Covid Discussion

[JPtheBeasta]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2766367

In this community seroprevalence study in Los Angeles County, the prevalence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 was 4.65%. The estimate implies that approximately 367 000 adults had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, which is substantially greater than the 8430 cumulative number of confirmed infections in the county on April 10.3 Therefore, fatality rates based on confirmed cases may be higher than rates based on number of infections. In addition, contact tracing methods to limit the spread of infection will face considerable challenges.

This study took some steps to remediate some of concerns persons had about the USC and Santa Clara studies, but with similar results. In places where ubiquitous PCR nasal/throat swab was done, such as Vo, Italy, or New Rochelle, NY, you also get much higher infection rates than you currently see (which are the result of testing the patients you suspect have the disease, as it only detects active infection). The implication is that a lot of people mounted a defense to this disease. The comment above about the difficulty of contact tracing all 367,000 persons with Covid-19 in L.A. would be very difficult.

You can multiply the population of Washington State (or the U.S., or wherever) by 4.65% to get the denominator. Divide the the total deaths in Washington (or the respective area) from Covid by this number. That is the death rate for total cases of Covid in that area, and you will get a much lower death rate than we currently have. I did this for AZ and it drops the death rate to 0.3%.

[MDABE80]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2766367



This study took some steps to remediate some of concerns persons had about the USC and Santa Clara studies, but with similar results. In places where ubiquitous PCR nasal/throat swab was done, such as Vo, Italy, or New Rochelle, NY, you also get much higher infection rates than you currently see (which are the result of testing the patients you suspect have the disease, as it only detects active infection). The implication is that a lot of people mounted a defense to this disease. The comment above about the difficulty of contact tracing all 367,000 persons with Covid-19 in L.A. would be very difficult.

You can multiply the population of Washington State (or the U.S., or wherever) by 4.65% to get the denominator. Divide the the total deaths in Washington (or the respective area) from Covid by this number. That is the death rate for total cases of Covid in that area, and you will get a much lower death rate than we currently have. I did this for AZ and it drops the death rate to 0.3%.

Is that we’re getting g a better look at this disease. naps I come. Odds to. Also worth a look is the Hoover Institute data. It’s a revisit of the Johns Hopkins data. An eye opener. This disease is very. As for the elderly with other diseases. We knew that whT we did not know is that it seems pretty benign for normal people who don’t have predisposed other diseases. Pretty much like influenza. Certainly nothing like the beast the media has indicated.

Masks and distance is all that’s needed. Let’s play ball! B

[sonuvazag]

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2766367



This study took some steps to remediate some of concerns persons had about the USC and Santa Clara studies, but with similar results. In places where ubiquitous PCR nasal/throat swab was done, such as Vo, Italy, or New Rochelle, NY, you also get much higher infection rates than you currently see (which are the result of testing the patients you suspect have the disease, as it only detects active infection). The implication is that a lot of people mounted a defense to this disease. The comment above about the difficulty of contact tracing all 367,000 persons with Covid-19 in L.A. would be very difficult.

You can multiply the population of Washington State (or the U.S., or wherever) by 4.65% to get the denominator. Divide the the total deaths in Washington (or the respective area) from Covid by this number. That is the death rate for total cases of Covid in that area, and you will get a much lower death rate than we currently have. I did this for AZ and it drops the death rate to 0.3%.

I wouldn't assume just because one county has 4.65% seroprevalence that the same value can be carried over to any other area in the US.

With the New York City serology studies providing a different conclusion about the death rate, there's only a few plausible explanations. The LA county study is overestimating the seroprevalance, the reported deaths in New York City are overestimated, or there are different strains with different IFRs.

The calculation of estimated deaths and estimated seroprevance in NYC gives us an IFR of 1.4%:
https://www.worldometers.info/corona...us-death-rate/

[MDABE80]

IN NYC, we knew the elderly would have the highest victims......especially with the "stuffing" of the elderly in high risk nursing homes. I agree it's a big number. For the under 60 crown who are healthy at entry are very low risk. The one thing in the NY data is the absence of confirmed data and the over estimation of who had the disease. In a few more months, we'll know more.

Most recent data is from Hoover Inst. THis dease is way oversold..media scared everyone when they had little data. Projects now show that 1/10th of one percent of the under 60 group with no other disease will be infected or die. Hoover took the Johns Hopkins data ( the best data around as far as I can tell) and takes hard focused looked at the overall and the subgroups.

Politics fails the test when the data is known. We're getting better at the latter. A lot better. All those predictions were not worth a keystroke without accurate information which is only coming out now. Media say we're approching 100 K death but only half that number is confirmed as diseased from COVID. EVen if the 100 K death is accurate, we also know the majority of the elderly ( 80-90% of the deaths) had other major diseases that killed them. COVID was just an add on.

Lets play ball. !!

[bballbeachbum]

Beach says "But the leadership on this was so divisive that not wearing a mask is somehow about freedom...what a sad joke. reveals a basic lack of understanding about why to wear a mask seems to me, and the total politicization of it." I f you have something somewhere that confirms this, I would be surprised. I don't see division from leadership ( I do see whatever "leadership" you're referring to being attacked incessantly by majority of media) but NOBODY I've seen says not wearing a mask is about freedom...……<--this is where my comment on Beach's post stops.

_---------> this is where a new general comment begins...Everyone I know of recommends distancing and masks......and nobody's said don't wear a mask. Almost universally leadership and anyone with a brain has said wear masks! Where did you get this idea??I have seen statements to the effect wherein" you do not HAVE to wear a mask".....and you don't. Never yet have I seen the grotesque idea that mixes politics with mask wearing. Maybe there some confusion over reopening the country for business and mask wearing. Media's made that a political item. "you care about money more than health" lol.....

WEAR a mask! But there are 8 states who've done nothing and they do have low low infection and death rates (for whatever death rates mean in these confusing data sets) . Most people don't require commands from on on high to wear a mask in an infectious environment. Just common sense. No offense intended but I had to drop a note on this one.

No offense taken.

Let's look at it the other way then...the leadership has been unifying on this issue.

So for just one example, when VP Mike Pence, the leader of President Trump's coronavirus task force, chose not to wear a mask when he visited the Mayo Clinic on April 28, where one was required to wear a mask to enter Mayo by that point...that was a gesture of unification? to demonstrate to all that if you are required to wear a mask, you actually don't have to, and so we are better unified! And it had nothing to do with politics.

Never yet have I seen the grotesque idea that mixes politics with mask wearing

[LTownZag]

Everyone I know of recommends distancing and masks......and nobody's said don't wear a mask. Almost universally leadership and anyone with a brain has said wear masks! Where did you get this idea??I have seen statements to the effect wherein" you do not HAVE to wear a mask".....and you don't. Never yet have I seen the grotesque idea that mixes politics with mask wearing. Maybe there some confusion over reopening the country for business and mask wearing. Media's made that a political item. "you care about money more than health" lol.....

WEAR a mask! But there are 8 states who've done nothing and they do have low low infection and death rates (for whatever death rates mean in these confusing data sets) . Most people don't require commands from on on high to wear a mask in an infectious environment. Just common sense. No offense intended but I had to drop a note on this one.

The vice president infamously refused to wear a mask while touring the Mayo Clinic while it had COVID patients.

Has the president ever worn as mask in public? He refused to wear a mask while on a tour of the large Honeywell mask factory. When he first mentioned masks at his press briefing, he emphasized that he himself would not be wearing one:

“It’s going to be really a voluntary thing,” Trump said during a White House briefing with reporters.

“You can do it. You don't have to do it. I'm choosing not to do it, but some people may want to do it, and that's OK,” he said.

As far as republican or conservative leaders explicitly criticizing masks, as opposed to prominently and uniformly not wearing them on the senate floor, etc, the editor of the american conservative magazine "First Things" (Russell Reno) just wrote:

By the way, the WWII vets did not wear masks. They're men, not cowards. Masks=enforced cowardice.

Just to reinforce. Talked to my son in Seattle. The mask culture if fear driven. Masks+cowardice. It's a regime dominate by fear of infection and fear of causing of infection. Both are species of cowardice.

Look, let's face it. There are those who are terrified, and those who are not. Where do you stand? Terror or a more reasonable position? Will you visit our mother? If so, the mask is a PC gesture. If not, you are a moral monster.

MDABE80, I am glad you support mask wearing and think it is wise and shouldn't be seen as a political partisan issue. That's something you and I agree on and I am encouraged by that agreement. Currently democrat-identifying people are 20% more likely than republican identifying people to wear masks.

[LTownZag]

IN NYC, we knew the elderly would have the highest victims......especially with the "stuffing" of the elderly in high risk nursing homes. ... EVen if the 100 K death is accurate, we also know the majority of the elderly ( 80-90% of the deaths) had other major diseases that killed them.

NYC has had a relatively high number of young deaths and a low percent of its deaths occur among retired folks or anyone old enough for a nursing home. It's a strange USA outlier for the young age of the victims. Majority dead have been under 75.

Many foreign, especially poorer countries are also seeing younger-skewing deaths (similar or even younger than NYC)

In Brazil, 15 percent of deaths have been people under 50 — a rate more than 10 times greater than in Italy or Spain. In Mexico, the trend is even more stark: Nearly one-fourth of the dead have been between 25 and 49. In India, officials reported this month that nearly half of the dead were younger than 60. In Rio de Janeiro state, more than two-thirds of hospitalizations are for people younger than 49.

-People under 75 made up just over half of of NYC's deaths as of 5/13.

-People under 75 consistently make up a 35-40% of national deaths (SEE JP's chart below).

-People under 65 account for 29% of Texas deaths.

Unless you classify elderly as persons in their 60s, I don't believe any state or country in the world has had 80%+ deaths among the elderly.

[JPtheBeasta]

I wouldn't assume just because one county has 4.65% seroprevalence that the same value can be carried over to any other area in the US.

With the New York City serology studies providing a different conclusion about the death rate, there's only a few plausible explanations. The LA county study is overestimating the seroprevalence, the reported deaths in New York City are overestimated, or there are different strains with different IFRs.

The calculation of estimated deaths and estimated seroprevalence in NYC gives us an IFR of 1.4%:
https://www.worldometers.info/corona...us-death-rate/

Population demographics seem to play into the death rate, if it is accurate that places with higher numbers of African American patients have the highest death rates.

I agree that generalizability of the data is a caveat, although everywhere these studies look it suggests a higher prevalence than the PCR tests suggest, which is the major point. This is except for the study of MLB employees, which was much lower (I think 0.7% prevalence). It stands to reason that the prevalence is more than is detected by PCR when many persons are asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms to the tune of 80%. It's a crude calculation that oversimplifies the data but one could divide the total number of PCR-confirmed cases and divide by .2 to get a ballpark of what the actual cases might be in this country. The antibody numbers were obviously worse in New York, and at a homeless shelter in Boston, and I would never use these numbers to extrapolate out to the rest of the country.

In regard to NYC, the 1% death rate is much lower than the case fatality rate of 6.5% that is produced when looking at the PCR numbers. New York is tough, in my opinion, because it has been an outlier. I never assumed that their antibody numbers could be generalized to the rest of the country. California has numbers that are more in line with other antibody testing areas, or areas when closer to universal PCR testing was done.

California has had one of the most strict lockdowns, so there's some conversation that will be had about that, I'm sure.

[MDABE80]

NYC has had a relatively low percent of its deaths occur among retired folks or anyone old enough for a nursing home. It's a strange outlier for the young age of the victims. Most have been under 75.

People under 75 made up just over half of of NYC's deaths as of 5/13.
People under 75 consistently make up a 30-35% of national deaths.
People under 65 account for 29% of Texas deaths.

Unless you classify elderly as persons in their 60s, I don't believe any state or country in the world has had 80%+ deaths among the elderly.

I think u need some references on these statements. So go find solid references and get back to us.

[JPtheBeasta]

NYC has had a relatively low percent of its deaths occur among retired folks or anyone old enough for a nursing home. It's a strange outlier for the young age of the victims. Most have been under 75.

People under 75 made up just over half of of NYC's deaths as of 5/13.
People under 75 consistently make up a 30-35% of national deaths.
People under 65 account for 29% of Texas deaths.

Unless you classify elderly as persons in their 60s, I don't believe any state or country in the world has had 80%+ deaths among the elderly.

According to the Beer's criteria, as provided by the American Geriatric Society, anyone over 65 is included in the "older adult" population. The Merck manual also accepts this definition when discussing geriatrics.

I've include the following chart again so persons don't get distracted by your switching of data sets between NY, the U.S. and Texas.

Covid Deaths By Age Group:

Data from the CDC website, accessed 5/17/2020 [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/c...kly/index.htm]

Age Group	Covid Deaths	Population	Percent of All Covid Deaths	Percent of Age Group	Deaths Per 100K Persons
<1	4	3,848,208	0.01%	0.00%	0.10
1-4	2	15,962,067	0.00%	0.00%	0.01
5-14	6	41,075,169	0.01%	0.00%	0.01
15-24	59	42,970,800	0.11%	0.00%	0.14
25-34	388	45,697,774	0.71%	0.00%	0.85
35-44	973	41,277,888	1.77%	0.00%	2.36
45-54	2,772	41,631,699	5.05%	0.01	6.658
55-64	6,725	42,272,636	12.26%	0.02%	15.91
65-74	11,524	30,492,316	21.01%	0.04%	37.79
75-84	14,930	15,394,374	27.21%	0.10%	96.98
85<	17478	6,544,503	31.86%	0.27%	267.06
All	54861	327,167,434	100%	0.02%	16.77

[MDABE80]

Hugely important data JP. I do not trust flimsy references like often comes from LTown. What you just posted tracks nicely with the cumulative Johns Hopkins data.

[ZagaZags]

I will wear a mask out of respect for others. I am no coward.

[willandi]

According to the Beer's criteria, as provided by the American Geriatric Society, anyone over 65 is included in the "older adult" population. The Merck manual also accepts this definition when discussing geriatrics.

I've include the following chart again so persons don't get distracted by your switching of data sets between NY, the U.S. and Texas.

Covid Deaths By Age Group:

Data from the CDC website, accessed 5/17/2020 [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/c...kly/index.htm]

Age Group	Covid Deaths	Population	Percent of All Covid Deaths	Percent of Age Group	Deaths Per 100K Persons
<1	4	3,848,208	0.01%	0.00%	0.10
1-4	2	15,962,067	0.00%	0.00%	0.01
5-14	6	41,075,169	0.01%	0.00%	0.01
15-24	59	42,970,800	0.11%	0.00%	0.14
25-34	388	45,697,774	0.71%	0.00%	0.85
35-44	973	41,277,888	1.77%	0.00%	2.36
45-54	2,772	41,631,699	5.05%	0.01	6.658
55-64	6,725	42,272,636	12.26%	0.02%	15.91
65-74	11,524	30,492,316	21.01%	0.04%	37.79
75-84	14,930	15,394,374	27.21%	0.10%	96.98
85<	17478	6,544,503	31.86%	0.27%	267.06
All	54861	327,167,434	100%	0.02%	16.77

Is the rate of death per age group for among those infected with Covid? That is what I have assumed.

It makes limiting the infection paramount. If the overall death rate of 16.7 per 100K is accurate (and I have no reason to assume it is not) trying to get to the 80% for herd immunity implies a very large final loss of life number, unless my feeble brain is missing something or I am overthinking this.

Nonetheless, I am and will be, wearing a mask, for now and the foreseeable future.

[willandi]

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/ne...TyuNp6ojDEehxE

"The number of COVID-19 cases in the United States continues to climb as more states are easing isolation restrictions. The total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. exceeded 1.5 million on Monday. According to Reuters, American deaths now total more than 91,000 due to the novel coronavirus. 13 states saw a rise in infections this week, with Tennessee seeing the biggest weekly surge of 33%. Louisiana saw a surge in cases of 25%, and Texas reported 22% more cases than in the first week of May. Michigan saw new cases climb by 18% after five weeks of declines."

[JPtheBeasta]

Is the rate of death per age group for among those infected with Covid? That is what I have assumed.

It makes limiting the infection paramount. If the overall death rate of 16.7 per 100K is accurate (and I have no reason to assume it is not) trying to get to the 80% for herd immunity implies a very large final loss of life number, unless my feeble brain is missing something or I am overthinking this.

Nonetheless, I am and will be, wearing a mask, for now and the foreseeable future.

I added the deaths per 100k because the numbers are often reported that way and I thought it would be helpful for comparison. The percent of age group is the Covid deaths in the age group divided by the number of persons in that age group. The comments that I think relate to your concerns that I would make are: The 16.77 deaths per 100k is skewed greatly by the higher risk age groups. You would not try to get herd immunity via that group. You want the low risk persons— all of the those 54 and under, and even the older folks with no comorbidities*— to get the disease. This would protect the vulnerable population. You would still take measures to protect those higher risk groups.

This assumes that getting the disease confers immunity to the person, which is the principal behind vaccines and is what happens with every other disease. This doesn’t have to be total immunity, but could be the difference between a bad infection and a light one. The reason this virus was so scary at the start is because it was different enough that we weren’t supposed to have any defense against it, but this should be different the next go around, say next fall.

*Death and hospitalization data shows that at least one, and most often two or more comorbidities are present).