8 ms·

people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid. we dont see those numbers here -- if it was widespread in feb, what caused the discre

people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid. we dont see those numbers here -- if it was widespread in feb, what caused the discrepancy?

weaksauce 6y ago
different strains?
- elorant 6y ago
  Viruses tend to become less lethal as time passes, not more.
  - risaacs99 6y ago
    I keep reading people asserting this, and I assume it's because we believe that a virus that becomes less lethal would have an evolutionary advantage. But, wouldn't lengthening the incubation period also be a successful evolutionary strategy regardless of lethality? It seems to me that there are many possible strategies that a mutating virus might gain an advantage and we shouldn't just assume that the only one that they would use would be to become more mild. Luckily, sars-cov-2 seems relatively stable.
    - saiya-jin 6y ago
      'Tend to' doesn't mean some conscious, directed effort. On large enough scale, this is generally the more probable direction, and that's about it. Its truly random by nature. It can very well go the other way as with 1918 'spanish' flu. Or it can change in ways that won't affect overall mortality much.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        > On large enough scale, this is generally the more probable direction, and that's about it. Its truly random by nature. If it's truly random it wouldn't be directional, yeah?
        jjjensen90 6y ago
        The genetic mutations are random, the survival of a lineage based on pressures and fitness can be "directional" by the human definition.
      - Filligree 6y ago
        It's interesting you should mention the 1918 flu. That one had two waves, the first one less lethal... Evolution is random, add you say, but that's not quite what happened. It was in the middle of world war 1. Soldiers were infected, and the ones that became the most ill were sent home to recuperate, or die. Either way they spread the virus better than the ones who weren't as ill, and who stayed in the field. So the usual evolutionary pressure was upside down here.
    - Natsu 6y ago
      You're neglecting the other side of things in that analysis. The more successful deadly viruses tend to eliminate their victims, so the surviving population has a higher concentration of people who are resistant or immune to it, including those who acquire immunity after being exposed to the virus.
    - guscost 6y ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ > Trade-offs between different components of parasite fitness provide the dominant conceptual framework for understanding the adaptive evolution of virulence (Alizon et al. 2009). ... > By far, the most widely studied trade-off involves transmission and virulence (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996; Alizon et al. 2009). Transmission and virulence are linked by within-host replication: increasing parasite abundance increases the likelihood of transmission, but also increases the likelihood of host death; mathematically, this assumption can be formalized by making transmission rate β an increasing function of parasite-induced mortality rate ν. Nearly all of the literature we summarize below assumes this trade-off. However, another potential trade-off suggested by an examination of R0 involves virulence and recovery rate (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996). This trade-off is also mediated by replication rate, with high abundance increasing the likelihood of host death, but also decreasing the likelihood of the host clearing the infection (Antia et al. 1994); mathematically, this assumption makes recovery rate γ a decreasing function of parasite-induced mortality rate ν.
- xyhopguy 6y ago
  afaik there havent we havent observed major functional mutations in the virus
  - weaksauce 6y ago
    The Strain that was seen in ny was more deadly than the strain seen on the west coast. And I’m not sure how many others are out there.
    - xyhopguy 6y ago
      they have a different lineage, but as I stated previously, no major functional mutations were observed.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      We don't yet know why (or even if) more people died in New York than on the west coast, per capita. We certainly cannot yet attribute it to a different strain.
    - christkv 6y ago
      You want to use the word isolate. The SARS2 virus is a strain of the original SARS virus I think
  - sanxiyn 6y ago
    We haven't confirmed functional mutations. One of currently known mutations (D614G being a prime suspect) can be functional and we can't rule out the possibility.
jrockway 6y ago
I guess we need to know the total number of cases to figure out what the deaths mean, and until everyone has gotten an antibody test, we can't know that total number. To make the numbers work for the "weird cold" in early February case, I guess we have to work backwards. Assume that when we went into lockdown was the actual peak, 8 million people in New York City had COVID-19. That means that there is one death for every 500 cases. Then we have to pick a reproduction rate, which I have no idea how to pick, so I'll say that it increases by 1.5x every day (so on day one you have x cases, then on day 2 you have x + 1.5x, then on day 3 you have x + 1.5x + (1.5)^2x, etc. Going back a month from March 20 (which is approximately 30 days, and when a lot of people report their "weird cold"), that would mean we'd expect around 8 million / 383500 = 20 cases on Feb. 20. With 1 death per 500 cases, you'd have 0 deaths at that level. I know I've pulled these numbers out of my nether region and so they are likely very wrong. But with some back-of-the-envelope math, I think we can have some sick people in February without a lot of deaths. Obviously my 8 million total cases in NYC number is too high, and the 20 cases on 2/20 is too low for me and my friends to be those cases. But that exponential can be tweaked to make something plausible. If we make it 1.2 instead of 1.5, then we should have had about 7000 cases on 2/20, and that means around 14 deaths. That seems quite plausible to me. So I dunno. There was a weird cold. It's weird. It could mean anything. I signed up to get an antibody test. 1 test is not data, but it will be very interesting to see the results.
- xyhopguy 6y ago
  That's a great point although obviously its very hard to estimate something that has a horizon of atleast a month. the bay area did shut down quite a bit earlier, it could be that the lack of deaths is simply due to a better response.
- not2b 6y ago
  1 out of 421 NYC residents have died, based on today's numbers, and recent serological tests estimated that 20% of residents were exposed. If that's right, then the death rate would be about 1/84, or about 1.2%. But I've seen other claims that the exposure rate in NYC is higher, which would give a lower fatality rate.
MarkusQ 6y ago
> people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid Source? I can only get a rate that high by taking the highest death count I can find (which involves extrapolations to attribute deaths to Covid-19) for New York State and dividing it by the population of New York City (which is clearly invalid).
- xyhopguy 6y ago
  hm, care to explain more? that's exactly how I think about it. Total deaths in NYC attributable to covid (~20k) over the total population (8.5M) = ~.25%. In my mind this is a very easy lower bound to estimate, what am I missing here? In anycase, even a rate of ~.1% would be absurd given ~20% of people are testing positive by antibody tests.
  - MarkusQ 6y ago
    Actually, I was asking <i>you</i> to explain, or at least give your source. I subsequently found what I believe you are working from here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page which does specify New York City (as opposed to New York State) so both the numerator and denominator refer to the same thing. Interestingly, they appear to be using a larger denominator than your 8.5 million (NYC metro vs. NYC proper perhaps?) and get a rate of 0.175% = 175.66/100,000, eg in the "citywide total" line of https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/by-age.csv https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/by...). But this is at least closer to your figure than I was able to get previously.
    - xyhopguy 6y ago
      whoops, I presumed you were asking about the math. My source is nytimes which pulls from the dataset you linked. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-deaths-confirmed-probable-daily-05102020.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d... Specifically has numbers for NYC. You can sum the boroughs or use the total listed below. Using confirmed by pcr cases you get ~15k/8.6 = ~.175% as you said. Using probable excess deaths adds an extra 5k deaths, hence ~.25%
013a 6y ago
While it's harsh to say: People die every day. The CDC officially states that, on average, ~880 people per 100,000 die every year in the United States (in 2017). Extrapolating that to NYC, this means that the city can expect to loose about 0.1% of its population every year (possibly even more; I imagine some forms of death are more prevalent in large cities. Possibly less; healthcare is better). Yes, losing 2x+ the annual number in one quarter should be noticed. But, maybe the virus evolved additional transmissibility over time, or maybe it evolved to be a little more deadly. It simply seems less likely that this virus was first noticed in November, by China, yet it didn't hit major urban areas in the rest of the world for another four months. We're too interconnected as a species; nearly half a million people came to the US from China alone, after COVID-19 was classified there [1]. It feels more likely that people have been getting it, and dying from it, well before March; these cases were just simply miscategorized as the flu. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...

people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid. we dont see those numbers here -- if it was widespread in feb, what caused the discrepancy?

weaksauce 6y ago

different strains?

elorant 6y ago
Viruses tend to become less lethal as time passes, not more.
- risaacs99 6y ago
  I keep reading people asserting this, and I assume it's because we believe that a virus that becomes less lethal would have an evolutionary advantage. But, wouldn't lengthening the incubation period also be a successful evolutionary strategy regardless of lethality? It seems to me that there are many possible strategies that a mutating virus might gain an advantage and we shouldn't just assume that the only one that they would use would be to become more mild. Luckily, sars-cov-2 seems relatively stable.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    'Tend to' doesn't mean some conscious, directed effort. On large enough scale, this is generally the more probable direction, and that's about it. Its truly random by nature. It can very well go the other way as with 1918 'spanish' flu. Or it can change in ways that won't affect overall mortality much.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      > On large enough scale, this is generally the more probable direction, and that's about it. Its truly random by nature. If it's truly random it wouldn't be directional, yeah?
      - jjjensen90 6y ago
        The genetic mutations are random, the survival of a lineage based on pressures and fitness can be "directional" by the human definition.
    - Filligree 6y ago
      It's interesting you should mention the 1918 flu. That one had two waves, the first one less lethal... Evolution is random, add you say, but that's not quite what happened. It was in the middle of world war 1. Soldiers were infected, and the ones that became the most ill were sent home to recuperate, or die. Either way they spread the virus better than the ones who weren't as ill, and who stayed in the field. So the usual evolutionary pressure was upside down here.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    You're neglecting the other side of things in that analysis. The more successful deadly viruses tend to eliminate their victims, so the surviving population has a higher concentration of people who are resistant or immune to it, including those who acquire immunity after being exposed to the virus.
  - guscost 6y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873896/ > Trade-offs between different components of parasite fitness provide the dominant conceptual framework for understanding the adaptive evolution of virulence (Alizon et al. 2009). ... > By far, the most widely studied trade-off involves transmission and virulence (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996; Alizon et al. 2009). Transmission and virulence are linked by within-host replication: increasing parasite abundance increases the likelihood of transmission, but also increases the likelihood of host death; mathematically, this assumption can be formalized by making transmission rate β an increasing function of parasite-induced mortality rate ν. Nearly all of the literature we summarize below assumes this trade-off. However, another potential trade-off suggested by an examination of R0 involves virulence and recovery rate (Anderson and May, 1982; Frank, 1996). This trade-off is also mediated by replication rate, with high abundance increasing the likelihood of host death, but also decreasing the likelihood of the host clearing the infection (Antia et al. 1994); mathematically, this assumption makes recovery rate γ a decreasing function of parasite-induced mortality rate ν.
xyhopguy 6y ago
afaik there havent we havent observed major functional mutations in the virus
- weaksauce 6y ago
  The Strain that was seen in ny was more deadly than the strain seen on the west coast. And I’m not sure how many others are out there.
  - xyhopguy 6y ago
    they have a different lineage, but as I stated previously, no major functional mutations were observed.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    We don't yet know why (or even if) more people died in New York than on the west coast, per capita. We certainly cannot yet attribute it to a different strain.
  - christkv 6y ago
    You want to use the word isolate. The SARS2 virus is a strain of the original SARS virus I think
- sanxiyn 6y ago
  We haven't confirmed functional mutations. One of currently known mutations (D614G being a prime suspect) can be functional and we can't rule out the possibility.

jrockway 6y ago

I guess we need to know the total number of cases to figure out what the deaths mean, and until everyone has gotten an antibody test, we can't know that total number. To make the numbers work for the "weird cold" in early February case, I guess we have to work backwards. Assume that when we went into lockdown was the actual peak, 8 million people in New York City had COVID-19. That means that there is one death for every 500 cases. Then we have to pick a reproduction rate, which I have no idea how to pick, so I'll say that it increases by 1.5x every day (so on day one you have x cases, then on day 2 you have x + 1.5x, then on day 3 you have x + 1.5x + (1.5)^2x, etc. Going back a month from March 20 (which is approximately 30 days, and when a lot of people report their "weird cold"), that would mean we'd expect around 8 million / 383500 = 20 cases on Feb. 20. With 1 death per 500 cases, you'd have 0 deaths at that level. I know I've pulled these numbers out of my nether region and so they are likely very wrong. But with some back-of-the-envelope math, I think we can have some sick people in February without a lot of deaths. Obviously my 8 million total cases in NYC number is too high, and the 20 cases on 2/20 is too low for me and my friends to be those cases. But that exponential can be tweaked to make something plausible. If we make it 1.2 instead of 1.5, then we should have had about 7000 cases on 2/20, and that means around 14 deaths. That seems quite plausible to me. So I dunno. There was a weird cold. It's weird. It could mean anything. I signed up to get an antibody test. 1 test is not data, but it will be very interesting to see the results.

xyhopguy 6y ago
That's a great point although obviously its very hard to estimate something that has a horizon of atleast a month. the bay area did shut down quite a bit earlier, it could be that the lack of deaths is simply due to a better response.
not2b 6y ago
1 out of 421 NYC residents have died, based on today's numbers, and recent serological tests estimated that 20% of residents were exposed. If that's right, then the death rate would be about 1/84, or about 1.2%. But I've seen other claims that the exposure rate in NYC is higher, which would give a lower fatality rate.

MarkusQ 6y ago

> people say that because .25% of the population in NYC are dead from covid Source? I can only get a rate that high by taking the highest death count I can find (which involves extrapolations to attribute deaths to Covid-19) for New York State and dividing it by the population of New York City (which is clearly invalid).

xyhopguy 6y ago
hm, care to explain more? that's exactly how I think about it. Total deaths in NYC attributable to covid (~20k) over the total population (8.5M) = ~.25%. In my mind this is a very easy lower bound to estimate, what am I missing here? In anycase, even a rate of ~.1% would be absurd given ~20% of people are testing positive by antibody tests.
- MarkusQ 6y ago
  Actually, I was asking <i>you</i> to explain, or at least give your source. I subsequently found what I believe you are working from here: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page which does specify New York City (as opposed to New York State) so both the numerator and denominator refer to the same thing. Interestingly, they appear to be using a larger denominator than your 8.5 million (NYC metro vs. NYC proper perhaps?) and get a rate of 0.175% = 175.66/100,000, eg in the "citywide total" line of https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/by-age.csv https://github.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/blob/master/by...). But this is at least closer to your figure than I was able to get previously.
  - xyhopguy 6y ago
    whoops, I presumed you were asking about the math. My source is nytimes which pulls from the dataset you linked. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-deaths-confirmed-probable-daily-05102020.pdf https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/covid-19-d... Specifically has numbers for NYC. You can sum the boroughs or use the total listed below. Using confirmed by pcr cases you get ~15k/8.6 = ~.175% as you said. Using probable excess deaths adds an extra 5k deaths, hence ~.25%

013a 6y ago

While it's harsh to say: People die every day. The CDC officially states that, on average, ~880 people per 100,000 die every year in the United States (in 2017). Extrapolating that to NYC, this means that the city can expect to loose about 0.1% of its population every year (possibly even more; I imagine some forms of death are more prevalent in large cities. Possibly less; healthcare is better). Yes, losing 2x+ the annual number in one quarter should be noticed. But, maybe the virus evolved additional transmissibility over time, or maybe it evolved to be a little more deadly. It simply seems less likely that this virus was first noticed in November, by China, yet it didn't hit major urban areas in the rest of the world for another four months. We're too interconnected as a species; nearly half a million people came to the US from China alone, after COVID-19 was classified there [1]. It feels more likely that people have been getting it, and dying from it, well before March; these cases were just simply miscategorized as the flu. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...