Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[hutash]

I just heard an interview with Lawrence Wright a Pulitzer prize winning author,

he wrote a book " The end of October " about a Pandemic that starts in Asia

released today I think buddy will sell a lot of books

Phffffttt, I only read authors who win the Nobel Prize.

[simple]

Noble

[iceman]

Saying it must have a mortality rate greater than 1% is just another unsubstantiated claim at this point.

100%. Throwing around baseless numbers -high or low- is a political exercise, not a scientific one. Until there is widespread random testing suitable for statistical modeling we're flying blind. Since it's very possible to get this information it makes you wonder why it doesn't exist. Wiiful ignorance? Some people just can't read the writing on the wall...

[KQ]

I had this opportunity last weekend
I'd rather slam my dick in the car door than discus COVID-19 with another red-hatter, JFC they're brainwashed by cinnamon hitler

Pretty sure one of my friendships is over due to CV-19. Person is a YUGE Obama hater and Trump lover and that alone was challenging because she and her husband are so fervent about it but they have gone full on Qanon with this virus. Last time I spoke to her I was begging her to at least listen to Fauci but she'd rather believe Bill Gates developed the virus to bulk up his bank account.

The other day they posted on FB how great it was to see people outside without face masks.

[LeeLau]

I hear you, but that might be to get eyeballs on screens. Here's one example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carliep.../#1b28c9ea1714



or, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...e-economy.html



Would folks in the US do something like the Swedes and voluntarily SD? I guess anything is possible.

From friends with direct experience in Sweden (including a skeptical friend who works at the Karolinska Institute, a biomedical research foundation), Swedes are very much voluntarily physically distancing

[simple]

Twitter isn't news

[Benny Profane]

Yeah. Tweet deleted?

[altasnob]

So when are we finally going to come to terms with the fact that this thing kills 3-5% of the people who are infected with it? The writing is on the wall that it is far deadlier than anyone cares to admit.

Why do you think the case fatality rate, when it is all said and done, will be 3-5%? Even without a vaccine or prophylactic treatment available, as time goes on, doctors will get better at treatment. They are already using ventilators less and using treatments like putting the patient in the prone position instead. Lots of experts, such Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, estimate it at 1%. Others, like Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, thinks in the end fatality rate might be more like 0.3% to 0.5% as opposed to 1%. The recent serology tests bring it below 1%, but those all have their flaws. I believe the latest estimate from WHO is 3.4% but they acknowledge it will likely be lower.

Going way back, the Diamond Princess cruise ship closed system case study is still interesting. Nearly everyone on the ship was tested, 712 confirmed, 14 dead, gives case fatality rate of 1.9%. And that includes a bunch of old ass, unhealthy, cruise ship passengers.

No one knows for sure what the end case fatality rate will be, but 3-5% seems very pessimistic.

[Deebased]

You seem to be following this closely, so what does the data show about false positive rates with the antibody testing they're doing in New York?

I'm skeptical that the mortality rate will end up that low. And I agree completely, something that doesn't seem to get the attention is deserves is that recovering from this thing doesn't necessarily mean you're back to normal. Having compromised respiratory function would fucking blow.

There are major problems with both the antibody tests and the c19 tests.

Pretty good writeup
https://www.aruplab.com/news/4-21-20...COVID-19-Tests
but references. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2762997

It takes 2-4 weeks post symptoms or infection for a meaningfully accurate antibody result (depending somewhat on kit and lab, but its a trailing indicator in a similar if not longer timeline as deaths.

[glademaster]

So you think that right now, at this exact moment in time, 1 out of every 25 people in the United States has had the virus already?

I'm just postulating here for the sake of conversation, because this thread seems like the appropriate place for that.

[Deebased]

So you think that right now, at this exact moment in time, 1 out of every 25 people in the United States has had the virus already?

I'm just postulating here for the sake of conversation, because this thread seems like the appropriate place for that.

There's good reason to believe asymptomatic is 90+% of the case load. So one in 33 or so right now.

[GoldMember]

You sound like a fucking kook, dude.

I'm insulted! But, it's TGR and wouldn't feel normal if not insulting so, carry on.

[zartagen]

... reads astrophysics books for enjoyment)

You should check this book on astrophysics:



The science is irrefutable

[riser4]

Like scarlet fever. My father had that as a young boy. Damaged his heart and in the end that is what ended his life at 56.

My grandfather. I never met the guy. Similar deal.

[hutash]

Originally Posted by SkiCougar

... reads astrophysics books for enjoyment)

Could someone please tell cougs "Goodnight Moon" is not an astrophysics book.

[riser4]

I have missed a bunch of pages, so don't know if this has been covered, but another and very big worry is this virus appears to be causing micro embolisms and causing strokes, renal infarcts and other such clots cause subtle to not so ubtlestble organ damage that may not be reversible. Even mild cases may leave people with organ damage that comes back to haunt them later in life. Trash your kidneys or liver now, and you won't have much reserve later in life when all those years of drinking and partying really come home to roost.

So go ahead and open everything up and let people get infected, what could possibly go wrong?

A friend of ours got sick with symptoms that are a total match for trumpflu, got tested, came back negative, now has blood clots, they won't retest him. 100% coincidence or bogus test?

[jono]

The logic for the lock-down was preventing overwhelming hospital systems, right?

If we were taking a comprehensive risk management approach the reasoning behind pounding the mound would consider a lot of different risks, both positive and negative. Meaning basically anything that can vary with time (as well as some things that don't but are influenced by overall infection rate), since flattening the infection rate curve obviously moves infections out to different points in time.

Overwhelming the HC system was/is a high probability risk with demonstrable costs, but since so little data was/is available there are several other unknowns, too. Downside risks include the possibility of very high real impact rates (death, long/expensive convalescent periods, lasting impacts to health, increased long term mortality), the possibility of no lasting immunity such that follow-on waves are just as bad as the first without suppression, existence of viral reservoirs with continued transmission to humans, and I'm sure others I'm forgetting.

But the upside risks are very significant, too, and maybe more important after the initial SD period: improved treatment options, reduction of R0 through education, higher availability/effectiveness and use of PPE (wear a mask!), ability to isolate cases through testing and/or contact tracing (vs. assuming community spread), vaccines...the list goes on. Every infection that occurs after some of these upside risks are realized is better than having it occur sooner (either because these make it less dangerous or because they reduce R0, average spread from any one infection).

I'm sure you already know this, but I'll state it explicitly anyway: every risk has a probability and a cost (or benefit) and ignoring any of them is needlessly lazy (aka stupid). The quantitative value of a mitigation approach is the sum of all risk terms: each risk's potential cost or benefit times their probability of occurring without mitigation times the probability of the mitigation being effective. If a probability is small so be it, that's not an excuse to ignore it--that's how we got here in the first place. For instance, the chance of no lasting immunity might be 0.1%, but the cost if that turns out to be true could be insanely high--$30T? More? 0.1% of $30T is $30B--the kind of money we used to find significant.

As another example, if the risk of a global pandemic was 1% on, say, January 26, and the potential cost to the US Treasury was $5T if it occurred, and quarantining every incoming international traveler for 3 weeks had a 90% chance of being effective in preventing spread then the value of that measure would be:

$5T x 0.01 x 0.9 = $45B

A per traveler basis could be determined by dividing by the total number of travelers or you could separate that by country (or you could have in Jan/Feb). Allegedly 450k came from China since then, for example. But to my earlier point, multiple mitigation steps can be taken together and multiple risks can be addressed by adding their respective terms. Including the upside of killing the flu through SD.

Estimates, obviously. If there is a better/simpler approach please correct me, I'm just a random goon on the internet who'd rather be deluded by math than wishful thinking and memes of questionable origin. Sorry about the length!

[XXX-er]

Phffffttt, I only read authors who win the Nobel Prize.

Its a big coincidence he wrote & researched the book at the same time as a pandemic came out of china so he has already researched all this stuff talked to all the playas ... should sell a lot of books

[Rideski]

Seems irrelevant to pin it down to 0.8 or 0.7 etc. The question of how much this one kills, or the mutation that will be circulating in a month will kill? Could be more could be less.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/scie...-chinese-study

[Toadman]

Next time you are thinking of taking a flight...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video...36e_video.html

[funkendrenchman]

There are major problems with both the antibody tests and the c19 tests.

Pretty good writeup
https://www.aruplab.com/news/4-21-20...COVID-19-Tests
but references. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...rticle/2762997

It takes 2-4 weeks post symptoms or infection for a meaningfully accurate antibody result (depending somewhat on kit and lab, but its a trailing indicator in a similar if not longer timeline as deaths.

Aspen bought 1000 anti-body tests and decided not to use them because they will likely cause more harm than good at this point. If they aren't reliable and there is no guarantee on lasting immunity, what's the point?

[Adolf Allerbush]

Sweden’s per capita death toll is about 6-10x higher than similar countries that locked down.

Ex: 2200+ deaths in Sweden (10M pop.) vs. ~220 in Norway.

Some may say that’s acceptable. . Some would not.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bus...s-2020-4%3famp

Totally. That's how I see it as well. Some folks are acting like what the Swedes have done is some resounding success and that everyone else should follow their model. I hope that's the case, but given what you point out are people really ok with 6x-10x more death to keep the country open? And that's in Sweden where they're voluntarily SD'ing. Would American's voluntarily SD like the Swedes? My gut says no...and if that's correct then our death rate would be much higher than the Swedes it would seem.

But to your last point, that's the question...are people ok with a higher death rate, a higher rate of complications with potentially life altering effects, to keep the economy open? Maybe that's worth it? I don't know...

[k2skier112]

I know you're getting stir crazy stuck at home but try to remember to put your pants on before you go out.

Pants are for losers, jorts are for winners

[altasnob]

So you think that right now, at this exact moment in time, 1 out of every 25 people in the United States has had the virus already?

59,459 current deaths in USA. If we assume 1% case fatality rate, times this number by 100 to get realistic infected in USA, at this moment (5.9 million). This is 1.8% of the US population. So lets say approximately 1 out of every 50 people in the USA are infected at this moment. This is more realistic and falls in line with other infections disease experts' opinions.

[mcski]

Only 500 more to go before 60k deaths. Mission accomplished!