Rate of infection 50 times higher?

[DataDan]

Regardless, with the 11,372 New York City deaths cited that still puts a fatality rate at 0.6%.

Correct. My calculation error.

It's hard to know the exact number of deaths because there have been several thousand untested but had COVID symptoms that died increasing the reported COVID associated deaths to 16,388 today.

That apparently comes from the source you cited yesterday, but they cite no source, and it does not agree with either New York State or City. It is close to the City numbers, but only by including what they call "probable deaths" with no positive COVID-19 lab test. Remarkably, the City boosts its death total by about 50% compared to the State-reported total for the City by adding these. For an apples-to-apples comparison, COVID-19-positive deaths should be compared to the COVID-19-positive survey results.

 

[Dr_SLO]

Correct. My calculation error.


That apparently comes from the source you cited yesterday, but they cite no source, and it does not agree with either New York State or City. It is close to the City numbers, but only by including what they call "probable deaths" with no positive COVID-19 lab test. Remarkably, the City boosts its death total by about 50% compared to the State-reported total for the City by adding these. For an apples-to-apples comparison, COVID-19-positive deaths should be compared to the COVID-19-positive survey results.

The data are still very dynamic even at this stage in the outbreak so it's hard to keep on top of it all. The 1point3acres site pull their numbers from multiple sources but for New York they rely on data provided in the press conferences. From the City site the numbers are also confusing but it does report 10,290 deaths and 5,121 probable deaths as of 23rd April. It also states that NYC numbers provided by New York State to be 11,267 as of 22nd April. The inconsistency is infuriating and likely having negative effects on getting clear informed information to the public.

 

[Dr_SLO]

Science, one of the top tier journals in the scientific community, has a good overview of the serology tests: First antibody surveys draw fire for quality, bias. It draws attention to the limitations for several of the serology studies.

 

[Whammy]

You all notice the media will take something and parrot it word for word on just about every station that runs the story.
Journalism is dead to Whammy. No facts just parrot talk. SMH
Then you get the anger from them too. I don't watch the news to get anger from a reporter.
I don't care about their personal feelings about who what where why and when... just report the news.. it that's what they do anymore.
In the mean time Whammy is still racing the sim at home and having a blast! :teeth

 

[Whammy]

You all notice the media will take something and parrot it word for word on just about every station that runs the story.
Journalism is dead to Whammy. No facts just parrot talk. SMH
Then you get the anger from them too. I don't watch the news to get anger from a reporter.
I don't care about their personal feelings about who what where why and when... just report the news.. if that's what they do anymore.:wtf
In the mean time Whammy is still racing the sim at home and having a blast! :teeth

SMH

 

[Archimedes]

You all notice the media will take something and parrot it word for word on just about every station that runs the story.
Journalism is dead to Whammy. No facts just parrot talk. SMH
Then you get the anger from them too. I don't watch the news to get anger from a reporter.
I don't care about their personal feelings about who what where why and when... just report the news.. it that's what they do anymore.
In the mean time Whammy is still racing the sim at home and having a blast! :teeth

Assetto Corsa or iRacing?

 

[Snaggy]

A few weeks ago, I found a site listing over 200 companies working on COVID tests. This was mostly for the RNA test, for diagnosis, and the majority of vendors were in China. Antibody tests were fewer. Some of the best tech comes from China, some of the not-best too. It can be very difficult to take any action against Chinese companies if they have not delivered on their promises. The FDA normally would spend months or years approving a rapid test, but things are frantic right now and corners are being cut. Unlike Abbot Labs, these companies don’t give details about their product in English and the FDA and CDC are taking manufacturers claims at face value for now, but figure 90% specificity is adequate, in other words, one out of 10 people told they have antibody protection don’t.

Rapid tests usually use lateral flow testing systems. Lateral flow studies work by embedding antibodies in a media strip, applying the patient’s sample on the other end of the strip, adding a reagent and letting the antibody diffuse through the media to the antigen. Where the sample and antibody meet, an indicator molecule will change color if the antigen specific to the antibody is present, normally forming a line at the boundary.

You can go crazy trying to decide if you see a line or not, and considerable variation exists between testers looking for a red stripe on the Strep tests for example. Lateral flow studies relying on the eyeball are often not very sensitive, or, give false negatives, but tend to be very specific, so a positive test correlates very well with the presence of whatever the antigen is.

The sensitivity can be improved a lot by having a machine read the test, usually by measuring fluorescence releasesd by tagged antibodies. If the antigen is viral RNA, a sophisticated test can even use reverse transcriptase and PCR to amplify the RNA sequences. Putting a new machine on the market is much harder than creating a lateral flow test strip, but COVID testing capability has been successfully added to several manufacturers machines.

I think that testing is not very reliable without good design, manufacturing and quality control, and that isn’t all there yet.

 

[Whammy]

Assetto Corsa or iRacing?

Both, and I have some proprietary software built by a race engineer friend of mine.
He works for a un-named factory team..
So much fricking fun and you get a serious work out when you do the endurance races.
Typical soreness. of the upper body.
Whammy might have to go find a more comfortable race seat similar to what I use in my race car.
The side bolsters in this one I currently use are crap IMO.
Race on!

 

[Archimedes]

I'm playing Assetto Corsa and F1. I get worn out after 20 laps sometimes.

 

[The Smokester]

Here's an informal article on the IMHE (U of Washington) model:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/how-one-modeler-is-trying-to-forecast-the-toll-of-covid-19/

At least two takeaways for me. One is, despite how scrambled and imcomplete the input data are, how this modeler is trying to make the best of it.

The other is how the PI inferred demographic mortality rates using the Diamond Princess' infections as a "controlled" experimemt.

 

[Beanzy]

Here's a scary headline:

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes.

Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

 

[Butch]

Here's a scary headline:

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes.

Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

I read some of that, with the intent to evaluate it as news, or as good non fiction, or perhaps as fiction.

I wish I could see more good journalism. I’ll try to read it again later.

 

[Beanzy]

I thought it was extremely well written, sourced and researched.

 

[Snaggy]

Here's a scary headline:

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying from strokes.

Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

Not too surprising when you think of COVID as an infection of the circulatory system, specifically the Vascular Endothelium, which has manifestations in many other organ systems.

Every cell in your body is directly serviced by endothelium. It delivers oxygen and nutrients, and removes waste and byproducts. It delivers and carries chemical messages for cells, and carries away their products intended for use elsewhere.

Endothelium maintains the balance between clotting and bleeding by producing both procoagulants and anticoagulants with local effects.

It controls circulation by producing both vasoconstrictors and vasodilators. In damaged lungs, that can worsen edema and hypoxia.

It controls inflammation by regulating entry and transport of white blood cells in the circulatory system, along with producing different hormones with pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory properties.

It repairs itself by stimulating stem cell differentiation with hormones. As we age, endothelium loses some ability to repair itself and regulate circulation as above.

It would be simplistic to compare the endothelium to a road network supporting a city. It’s that, but it also controls all the intersections, signage, traffic signals, patrol cars, repairs, manages traffic flow, delivery vehicles, writes the vehicle codes, in short, every tiniest detail in delivering and removing everything for every single inhabitant of the city. It’s a balancer and a middleman.

This is why COVID will continue to surprise us with it’s severe, global effects on the body.

 

[Sharky]

Interesting to note that the virus was here in early February. About the same time as Washington.

The purpose of my post was not clear. It was a calculation to demonstrate that the Stanford serology study can't be used for extrapolation. Based on the infection fatality rate that the study estimates all people in NYC are now already infected. Highly unlikely.

I havent been following these threads super close, but I did go down and did the antibody test today. I only did so, because i got sick in February which corresponded with me traveling through seattle four times in two weeks. I was weirdly sick with unusual headaches and a rather longlasting cough. I almost never get sick so who knows.

I'll find out in 2-4 days if I have antibodies for the virus.

If so, i will look into options for donating blood if thats still a thing.

 

[GAJ]

I havent been following these threads super close, but I did go down and did the antibody test today. I only did so, because i got sick in February which corresponded with me traveling through seattle four times in two weeks. I was weirdly sick with unusual headaches and a rather longlasting cough. I almost never get sick so who knows.

I'll find out in 2-4 days if I have antibodies for the virus.

If so, i will look into options for donating blood if thats still a thing.

Let us know the results as many of us had the same "illness" at that time just after the Super Bowl.

 

[Dr_SLO]

I havent been following these threads super close, but I did go down and did the antibody test today. I only did so, because i got sick in February which corresponded with me traveling through seattle four times in two weeks. I was weirdly sick with unusual headaches and a rather longlasting cough. I almost never get sick so who knows.

I'll find out in 2-4 days if I have antibodies for the virus.

If so, i will look into options for donating blood if thats still a thing.

Let us know the results as many of us had the same "illness" at that time just after the Super Bowl.

Yes, definitely let us know. There's been a lot of talk about folk between December and February who had pretty nasty flu-like symptoms, myself included. I'm convinced I didn't have COVID despite a hacking cough. These antibody data will be useful. Did they say what sort of antibody test they were going to use? This is very interesting to me because of the enormous range of tests currently being offered.

 

[Sharky]

Yes, definitely let us know. There's been a lot of talk about folk between December and February who had pretty nasty flu-like symptoms, myself included. I'm convinced I didn't have COVID despite a hacking cough. These antibody data will be useful. Did they say what sort of antibody test they were going to use? This is very interesting to me because of the enormous range of tests currently being offered.

I dont know what test it was. Ill go back and look if I get postiive results.

 

[Yakoo752]

Never got the results from the Stanford test, called and they repeated what they told me previously.

Only if you test positive will we contact you.

Feels like it was only done to come up with data on that shitty study they did

Testing again on Friday

 

[Snaggy]

Never got the results from the Stanford test, called and they repeated what they told me previously.

Only if you test positive will we contact you.

Feels like it was only done to come up with data on that shitty study they did

Testing again on Friday

I sorta wondered if that Stanford free test thing was a way for the lab to get an idea of how good the test is. Almost seems like it should have been presented as "Enroll in trial of new lab test", instead of "get your free antibody test here".
That would be skirting with some rules maybe, to imply that people were being offered a valid test, without validating it first. We might not have heard the last on this. There are some very hard lines drawn by NIH and the FDA and others when you do a human trial.