COVID-19 (Wuhan Novel Coronavirus) Pandemic Master Thread

[biobook]

I saw this, too, and I'm calling BS. For every 80 year old who tests positive, you'd need 10 teenagers to get to that average. We have a lot of 80 year olds...

But the 80 year olds are staying home.

[yuneeq]

The average age of infection in Florida is around 30. It makes a big difference

FTFY

Was that always the average age? If yes, what are you trying to imply? If not, how much did it go down and how will that affect the trajectory?

It makes sense to have a low average age, it’s much more common for younger people who are out and about to contract COVID.

[Lurker]

But the 80 year olds are staying home.

They're staying in their old age homes and still getting infected.

[yuneeq]

In my opinion, there’s no reason to use Florida’s fudged numbers to formulate an opinion on whether Florida is making the right decisions or not. As long as DeSantis is afraid to release legitimate COVID data, you know that Florida is doing terrible and expects to continue that way. There’s only 1 reason to be afraid of the stats. The only question is how bad it really is.

[biobook]

They're staying in their old age homes and still getting infected.

I don't know, there are lots of healthy 80 year olds enjoying the sunshine state.  Have you looked at the dashboard by county?  Click on cases by county on bottom, then put in a county on top right.
I'm looking at Orange County, and see
age.... cases:
15-24    859
25-34  1003
35-44    714
45-54    652
55-64    501
65-74    232
75-84    102
85+        42

I agree that they're hiding a lot, but I don't think they're hiding 100s of infected 80 year olds.  I think they're the ones who took this seriously from the beginning. Although I guess it's also possible that they just left the state when things started to get bad.

[biobook]

I agree that they're hiding a lot, but I don't think they're hiding 100s of infected 80 year olds.  I think they're the ones who took this seriously from the beginning. Although I guess it's also possible that they just left the state when things started to get bad.

Unless (to argue with myself) they were only counting cases as people who had tested positive, and ignoring cases that were so obviously covid that they didn't bother with the test.  Or it was before testing was available.  Or the person died with another disease and they ignored the fact that they also had covid. 

Also, according to Jones, who developed the dashboard, the state is calculating # of cases divided by "total tests" rather than "total people tested", which makes it seem like only a small fraction of people are positive.

She says that on the state's dashboard, any person who tests positive will be counted as a positive test only once, no matter how many times they test positive. But a person who tests negative will be counted over and over again each time they test negative for the coronavirus.

Jones says that because many residents, such as health care workers, require repeated testing, the state's dashboard is artificially deflating the true positivity rate.

"They're adding their total test figures instead of their total people, which makes their percent positive extremely low," she says.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/14/876584284/fired-florida-data-scientist-launches-a-coronavirus-dashboard-of-her-own

[yuneeq]

Unless (to argue with myself) they were only counting cases as people who had tested positive, and ignoring cases that were so obviously covid that they didn't bother with the test.  Or it was before testing was available.  Or the person died with another disease and they ignored the fact that they also had covid. 

Also, according to Jones, who developed the dashboard, the state is calculating # of cases divided by "total tests" rather than "total people tested", which makes it seem like only a small fraction of people are positive.

She says that on the state's dashboard, any person who tests positive will be counted as a positive test only once, no matter how many times they test positive. But a person who tests negative will be counted over and over again each time they test negative for the coronavirus.

Jones says that because many residents, such as health care workers, require repeated testing, the state's dashboard is artificially deflating the true positivity rate.

"They're adding their total test figures instead of their total people, which makes their percent positive extremely low," she says.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/14/876584284/fired-florida-data-scientist-launches-a-coronavirus-dashboard-of-her-own

Florida has been playing games since the beginning. I believe Jones for no other reason than the fact it’s Florida; her firing and character assassination should take no one by surprise.

Censored, indeed. 
If you live in/visiting Florida, do you trust the public officials to tell the truth? Does this censorship make us safer?

[PlatinumGuy]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J9

Samples positive for traces of the virus that causes COVID-19 were also found in sewage from Bologna, Milan and Turin in January and February 2020. Samples taken in October and November 2019 tested negative.

The institute said it plans to launch a pilot study in July to monitor wastewater in tourist resorts.

Do countries routinely store sewage samples from different locations at different time intervals?!

The sleep away camps should be doing this

[shaulyaakov]

“When you do testing to that extent, you are gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down please. They test and they test. We have tests that people don’t know what's going on,” Trump said in the rally.

[Mikes@Micro]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J9

Do countries routinely store sewage samples from different locations at different time intervals?!

The sleep away camps should be doing this

Prob much easier for them then a random person in his house as many have septic tanks, etc.

They might not want to know of a positive case especially if they dont know who it is as that would cause dangerous panic and pandemonium....

[AsherO]

“When you do testing to that extent, you are gonna find more people, you’re gonna find more cases. So I said to my people slow the testing down please. They test and they test. We have tests that people don’t know what's going on,” Trump said in the rally.

On a policy/leadership level, it’s the scariest thing that he “decided” the pandemic is going away in the US. It means that instead of learning from his mistakes the first time around downplaying things, he’s doubling down and will make the same mistake again if we have further progression of infection.

[avromie7]

Unless (to argue with myself) they were only counting cases as people who had tested positive, and ignoring cases that were so obviously covid that they didn't bother with the test.  Or it was before testing was available.  Or the person died with another disease and they ignored the fact that they also had covid. 

Also, according to Jones, who developed the dashboard, the state is calculating # of cases divided by "total tests" rather than "total people tested", which makes it seem like only a small fraction of people are positive.

She says that on the state's dashboard, any person who tests positive will be counted as a positive test only once, no matter how many times they test positive. But a person who tests negative will be counted over and over again each time they test negative for the coronavirus.

Jones says that because many residents, such as health care workers, require repeated testing, the state's dashboard is artificially deflating the true positivity rate.

"They're adding their total test figures instead of their total people, which makes their percent positive extremely low," she says.

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/14/876584284/fired-florida-data-scientist-launches-a-coronavirus-dashboard-of-her-own

I don't see any other way to track testing data. There's no reason to count someone twice when they're only 1 person, and the point of doing lots of tests is to find it before it gets out of hand, I don't see the issue with counting someone as negative multiple times.

[Mikes@Micro]

I don't see any other way to track testing data. There's no reason to count someone twice when they're only 1 person, and the point of doing lots of tests is to find it before it gets out of hand, I don't see the issue with counting someone as negative multiple times.

When I got test results from LabCorp it noted that "The CDC recommends at least 2 or 3 test to ensure accuracy"
Kinda suspected they just wanted to boost numbers based on the context/ way it was written

[avromie7]

Like @Ergel said, I don't think those numbers will tell you anything, for a number of reasons.

1) Timeline. What stage are you going to compare the numbers against? By all accounts, all of those states have been dealing with Covid hospitalizations and deaths since March, albeit on a much lower scale. NY's numbers skyrocketed immediately, versus the slower climb here. This is a very good question. I also think we can't compare raw number of cases. When the virus was running rampant in NY there was almost no testing available, it wouldn't surprise me if FL is getting 5x as many positive tests as NY did at the peak when they were reporting 10-12k cases per day (meaning for every 10 people who got the virus NY tested 1 while FL tested 5)

2) Social distancing, masks, precautions in stores and public places, high-risk self-isolation. These are all factors which contribute to a slower spread, and slower consequences of hospitalization and deaths. Isn't that the goal? That would mean Florida is doing what it intended to do, flattening the curve.

3a) Medical knowledge at a PCP level. When someone calls their PCP because they feel sick or had a positive test, PCPs are far less likely to send patients to the hospitals. Even on a layman's level, the average person is less likely to panic and run to the ER now than they were in March in NY.

3a) Medical knowledge with regard to treatment protocols. We're eons away from where we were 2-3 months ago, so the deaths should go down as a result. This is aside from the fact that deaths come at a later stage in the game.

4) Political reaction. If FL and TX keep doubling down on their stance to let things ride, you're going to see much crazier numbers than NY. NY/NJ reacted late, but at least they reacted before their numbers hit what we're seeing out of FL, TX, AZ, and CA. You can probably include the political reaction to protests in here, but it will be hard to gauge the impact of those. Why would FL see worse that NY? There are some restrictions, as well as people (especially vulnerable) taking precautions.

There are other variables, as well, but this is what I'm pulling off the top of my head.

[biobook]

I don't see any other way to track testing data. There's no reason to count someone twice when they're only 1 person, and the point of doing lots of tests is to find it before it gets out of hand, I don't see the issue with counting someone as negative multiple times.

The governor said the state can re-open when the positivity rate was below 10%.

Person A tests positive
Person B tests 10 times, all negative

Rebekah Jones would say the positivity rate is 50%. 
1 positive test/ 2 people tested

Her supervisors would say the positivity rate is 9%.
1 positive test/ 11 tests total

Above is for illustration.  IIRC their calculations were something like 12% vs 8%, when the governor said it's okay now to re-open.  Do you see a problem with that?

[avromie7]

The governor said the state can re-open when the positivity rate was below 10%.

Person A tests positive
Person B tests 10 times, all negative

Rebekah Jones would say the positivity rate is 50%. 
1 positive test/ 2 people tested

Her supervisors would say the positivity rate is 9%.
1 positive test/ 11 tests total

Above is for illustration.  IIRC their calculations were something like 12% vs 8%, when the governor said it's okay now to re-open.  Do you see a problem with that?

I don't see a problem with that, positivity rate is only useful for telling us if there are enough tests being done to catch enough cases so it can't spread undetected. It doesn't matter if the same person got tested multiple times.

[etech0]

The governor said the state can re-open when the positivity rate was below 10%.

So we should start a campaign that when someone gets a negative test, they should run around to all the testing sites and take lots more tests!

[avromie7]

So we should start a campaign that when someone gets a negative test, they should run around to all the testing sites and take lots more tests!

That would corrupt the data.

[biobook]

I don't see a problem with that, positivity rate is only useful for telling us if there are enough tests being done to catch enough cases so it can't spread undetected. It doesn't matter if the same person got tested multiple times.

You may want to use the positivity rate to determine if enough tests are being done, but Governor DeSantis wanted to use it to determine the extent of community spread.  If it's <10%, covid's not spreading in the community, let's re-open. 

It doesn't matter if the same person got tested multiple times, but it does matter if those multiple tests are being used in the calculation of how extensively the virus has spread in the community.

That would corrupt the data.

Exactly.  Jones claims that the governor is relying on corrupted data.

[Mikes@Micro]

So we should start a campaign that when someone gets a negative test, they should run around to all the testing sites and take lots more tests!

This is exactly what the CDC recommends...
On LabCorp test results it says CDC recommendation to take 2 or 3 tests bc otherwise you cant be sure 🤨