Is there any good news in the fight against COVID-19?

[yuneeq]

If it infected the 1st half of the population without overwhelming the ICU's than there is no reason to believe the 2nd half of the population will overwhelm the ICU's.

This wasn't the case for Italy and it doesn't look like the case for NY. I doubt the UK will be different.

+100

The study is very perplexing. The numbers they claim would make it 15x fewer hospitalizations than the flu. Reality is not painting that picture in ICUs across the world, I don’t care what their broken calculator says. Also we have data from the Diamond Princess (let’s assume the entire cruise was infected) - 11 deaths and dozens of hospitalizations - still much higher than their projections. We also have South Korea data - they’ve basically contained the virus through a lot of testing including many asymptotic cases, and their fatality rate is at 1.4%. If in fact they weren’t finding a lot of asymptomatic people, the virus wouldn’t be able to be contained.

[chevron]

I guess now he is a viral disease expert?

Lol I was thinking the same

[chevron]

+100

The study is very perplexing. The numbers they claim would make it 15x fewer hospitalizations than the flu. Reality is not painting that picture in ICUs across the world, I don’t care what their broken calculator says. Also we have data from the Diamond Princess (let’s assume the entire cruise was infected) - 11 deaths and dozens of hospitalizations - still much higher than their projections. We also have South Korea data - they’ve basically contained the virus through a lot of testing including many asymptotic cases, and their fatality rate is at 1.4%. If in fact they weren’t finding a lot of asymptomatic people, the virus wouldn’t be able to be contained.

Also I would like to see what the average length of stay for patients is.

If xx % got infected, saying that okay big deal we are going to let the other half of the population get infected even if this were accurate this doesn't account for the fact that the hospitals are already overloaded and what do you do with the first half of the patients when the second half get infected?

And what about all the sick first responders and doctors? Where you going to come up with more doctors?

what about all the exhausted first responders and doctors who don't want to keep doing this for the next year non-stop?

[chevron]

I'm sure the people writing these studies are very smart but it doesn't paint a real picture and it's one reason why I felt people didn't take it seriously and people still don't take it seriously.

[hvaces42]

If it infected the 1st half of the population without overwhelming the ICU's than there is no reason to believe the 2nd half of the population will overwhelm the ICU's.

This wasn't the case for Italy and it doesn't look like the case for NY. I doubt the UK will be different.

WHAT ROCK ARE YOU LIVING UNDER? 

[aygart]

https://www.ghs.org/healthcenter/ghsblog/prisma-health-ventilator-covid19/

[ckmk47]

 Also we have data from the Diamond Princess (let’s assume the entire cruise was infected) - 11 deaths and dozens of hospitalizations - still much higher than their projections.

Cruises have a high percentage of high risk passengers.  Higher than the general population.

[hvaces42]

I was in the Javits Center storage area today. They are really gearing up. Saw hundreds of beds, pallets of PPE and hundreds of ventilators that were still in the storage area.

[incendia]

WHAT ROCK ARE YOU LIVING UNDER? 

I think you are missunderstanding me.

The article suggested a statistical analysts that half the UK population already had the virus and have immunity. I'm saying that doesn't make because their ICU's would be overwhelmed like Italy's.

[yuneeq]

Cruises have a high percentage of high risk passengers.  Higher than the general population.

Flu = 14 hospitalizations and 1.2 deaths per 1000 people
Corona according to Oxford = Less than 1 hospitalization and 0.1 deaths per 1000 people

The US population of 62+ is about 15%, or 150/1000. Let’s pretend the boat has 75% above 62, including all the crew mates and everyone is infected. We end up with about 4-5 hospitalizations and 0.5 deaths/1000. Multiply by 3.7 (cruise capacity is 3,700) and you have 18 hospitalizations and 1.8 deaths/1000.

So even the most wildest exaggerations of the elderly population and infected count, were still 6-10x lower than reality.

[CountValentine]

Flu = 14 hospitalizations and 1.2 deaths per 1000 people
Corona according to Oxford = Less than 1 hospitalization and 0.1 deaths per 1000 people

Do you have them reversed?

[yuneeq]

Do you have them reversed?

No, Oxford university does.
Read their study your jaw will drop.

[CountValentine]

No, Oxford university does.

Ouch!

[AsherO]

If it infected the 1st half of the population without overwhelming the ICU's than there is no reason to believe the 2nd half of the population will overwhelm the ICU's.

This wasn't the case for Italy and it doesn't look like the case for NY. I doubt the UK will be different.

Overwhelming the ICUs could have more to do with their current capacity than the percentage infected. If ICUs are at 99% then whomever else will get infected is likely to cross the 100% threshold...

[AsherO]

Flu = 14 hospitalizations and 1.2 deaths per 1000 people
Corona according to Oxford = Less than 1 hospitalization and 0.1 deaths per 1000 people

The US population of 62+ is about 15%, or 150/1000. Let’s pretend the boat has 75% above 62, including all the crew mates and everyone is infected. We end up with about 4-5 hospitalizations and 0.5 deaths/1000. Multiply by 3.7 (cruise capacity is 3,700) and you have 18 hospitalizations and 1.8 deaths/1000.

So even the most wildest exaggerations of the elderly population and infected count, were still 6-10x lower than reality.

Unfortunately not everyone who tested positive from the cruise is out of the hospital and in the clear yet.

[dealfinder11]

The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people in the UK than scientists had previously estimated — perhaps as much as half the population — according to modelling by researchers at the University of Oxford.

If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all.

“We need immediately to begin large-scale serological surveys — antibody testing — to assess what stage of the epidemic we are in now,” she said.

The modelling by Oxford’s Evolutionary Ecology of Infectious Disease group indicates that Covid-19 reached the UK by mid-January at the latest. Like many emerging infections, it spread invisibly for more than a month before the first transmissions within the UK were officially recorded at the end of February.

The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London, which has strongly influenced government policy. “I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” said Prof Gupta.

However, she was reluctant to criticise the government for shutting down the country to suppress viral spread, because the accuracy of the Oxford model has not yet been confirmed and, even if it is correct, social distancing will reduce the number of people becoming seriously ill and relieve severe pressure on the NHS during the peak of the epidemic.

The Oxford study is based on a what is known as a “susceptibility-infected-recovered model” of Covid-19, built up from case and death reports from the UK and Italy. The researchers made what they regard as the most plausible assumptions about the behaviour of the virus.

The modelling brings back into focus “herd immunity”, the idea that the virus will stop spreading when enough people have become resistant to it because they have already been infected. The government abandoned its unofficial herd immunity strategy — allowing controlled spread of infection — after its scientific advisers said this would swamp the National Health Service with critically ill patients.

But the Oxford results would mean the country had already acquired substantial herd immunity through the unrecognised spread of Covid-19 over more than two months. If the findings are confirmed by testing, then the current restrictions could be removed much sooner than ministers have indicated.

Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against Covid-19.

To provide the necessary evidence, the Oxford group is working with colleagues at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent to start antibody testing on the general population as soon as possible, using specialised “neutralisation assays which provide reliable readout of protective immunity,” Prof Gupta said. They hope to start testing later this week and obtain preliminary results within a few days.

how do you reconcile this with the fact that the majority of people tested in highly infected areas who test positive is still well below 50 percent?

[sam28]

Because most who I know don't get tested.

[dealfinder11]

Because most who I know don't get tested.

I don't believe you are not understanding. Among those that get tested, meaning they have all the symptoms and then some (depending on state requirements), the actual amount of tests that result in a positive is fairly low. In New jersey it's 29 percent (up from 27 percent yesterday). And Jersey has had some of the strictest testing requirements. Israel is around 9 percent.

The data on this website is not perfect (it acknowledges the quality of the data state by state), but it should give you a general idea.

https://covidtracking.com/data/#NJ

So unless you think there is a conceivable reason that the public that has not been tested, has a higher percentage of people who have Covid-19 than the people who actually got tested, that is a totally irrelevant fact.

[etech0]

It's possible that people who are pretty certain that they have it don't bother testing. I know some like that. I can't speak for percentages but it's a possibility.

[dealfinder11]

It's possible that people who are pretty certain that they have it don't bother testing. I know some like that. I can't speak for percentages but it's a possibility.

So unless you think there is a conceivable reason that the public that has not been tested, has a higher percentage of people who have Covid-19 than the people who actually got tested, that is a totally irrelevant fact.