Cont: 2019-nCoV / Corona virus Pt 3

[Planigale]

Sorry if this has already been posted from 2017...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41...e4n7T8_Bu8eKOoGIf595T-voDow6UIe7dD_i2edDCQjz8



And a study shared by a scientist friend of mine:
[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49700691458_9933e40928_z.jpg[/qimg]

A pandemic due to a respiratory virus has been expected, pandemic plans have been in place. This is why there were containment and mitigation phases, this was pre planned strategy together with criteria for changing strategy. WHO has had a global surveillance system in place for decades looking for the next pandemic (although primarily for flu viruses). There have been a number of candidate viruses of concern, coronaviruses were certainly one group. This is why the Gates foundation 'war gamed' a coronavirus pandemic last year. Highly pathogenic avian influenza remains a major concern, Nipah or a Nipah like virus is another.

That we have had one pandemic doesn't mean we cannot have another. So planners are already planning for the next virus and learning how we can respond better.

 

[Meadmaker]

Not sure why that is significant considering the US population is more than five times that of Italy..

If it stops tomorrow, you will be right.

 

[Planigale]

My latest point of confusion: if significant amounts of transmission are from pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic victims, what does that imply about the major method of transmission? Are there enough random coughs and sneezes due to other causes to keep a large supply of viruses available to infect other people? Is there some other means by which viruses get out?

Key music to The Great Escape; image of virus on motor bike.

Assuming your mucosa is shedding virus, your nose and mouth and airways. Virus will get on your face, around your eyes and nose and mouth. Every time you touch your face you transfer virus to your hands then you touch something or someone else and you onward transfer virus. Just normal breathing never mind heavy breathing after you have run up the stairs will shed some viral droplets in to the air, not more than a metre, and they should settle out of the air over minutes, but this still leaves a chance for someone else in a busy stairwell or a crowded club to breathe in some virus. So no it does not need a cough or sneeze to spread.

 

[Trebuchet]

And half of the US will never know it becauxe it will be never be mentioned on Fox News.

It might be, but they'll blame China, while simultaneously praising Trump for keeping it from coming in from China.

 

[Mader Levap]

But the point of it was that if NO WAIT, 19-3-2020 was only a week ago, too soon for many deaths that would even need to be covered up.

Riiiiight. Because countries get infected from 0% to 50% suddenly overnight.

Not sure why that is significant considering the US population is more than five times that of Italy..

I like how you lot indirectly imply numbers will suddenly stop.

Who's denying what?

Who? You (among others). What? Seriousness of situation. "Oh, it is small number comparing to other nations". BS.

 

[Meridian]

Yup, it can't be true. Otherwise there would be already tons of deaths of 60+ and other vulnerable population in UK.

Impossible to cover up, at most they could do it Russia-style assigning it as "pneumonia" or other nonsense. Do we know about any weird spikes of totally different deaths in various countries like UK or Japan lately?

The thing is that their hypothesis is that the death rate (and serious desease rate) is perhaps much lower than everyone else thinks, coupled with a large number of cases.

As far as I can see it just amounts to "let's look at the number of deaths over time; that's consistent with lots of people infected and a low fatality rate, or fewer people infected and a higher fatality rate". I really don't think there is anything beyond that in their paper.

This article in the Guardian seems to agree with me. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/virus-infection-data-coronavirus-modelling

 

[Meridian]

I'd like you to post the link, please.

I've been saying since early on that the maths just isn't adding up with Covid-19 and I don't think any theories can be completely dismissed at the moment.

Ok, here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxmu2rwsnhi9j9c/Draft-COVID-19-Model%20%2813%29.pdf?dl=0 (change dl=0 to dl=1 to download it).

But you really won't learn anything from it, and may perhaps be mislead. They don't present any actual evidence for the conclusion. If you read the paper, they don't even argue for it anywhere in the paper; it's just consistent (according to their analysis) with the limited data that they look at. But still they "suggest" it as a conclusion on page 1.

And it's not a `paper' yet, just a draft, that hasn't (I believe) even been published as a preprint, but has been spread to the press.

 

[Elaedith]

The thing is that their hypothesis is that the death rate (and serious desease rate) is perhaps much lower than everyone else thinks, coupled with a large number of cases.

As far as I can see it just amounts to "let's look at the number of deaths over time; that's consistent with lots of people infected and a low fatality rate, or fewer people infected and a higher fatality rate". I really don't think there is anything beyond that in their paper.

This article in the Guardian seems to agree with me. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/26/virus-infection-data-coronavirus-modelling

Yes, I think there is a misunderstanding about the paper. It is based on modelling a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the importance of knowing what proportion of the population is immune for making predictions and formulating policy. I've looked at the paper and I don't interpret it as claiming that the assumptions of the model are true.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

If it stops tomorrow, you will be right.

Right about what?

At what point will the number of cases in the US, compared to country X be significant, and why?

 

[Meadmaker]

Right about what?

At what point will the number of cases in the US compared to country X be significant, and why?

Significant? I guess it's significant at the point that it affects you and your life. If your sister dies, it's pretty significant.


However, even then, I suppose the number is still not significant. If your sister dies, it doesn't become more significant just because a lot of other people also died at the same time.


However, the data is still significant, because the significance of the numbers is that they form data that can be used as a model to predict what will happen in the future.

Two weeks ago, the President of the United States went on television to say that thanks to his actions in imposing travel restrictions on China, the US had been spared the worst of the coronavirus trauma. The Europeans, by contrast, were lax in their border policies, and were going to suffer far worse consequences than the United States. That's what he said.

Now, we can use data to check the result. Was he right? In absolute numbers of cases, no. The US now has more cases than France. In absolute numbers of deaths, no. The US will have more deaths than France either today or tomorrow. In per capita cases or per capita deaths, so far, France seems to have it worse. However, if we look at the rate of change in either cases or deaths, it would appear that this situation will only be temporary. If trends continue as expected, the United States will eventually pass France and most other nations in per capita cases and per capita deaths.

In other words, the numbers today are significant because they tell us that unless there is something that we can do about it, and that we actually do about it, life in the USA is going to suck really bad, soon. By "suck really bad", I mean tens of thousands, at least, of people dying painfully because there is inadequate medical care to prevent their deaths.

I believe that's what those numbers are telling us, and I believe that's significant.

I sure hope I'm wrong.

ETA: And it looks like France is having a very bad day. It might take us a few more days to catch them in absolute numbers of deaths, but we will.

By the way, all of this is incredibly easy to predict, just as it was a month ago when Donald Trump said the cases would soon be near zero.

 

[The Atheist]

Meanwhile, in the "Only the aged and infirm are dying" camp, along with the dead 21 yo female in UK, we can now add a 16-year-old girl in France to the tally. In French, sorry:

https://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/s...france-retire-ses-troupes-d-irak_2121976.html

I noted with interest that the median age of infections in other countries is significantly lower than China's, despite China having a younger median aged population.

Yet another twist in the saga.

 

[wobs]

A pandemic due to a respiratory virus has been expected, pandemic plans have been in place. This is why there were containment and mitigation phases, this was pre planned strategy together with criteria for changing strategy. WHO has had a global surveillance system in place for decades looking for the next pandemic (although primarily for flu viruses). There have been a number of candidate viruses of concern, coronaviruses were certainly one group. This is why the Gates foundation 'war gamed' a coronavirus pandemic last year. Highly pathogenic avian influenza remains a major concern, Nipah or a Nipah like virus is another.

That we have had one pandemic doesn't mean we cannot have another. So planners are already planning for the next virus and learning how we can respond better.

That's interesting, thank you.

 

[Planigale]

Does anyone know of any country that's tested a random sample of the population? I can't seem to find any examples, though Iceland *may* be one. (It's not clear; they've certainly done some `anyone can be tested' testing, but I don't know whether they actually sampled randomly.)

This arises in the context of a draft paper from a group in Oxford (I'm not sure I want to link to it, as I think it is essentially misinformation) saying that perhaps (but they put it a bit stronger) 50% of the UK population was already infected by 19/3/2020. I think this is likely very far from the truth, and a dangerous claim to spread (it might cause people to think there is no longer any point in reducing contacts). I'm sure there are arguments against it (based on analysis form China, South Korea, Diamond Princess etc), but the very simplest and easiest to get across would be "We've just tested a random sample, and <x% currently have the disease."

If you suspect there may be a very high infection rate, even a small random sample is useful, as it can quickly rule this out. But I can't find an account of this having been done anywhere.

There's plenty of plans to do large scale antibody testing, but it seems this isn't quite ready and there are concerns about the false positive rate. But to rule out the `we are already at the peak of infections' hypothesis, one could do PCR testing *now*. So I don't really understand why this hasn't been done.

Oxford dons are famed for their imagination resulting in concepts such as Hobbits and Orcs, Mad Hatters and Cheshire Cats. Whereas the academics of my alma mater imagined things like gravity, the double helix and black holes. This is a possible though not a likely interpretation of the current data.

 

[The Atheist]

But you really won't learn anything from it, and may perhaps be mislead. They don't present any actual evidence for the conclusion. If you read the paper, they don't even argue for it anywhere in the paper; it's just consistent (according to their analysis) with the limited data that they look at. But still they "suggest" it as a conclusion on page 1.

And it's not a `paper' yet, just a draft, that hasn't (I believe) even been published as a preprint, but has been spread to the press.

Thanks for that!

It fits the scenario perfectly. Way back in January there was a fairly strong theory that known cases were 1% of the real number and we still can't rule out that possibility.

What it does is emphasise the need for serological testing, because that would tell us for sure. I think the medical world is a bit busy to worry about that at the moment.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Significant? I guess it's significant at the point that it affects you and your life. If your sister dies, it's pretty significant.

Yes, when my sister died a few years ago it was significant to me..

Yes the data as a whole is significant for future actions and planning.

I still fail to see the significance of a milestone, such as the US number of cases surpassing those of country X..

 

[Meridian]

Yes, I think there is a misunderstanding about the paper. It is based on modelling a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the importance of knowing what proportion of the population is immune for making predictions and formulating policy. I've looked at the paper and I don't interpret it as claiming that the assumptions of the model are true.

Sort of. The misunderstanding is 100% the authors fault, because they write (on page 1):

Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries.

 

[Meridian]

Thanks for that!

It fits the scenario perfectly. Way back in January there was a fairly strong theory that known cases were 1% of the real number and we still can't rule out that possibility.

What it does is emphasise the need for serological testing, because that would tell us for sure. I think the medical world is a bit busy to worry about that at the moment.

If you believe this now on the basis of the paper, you are making a mistake. There is absolutely zero evidence in this direction in the paper that I can see. Nor any actual argument for this conclusion.

Actually, as I understand it, this `we've now reached 50% infected' hypothesis could be ruled out tomorrow or the day after. Just test 100 random people with the current PCR test. If we've really reached 50%, it was only recently, so lots of people will have active infections, and it would show up.

 

[Meadmaker]

Yes, when my sister died a few years ago it was significant to me..

Yes the data as a whole is significant for future actions and planning.

I still fail to see the significance of a milestone, such as the US number of cases surpassing those of country X..

You're right. It's not significant.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

So we had >40k new cases yesterday and >51k today. Just a couple of days before we reach 1 million right?

In the region were I live in Sweden, my town has the most cases. Now I'm sitting here with an itch in my throat...

 

[Mader Levap]

So we had >40k new cases yesterday and >51k today. Just a couple of days before we reach 1 million right?

In the region were I live in Sweden, my town has the most cases. Now I'm sitting here with an itch in my throat...

Don't worry, someone will come here and say these numbers are insignificant and unimportant. Especially if these numbers make politician that they like look bad.