***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.”

[O.city]

I feel like the "double the testing numbers stuff" is just lip service.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by Pants

Do different strains require different antibodies? How does that work?

We don't even know for sure if having antibodies protects you from the strain you already had. Dr. Fauci has said "that's a reasonable assumption to make", but nobody actually knows.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by TLO

We don't even know for sure if having antibodies protects you from the strain you already had. Dr. Fauci has said "that's a reasonable assumption to make", but nobody actually knows.

If it didn't, with how infectious this supposedly is we'd have alot more sick again already.

I don't think i'd really be concerned with that.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by O.city

I feel like the "double the testing numbers stuff" is just lip service.

The more I listen to him, the more I dislike him. I distinctly remember them saying they'd be doing 10,000 tests a day by April 1st. That obviously didn't work out. Maybe he misspoke. Maybe he's just as lost as all of us. Who knows.

[Marcellus]

Originally Posted by TLO

This feels like a giant cluster ****. We're going to "double our testing capacity here in Mizzoura" according to the governer. At which time we're going to see a ton more positive cases, (one would assume).

But hey we're gonna open up on May 4th! Never mind the fact we're probably gonna have to close everything down again because the number of positive cases are going to skyrocket.

****

Take a deep breath dude, by your own logic there is no reason to be alarmed in a spike in new cases if that happens.

[O.city]

If testing shows that there's more cases out there, that wouldn't be ideal. But i guess you could say they're out there now and the hospitals aren't over run.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by O.city

If it didn't, with how infectious this supposedly is we'd have alot more sick again already.

I don't think i'd really be concerned with that.

Healthcare workers who have been infected and then return to work would seem to be a logical place to look.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by TLO

Healthcare workers who have been infected and then return to work would seem to be a logical place to look.

It really goes against every other virus we've seen in the past. Like i said, it would be pretty shocking.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by O.city

It really goes against every other virus we've seen in the past. Like i said, it would be pretty shocking.

I ultimately agree. But this virus has thrown us some crazy twists and turns already.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by Marcellus

Take a deep breath dude, by your own logic there is no reason to be alarmed in a spike in new cases if that happens.

I personally don't know how alarmed I'll be by it, but I worry government officials will be alarmed by it and shut everything down again.

[ChiliConCarnage]

There is a small town in California that is going to test every person. Working with University of California.

[petegz28]

Coronavirus antibody testing shows LA County outbreak is up to 55 times bigger than reported cases
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/coro...ted-cases.html

This new estimate is 28 to 55 times higher than the 7,994 confirmed cases of Covid-19 reported to the county in early April. The number of coronavirus-related deaths in the county has now surpassed 600, according to the Department of Public Health. The data, if correct, would mean that the county’s fatality rate is lower than originally thought.

[mr. tegu]

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.

Now, if we assume that the R0 is 2.2, then we would need 55% of the population to be infected to reach herd immunity. If the R0 is 5.7, then it's 82%.

Thus, with no mitigation strategies, and assuming that New York had a population that was actually 47% positive (essentially impossible) with no excess deaths, the total death rate from COVID with no mitigation would be:

330,000,000*0.55*0.0019= 344,850

With an R0 of 5.7 it is: 330,000,000*0.82*0.0019=514,140

And that's assuming that hospitals wouldn't be overrun.

If mitigation strategies reduced the R0 (known as Re) of the virus to 1.5, then 1/3 of the population would need to contract the virus for herd immunity. Thus, mitigation strategies, even if they only lowered the infectiousness of the virus by 50% on on the low end, would save this many lives:

(344,850)-330,000,000*0.33*.0019= 137,940

So, given what we know now, even if mitigation strategies were only 50% effective and the virus was at the low end of infectiousness, distancing, shutdowns, mask wearing in public after reopening would save, at minimum, 137,940 lives.

I can definitely see how the model came to an estimate of 1.1-2.2 million deaths without mitigation, because if New York ends up with 40,000 dead, then, by definition, the CFR couldn't be less than 0.2%, even if every single person in the state was infected, which is an impossibility.

One potential problem with these assumptions is that the New York City area is disproportionately affecting the entire state and your numbers. Stats show that 62.5% of New York’s population (the downstate area) accounts for 91.7% of deaths in the state. NYC is so different than the rest of the state that you everything is elevated beyond a reasonable extrapolation to the rest of state and country as a whole.

Using New York’s site here: https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov...r=no&%3Atabs=n

You can find stats for just the lower portion, high populated area of the state, they call it downstate. I couldn’t get a picture of it here.

This small part of the state has 13165 deaths and 228908 positives. A population of about 12.5 million (62.5% population) Going by your 47% (not sure where that came from) that’s a potential of about 6 million so a fatality rate of about 0.21. So not much different than your estimate for the whole state.

But filtering them out the rest of the state has 1182 deaths, 247512 positives (huge rate difference), and about 7.5 million (37.5% population) people so a potential at 47% of 3.5 million, a fatality rate of about 0.03.

Just averaging these out, you get about a 0.12 fatality rate which I think is a much better estimate for the state as a whole even though it’s still weighted a bit towards the downstate area stats.

The positive rates are also way lower everywhere else in the state, including some of the bigger cities. They are more in line with the 15-20% rate.

So you can sort of play with those numbers in the rest of your calculations and they change a lot, but at the very least, even if we ignore all of the estimates, based on these numbers we can assume as close to factual, 62.5% of New York’s population accounts for 91.7% of deaths in the state. I just don’t think you can ignore such small geographically dense numbers and try to extrapolate them to the state, then use those in nationwide numbers.

[TLO]

Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage

There is a small town in California that is going to test every person. Working with University of California.

Antibody tests I'm assuming?

What's the population of the town?

[ChiliConCarnage]

Coronavirus antibody testing shows LA County outbreak is up to 55 times bigger than reported cases

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/20/coro...ted-cases.html