***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[dirk digler]

Originally Posted by TLO

MO DHSS numbers for yesterday

Cases in Missouri: 5,667

Total Deaths: 176

Patients tested in Missouri (by all labs): approximately 55,873
As of 2:00 p.m. CT, April 19

Numbers for today

Cases in Missouri: 5,807

Total Deaths: 177

Patients tested in Missouri (by all labs): approximately 55,873 (not yet updated for 4/20/20)

excellent

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

You are welcome to explore the reasoning for the wide range of death rates. It would be interesting to see. Perhaps the suspected various strands plays a part. But the point is that at this time based on available numbers assuming equal death rates just doesn’t work as an assumption. However, if you add a ton of cases then New York could be more equal to other places on the death rate, which would then support the idea put forth about many more infected.

Originally Posted by DaFace

Possibly.

Anyway, my point isn't that it's impossible that 32% of people in Boston have it - only that it seems very unlikely given what we're seeing in NYC. Time will tell.

This is why the numbers from the antibody study in Santa Clara don't match up. Boston, we'll see, but it's highly, highly unlikely.

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

As more information comes in our ability to refine predictions will obviously improve. I've mentioned this twice in the last day, but I think it bears repeating. Regardless of what you initially believed about the models, we are getting enough data in from New York and the infectiousness of the virus to make some baseline assumptions about the death toll that are fairly well grounded.

What we know:
*New York State has a population of 20,000,000
*New York has a death toll of 17,671 at this point
*Tests of suspected COVID patients in New York were 38% as of April 1
*Deaths usually lag about two weeks behind infections

What we are assuming based upon some clinical research:

The low end of the R0 is 2.2, the high end is over 8. One study put the R0 at 5.7

We can plug and chug to help us understand fatality rates, but this is still back of the napkin stuff:

Given that 38% of suspected COVID patients were positive in April (and those are the ones most likely to test positive) and the test has a false negative rate of 30%, at most 47% of people in New York (and I'm counting the entire state, which will greatly elevate the potential number of infected) would have been infected at that time.

That gives us a pool of 9.4 million infections in New York. Although this is highly, highly unlikely, it would give us a lower bound of a fatality rate. As of now it would be 0.19.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by dirk digler

excellent

I'm thinking they might be asleep at the wheel. Every other site that tracks this has is around 200 deaths. Our total death count has been 1 for the past 2 days according to DHSS.

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by TLO

I'm thinking they might be asleep at the wheel. Every other site that tracks this has is around 200 deaths. Our total death count has been 1 for the past 2 days according to DHSS.

I’m curious to see how many tests that is from this yesterday

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by SAUTO

Not sure where your getting numbers from

3-31 tues 914
4-1 w 1050
2 th 974
3 fr 1051
4 sat 1330
5 sun 1167 !!!
6 mon 1257 !!!
7 tues 1973
8 we’d 1943
9 th 1901
10 fri 2035
11 sat 1830
12 sun 1578!!!
13 mon 1535!!!
14 tues 2405
15 wed 2016
16 thurs 2176
17 fri 2578
18 sat 1867!!!
19 sun 1861!!!


See how Sunday and Mondays are consistently lower than any days around them???

Go back into March. And I understand what you are saying but the argument is anecdotal as far as I know save 4/5 which they said were errors in reporting.

Plus the argument was Sundays were lower. Today you introduced Mondays to that argument.

Again, anecdotal unless there is some specific reason you can point to.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by SAUTO

I’m curious to see how many tests that is from this yesterday

Based on what we've been averaging lately, I'd say somewhere between 1000-1500. I'll update it as soon as they do.

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by TLO

MO DHSS numbers for yesterday

Cases in Missouri: 5,667

Total Deaths: 176

Patients tested in Missouri (by all labs): approximately 55,873
As of 2:00 p.m. CT, April 19

Numbers for today

Cases in Missouri: 5,807

Total Deaths: 177

Patients tested in Missouri (by all labs): approximately 55,873 (not yet updated for 4/20/20)

Oddly enough Worldometers matches the number of cases with a difference in new cases and still shows 198 total deaths with 0 new deaths today so far.

Weird shit in Mo

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Go back into March. And I understand what you are saying but the argument is anecdotal as far as I know save 4/5 which they said were errors in reporting.

Plus the argument was Sundays were lower. Today you introduced Mondays to that argument.

Again, anecdotal unless there is some specific reason you can point to.

Uhhhh no. I Said Sunday’s and Monday’s before today.


And it’s because they are a day behind ( which I’m pretty sure you’ve agreed with) and obviously everywhere isn’t reporting on the weekends correctly. That’s why it catches up on Tuesdays.

[loochy]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Oddly enough Worldometers matches the number of cases with a difference in new cases and still shows 198 total deaths with 0 new deaths today so far.

Weird shit in Mo

It's not weird. Something happened with the reporting. Duh.

[SAUTO]

Originally Posted by SAUTO

Sunday’s and Mondays are always down. We’ve gone through this Pete

Here is my post from yesterday... just FTR . Mondays didn’t just come up today.

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by TLO

Based on what we've been averaging lately, I'd say somewhere between 1000-1500. I'll update it as soon as they do.

Worldometers shows zero change in total tests from yesterday to today

[IowaHawkeyeChief]

Originally Posted by TLO

Ooooh. This is a good read. Much better than the news article I posted.

Since the article, the Stanford team released an appendix, and he addresses that at the bottom of the article, but I guess you guys didn't read down that far... I believe there is a bias for self selection, however, many of the other concerns were addressed.

Here is the author of the link with concerns on the study after the appendix came out...

P.P.S. The authors provide some details on their methods here. Here’s what’s up:

– For the poststratification, it turns out they do adjust for every zip code. I’m surprised, as I’d think that could give them some noisy weights, but, given our other concerns with this study, I guess noisy weights are the least of our worries. Also, they don’t quite weight by sex x ethnicity x zip; they actually weight by the two-way margins, sex x zip and ethnicity x zip. Again, not the world’s biggest deal. They should’ve adjusted for age, too, though, as that’s a freebie.

– They have a formula to account for uncertainty in the estimated specificity. But something seems to have gone wrong, as discussed in the above post. It’s hard to know exactly what went wrong since we don’t have the data and code. For example, I don’t know what they are using for var(q).

Here is the appendix:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medr...20062463-1.pdf

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by SAUTO

Here is my post from yesterday... just FTR . Mondays didn’t just come up today.

Excuse me, yesterday was the first time......

[TLO]

Originally Posted by loochy

It's not weird. Something happened with the reporting. Duh.

I've said this a few times but the Missouri DHSS has say always lagged behind other sites in the numbers of deaths. You'd think they'd be the ones with the most up to date info, but

They seem to be petty good about the number of positive cases and tests run though.

[SAUTO]

Also using March doesn’t get you much. There weren’t hardly any deaths per day most of the month but the last week is the exact same. Lower on Sunday and Monday than tues...