connected by shared ventilation but I would be cautious about saying flatly that it can't happen.
      - Vysero 7y ago
        I didn't say flatly that it can't happen. I said it can't happen at any appreciable distance. Obviously, if someone sneezes in your mouth your going to get sick.
- anoraca 7y ago
  Reference: "Preliminary data submitted by 113 hospitals over the last three days show most new admissions have mostly been staying home; they're predominantly from the downstate area (57 percent NYC, 18 percent Long Island) and people of color. Most of them are older and non-essential employees; 66 percent were admitted from their own residences. Of the new New York City hospitalizations, 90 percent have not been traveling by car service, personal automobile, mass transit or even walking around. If they've been working, they've been doing it from home and apparently weren't going out much, the governor said." https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/subway-shutdown-begins-infection-rates-spike-outside-new-york-amid-devastating-toll-at-home/2404295/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/subway-shutdown-...
  - fpoling 7y ago
    In Wuhan the infection rate went down only when they started to place any person who required quarantine to separated buildings. This points out that perhaps transmission across apartment building is significant.
  - abrowne 7y ago
    I wonder about other people in their households, who may be going outside more or even working.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  News alert: Americans lie and/or are misinformed on surveys.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    There's a strong incentive, if you're going in to hospital with Covid19, to lie. They ask "were you sheltering in place?" and you'd think "if I answer no, will I be denied care?". That's going to make survey almost useless, a secondary survey (eg speak to neighbors) might be better but would still be relatively poor.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  That's not what the numbers meant. The majority were admitted from home to the hospital, i.e., they were not institutionalized or homeless.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  That data is poorly framed. I have no idea why he's surprised. This is the one I've seen people cite: https://i.imgur.com/b9RAr8g.jpg https://i.imgur.com/b9RAr8g.jpg Cuomo: > 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us...This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home...We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home. That chart is titled "Source of Admission," not "Was supposed to be staying home." Someone providing critical services who woke up with a fever and got tested would fall under "home." There's also nothing to compare it to. What percent of people are in those circumstances? To what I think he misread and was surprised by, the idea that most people getting hospitalized were sheltering in-place (a stat I haven't seen), with how many New Yorkers who have been exposed to SARS-CoV2, you'd expect essential workers who are going out every day to be more likely to be immune at this point, those sheltering in place aren't. More people are sheltering in-place than out working, they're less likely to have been exposed, so I wouldn't be surprised to see more of them infected. But again, that's not the data Cuomo was talking about with "66%."
- tedmcory77 7y ago
  Ventilation systems like what happened in South Korea?
chpmrc 7y ago
I wasn't sure about publishing this but I took some time to go over Worldometers' data and associate a lockdown type to each country in the EU (+ a few more countries). There doesn't seem to be a strong correlation between how strict the lockdown is and the total cases per million people: https://www.notion.so/Lockdown-data-361fe56821d046a787d765355a097a1a https://www.notion.so/Lockdown-data-361fe56821d046a787d76535.... So, yeah, I completely agree with you. We should definitely try to find out what's going on. I'm writing this because I think HN is one of the very few communities able to properly discuss ideas with hard science and facts. So any observation, correction, criticism etc. is more than welcome!
- mistermann 7y ago
  > I'm writing this because I think HN is one of the very few communities able to properly discuss ideas with hard science and facts. I propose that if you pay very close attention to the nature of discussions, over a long period of time, across a broad spectrum of differing topics, you may notice that the ability to "discuss ideas with hard science and facts" varies greatly according to the topic. Or to be more specific...when the topic involves issues that are "political or values oriented", as this one does, the discussion and thinking styles exhibited in the comments much more resembles that which you would find within less "logically capable" communities.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    I couldn’t agree more. The COVID discussions have been the single most frustrating experience for me on HN since I joined. Ever single comment I’ve made downvoted, even accused of contributing to millions of deaths (an account which was thankfully banned for making the remark). It’s only in the last week or two that it’s started to become remotely possible to have intellectual discussions on COVID, but it’s still overwhelmingly politicized and unscientific.
    - clairity 7y ago
      agreed, it's been hard having discerning discussions about this disease. the tide has been turning though in the last few weeks as the hysteria wanes.
acqq 7y ago
> so far no one has proven precisely what factors make the biggest differences. The problem is in the question itself. Behind it is an expectation that there is just a tiny number of "magic spells" or "a trick" that would "solve" the problem, and that anything else is unnecessary. The reality is the opposite: all the countries, and where the regulation was weaker, the people on their own, with the time attempted with different levels of success to protect themselves. They all did many things, many real people on many different levels, and with many not identical results. But it's much more complex than the assumption behind the question. For example, people like to quote Sweden as some "magical other way country" whereas the universities and upper schools were shut down there too, it still has more deaths per capita than the US, the rate of new confirmed cases is not sinking etc. Also, those who claim that there is an "impact" which "is different" typically don't try to fairly compare the actual impacts which are eventually much more similar when compared properly than implied in such a claim with no correct comparison done. That is, a lot of such "arguments" are frauds which depend on those hearing it not willing or being able to look at the data properly. I worked in finance for years, and I can tell you: if those who promote various claims in the news, media and social media would trade while ignoring so much data which is here so obviously available to find and compare, like they do in their claims, they would lose all their money in a blink of an eye. I don't know how it would be possible to organize that, but if people who claim bullsh.t would have to invest some money behind their claims, and lose it if their claims would be proven wrong, we'd have much less insane conversations. Just looking at the raw data and comparing can show you that a lot of claims floating around are plainly and completely false. One page that allows magnificently easy comparison is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Additionally, one should search for the original sources of the information for different countries, and compare the numbers based on that additional information. I can especially recommend translate.google.com for an amazingly efficient way to read some information from the original sources.
ghaff 7y ago
I strongly suspect when we're through all this, two things will probably be true: -- We will probably be able to make some statements about what practices seem to have various effects for better or worse and what environmental factors (like density and isolation) tilt the results in one direction or another -- There will remain debate over what we should have done given the benefit of perfect hindsight -- However, we're also going to conclude that some of the wide variation in outcomes can best be described as luck of the draw
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  I doubt our hindsight will be perfect. 9/11 happened in broad daylight at 9 in the morning, in two major cities, yet it is almost impossible to suss out what actually happened that day based on the current, publicly available data. SARS-CoV 2 is probably going to get filed away into the "suspicious mystery" drawer, right next to JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, DB Cooper, MH370 et al.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    There's a lot of political effort, it seems, going in to ensuring the truth is hidden from the demos. In part this can be considered necessary - some people need lying to in order to keep them compliant and save lives, but largely is about covering up errors of judgement, and decisions that have purposefully been made against population-health advice. That effect is reduced over time, but doesn't d disappear entirely; if a politician -- or political appointee -- is in charge of the output of a scientific advisory group then their filtering will likely obscure content forever.

ekianjo 7y ago

> lockdown does not always result in a low enough rate of transmission to avoid a crisis. On that topic, Cuomo just declared that among the last batch of infected people in NY, more than 80% were apparently respecting the lockdown and staying at home and we have no idea how they were even contaminated. Puzzling.

usaar333 7y ago
That's a bit of a stretch of what he said (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocki...). * Hospitalizations, not cases and not infections. That skews old/out of the workforce. * The stat is that 66% live at home and 84% not working. * That doesn't mean they are 100% to the letter respecting social distancing. Nor does it mean they don't have housemates that aren't working. (That could be the case, but there's no data).
aeyes 7y ago
Do you have a link? With incubation periods of up to two weeks and cases without symptoms everything is possible.
rb808 7y ago
That makes sense to me. The lockdown has reduced people getting infected from being out. There are still people getting infected and that is people in institutions (care homes, prisons, hospitals) and people in houses. Ie if one person in a house of 4 gets the virus and passes it on to the rest of the family 75% of people infected were staying at home.
gpapilion 7y ago
Generally lockdown in the US has been pretty loose. Many people have left their homes, and had the opportunity to be exposed. I also think there is a likelihood that between presymptomatic/asymptomatic transmission, and the possibility of 2 week incubation this seems like a nightmare to track transmission. A friend who had SARS-cov2 was sick for 30+ days. So it’s not clear to me that a mild infection would be over in 14 days.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  > Generally lockdown in the US has been pretty loose. I'd like to see the same study done outside of NY, because the NY lockdown was one of the most stringent in the country, from what I've read.
  - usaar333 7y ago
    Was it? It reads about the same as the Bay Area's, possibly even a bit looser.
- kl4m 7y ago
  If it's a mild infection, by definition, the immune system has squashed it. If it didn't, the virus would take hold; it's not a latent viral infection like herpes. Edit: okay, okay, I didn't specify "a mild infection that stays mild and goes away". We know complications can arise and the infection can progress into severe symptoms. Plenty of examples.
  - smaddox 7y ago
    The evidence does not support this viewpoint. Also, things are complicated by the evidence that the worst symptoms are caused by cytokine storm, i.e. an auto-immune response.
    - kl4m 7y ago
      Which evidence? Are you referring to the "lag" in immune response in the initial stage of infection?
ebiester 7y ago
I've worried about apartments for that reason. If air circulation is shared, wouldn't it be possible to transmit from apartment to apartment? I think it would be worth a test, at least.
- Vysero 7y ago
  No, the virus doesn't just float around in the air, at least, not for any appreciable amount of time. It's much more likely that people in these apartments are touching the same elevator buttons and then wiping their eyes and contracting the virus.
  - tgflynn 7y ago
    > No, the virus doesn't just float around in the air I'd be interested in any references you can point to that explain why that doesn't happen. A priori I would expect virus particles to be able to remain airborne indefinitely. Viruses are very small, much smaller than pollen grains that I believe are well known to remain airborne over long distances so I would think Brownian motion from collisions with air molecules would suffice to keep them aloft.
  - markbnj 7y ago
    > No, the virus doesn't just float around in the air, at least, not for any appreciable amount of time. Here is a pretty approachable summary of how transmission happens that contains a review of some specific cases where airflow was critical to transmitting the infection: https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them https://erinbromage.wixsite.com/covid19/post/the-risks-know-.... None of these occurred in isolated spaces connected by shared ventilation but I would be cautious about saying flatly that it can't happen.
    - Vysero 7y ago
      I didn't say flatly that it can't happen. I said it can't happen at any appreciable distance. Obviously, if someone sneezes in your mouth your going to get sick.
anoraca 7y ago
Reference: "Preliminary data submitted by 113 hospitals over the last three days show most new admissions have mostly been staying home; they're predominantly from the downstate area (57 percent NYC, 18 percent Long Island) and people of color. Most of them are older and non-essential employees; 66 percent were admitted from their own residences. Of the new New York City hospitalizations, 90 percent have not been traveling by car service, personal automobile, mass transit or even walking around. If they've been working, they've been doing it from home and apparently weren't going out much, the governor said." https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/subway-shutdown-begins-infection-rates-spike-outside-new-york-amid-devastating-toll-at-home/2404295/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/subway-shutdown-...
- fpoling 7y ago
  In Wuhan the infection rate went down only when they started to place any person who required quarantine to separated buildings. This points out that perhaps transmission across apartment building is significant.
- abrowne 7y ago
  I wonder about other people in their households, who may be going outside more or even working.
dragontamer 7y ago
News alert: Americans lie and/or are misinformed on surveys.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  There's a strong incentive, if you're going in to hospital with Covid19, to lie. They ask "were you sheltering in place?" and you'd think "if I answer no, will I be denied care?". That's going to make survey almost useless, a secondary survey (eg speak to neighbors) might be better but would still be relatively poor.
umanwizard 7y ago
That's not what the numbers meant. The majority were admitted from home to the hospital, i.e., they were not institutionalized or homeless.
dehrmann 7y ago
That data is poorly framed. I have no idea why he's surprised. This is the one I've seen people cite: https://i.imgur.com/b9RAr8g.jpg https://i.imgur.com/b9RAr8g.jpg Cuomo: > 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us...This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home...We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home. That chart is titled "Source of Admission," not "Was supposed to be staying home." Someone providing critical services who woke up with a fever and got tested would fall under "home." There's also nothing to compare it to. What percent of people are in those circumstances? To what I think he misread and was surprised by, the idea that most people getting hospitalized were sheltering in-place (a stat I haven't seen), with how many New Yorkers who have been exposed to SARS-CoV2, you'd expect essential workers who are going out every day to be more likely to be immune at this point, those sheltering in place aren't. More people are sheltering in-place than out working, they're less likely to have been exposed, so I wouldn't be surprised to see more of them infected. But again, that's not the data Cuomo was talking about with "66%."
tedmcory77 7y ago
Ventilation systems like what happened in South Korea?

chpmrc 7y ago

I wasn't sure about publishing this but I took some time to go over Worldometers' data and associate a lockdown type to each country in the EU (+ a few more countries). There doesn't seem to be a strong correlation between how strict the lockdown is and the total cases per million people: https://www.notion.so/Lockdown-data-361fe56821d046a787d765355a097a1a https://www.notion.so/Lockdown-data-361fe56821d046a787d76535.... So, yeah, I completely agree with you. We should definitely try to find out what's going on. I'm writing this because I think HN is one of the very few communities able to properly discuss ideas with hard science and facts. So any observation, correction, criticism etc. is more than welcome!

mistermann 7y ago
> I'm writing this because I think HN is one of the very few communities able to properly discuss ideas with hard science and facts. I propose that if you pay very close attention to the nature of discussions, over a long period of time, across a broad spectrum of differing topics, you may notice that the ability to "discuss ideas with hard science and facts" varies greatly according to the topic. Or to be more specific...when the topic involves issues that are "political or values oriented", as this one does, the discussion and thinking styles exhibited in the comments much more resembles that which you would find within less "logically capable" communities.
- zaroth 7y ago
  I couldn’t agree more. The COVID discussions have been the single most frustrating experience for me on HN since I joined. Ever single comment I’ve made downvoted, even accused of contributing to millions of deaths (an account which was thankfully banned for making the remark). It’s only in the last week or two that it’s started to become remotely possible to have intellectual discussions on COVID, but it’s still overwhelmingly politicized and unscientific.
  - clairity 7y ago
    agreed, it's been hard having discerning discussions about this disease. the tide has been turning though in the last few weeks as the hysteria wanes.

acqq 7y ago

> so far no one has proven precisely what factors make the biggest differences. The problem is in the question itself. Behind it is an expectation that there is just a tiny number of "magic spells" or "a trick" that would "solve" the problem, and that anything else is unnecessary. The reality is the opposite: all the countries, and where the regulation was weaker, the people on their own, with the time attempted with different levels of success to protect themselves. They all did many things, many real people on many different levels, and with many not identical results. But it's much more complex than the assumption behind the question. For example, people like to quote Sweden as some "magical other way country" whereas the universities and upper schools were shut down there too, it still has more deaths per capita than the US, the rate of new confirmed cases is not sinking etc. Also, those who claim that there is an "impact" which "is different" typically don't try to fairly compare the actual impacts which are eventually much more similar when compared properly than implied in such a claim with no correct comparison done. That is, a lot of such "arguments" are frauds which depend on those hearing it not willing or being able to look at the data properly. I worked in finance for years, and I can tell you: if those who promote various claims in the news, media and social media would trade while ignoring so much data which is here so obviously available to find and compare, like they do in their claims, they would lose all their money in a blink of an eye. I don't know how it would be possible to organize that, but if people who claim bullsh.t would have to invest some money behind their claims, and lose it if their claims would be proven wrong, we'd have much less insane conversations. Just looking at the raw data and comparing can show you that a lot of claims floating around are plainly and completely false. One page that allows magnificently easy comparison is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ Additionally, one should search for the original sources of the information for different countries, and compare the numbers based on that additional information. I can especially recommend translate.google.com for an amazingly efficient way to read some information from the original sources.

ghaff 7y ago

I strongly suspect when we're through all this, two things will probably be true: -- We will probably be able to make some statements about what practices seem to have various effects for better or worse and what environmental factors (like density and isolation) tilt the results in one direction or another -- There will remain debate over what we should have done given the benefit of perfect hindsight -- However, we're also going to conclude that some of the wide variation in outcomes can best be described as luck of the draw

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
I doubt our hindsight will be perfect. 9/11 happened in broad daylight at 9 in the morning, in two major cities, yet it is almost impossible to suss out what actually happened that day based on the current, publicly available data. SARS-CoV 2 is probably going to get filed away into the "suspicious mystery" drawer, right next to JFK, Jimmy Hoffa, DB Cooper, MH370 et al.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  There's a lot of political effort, it seems, going in to ensuring the truth is hidden from the demos. In part this can be considered necessary - some people need lying to in order to keep them compliant and save lives, but largely is about covering up errors of judgement, and decisions that have purposefully been made against population-health advice. That effect is reduced over time, but doesn't d disappear entirely; if a politician -- or political appointee -- is in charge of the output of a scientific advisory group then their filtering will likely obscure content forever.