Interesting COVID numbers article – Pigg thoughts ?

[pencilneck]

HIV/AIDS

[gzz]

Sweden is less wealthy and more urban than Norway Finland and Denmark.

There’s a big random factor in covid19 too. Belgium and Lombardy got hit very hard compared to similar neighboring areas.

[The-Shoveler]

Thing is they are now the safest (with concerns of Covid) country in Europe.

Spain with the strictest lock-downs now has raging new outbreak.

[utcsox]

[quote=The-Shoveler]NY-times is saying the covid tests are far too sensitive with up to a 90% false positive rate, meanwhile hospitalization and death rates are falling like a rock.[/quote]

link, please? Which test(s) specifically have a 90% false positive rate? I find it hard to believe that testing sites use these tests if they know the false positive rate is at 90%.

[The-Shoveler]

[utcsox]

[quote=The-Shoveler]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html[/quote]

Thanks. I think a better summary of the article will be the tests are too sensitive to identity potentially infectious patients. This doesn’t mean those tests have up to 90% false positive rate.

[biggoldbear]

The “false positives” noted by the NYT article refer to cases where the viral nucleic acid was detected, but at “low” levels.
There are many reasons why a sample my have a low target amount:
1. There is high variability between samples taken, even severely ill patents have days with no/low detectable target followed and preceded by high viral load measurements.
2. Patient is at early stage of disease, some of these progress to very high viral load, some remain very low and are typically asymptomatic.
3. Patient was exposed to virus/nucleic acids, but never truly infected. (it’s estimated that it takes ~1000 infectious viral particles to cause an infection in ~50% of people)
4. True false positive- patient had no target nucleic acid, some contamination from collection through processing introduced the target. This is typically <1%(It is extremely rare for the vast majority of these tests to have false positives due to chemistry or off-target amplification)

Initially, the focus was on getting the best sensitivity possible, as the risk of a false negative spreading to others far outweighed the risk of a false positive self-isolating. Now that a single false positive can shut down a classroom/business/etc. more focus is being paid to determining if someone is truly a risk to spread to others.

The NYC article extremely overstated the utility of Ct values by themselves. While Ct values can give some semi-quantitative value, the variability between assay, specimen type, lot, etc. makes it impossible to draw any conclusions from that single number. Any test that wanted to look at viral load would need to run standards to give a quantifiable number, and the value would need to be based on copies per number of cells collected (for most sample types) to have any ability to compare.
Here is a good explanation:
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30424-2

tl;dr: The vast majority of positives came from patients with CoV-2 nucleic acid in their sample. Any effort to further stratify risk by viral load will take much more than the information we have on hand.

[biggoldbear]

With so much conflicting data/interpretations with regards to the number of cases and deaths from Covid, I tried to find the most unbiased data set, that couldn’t be influenced by testing volume or personal judgement. Looking at the overall number of deaths, it is clear that Covid-19 is very serious and deadly.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
[img_assist|nid=27228|title=US Excess deaths|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=38]
The number of excess deaths in the US closely match (and are even higher) than the Covid death tolls published. It far outpaces any flu season, you can see compared the the 2018 “bad” flu year.

If you want to see what unmitigated spread looks like, look no further than NYC where just days/weeks of exponential spread led to death rates almost 8X normal. Not to mention the even higher number of people with serious, and possibly long-lasting symptoms that didn’t die.
[img_assist|nid=27227|title=NYC Excess Deaths|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=39]

Take a look at the different states, you will see the excess deaths closely match the various outbreaks. This is not just overblown media hype, it needs to be taken seriously.

Personally, I’m not in favor of full-shutdowns except to combat severe spikes (e.g. NYC). With proper social distancing and mask-wearing, together we can push the average transmission rate below 1 and continue to live our lives.

[The-Shoveler]

IMO Lock-downs, forced biz closing and school closing is not really doing much to prevent the spread in SoCal and USA and is doing far more harm than good.

Like NYC and Sweden I think we are close to burnout.
Its about run its course IMO.
Lock-downs did not really do much IMO.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=The-Shoveler]IMO Lock-downs, forced biz closing and school closing is not really doing much to prevent the spread in SoCal and USA and is doing far more harm than good.

Like NYC and Sweden I think we are close to burnout.
Its about run its course IMO.
Lock-downs did not really do much IMO.[/quote]

LOL

[Escoguy]

I do a daily sinus rinse. A young man I know tested positive last week, my wife was briefly at the house (5 min), they both did the daily sinus rinse and are ok.

Wife never showed symptoms, probably won’t bother to test.

A guy I work with went to dinner with three men, they all tested positive, he did the daily sinus rinse and didn’t test positive.

I know it’s anecdotal but hey.

[JPJones]

[quote=Escoguy]I know it’s anecdotal but hey.[/quote]

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/rinsing-your-sinuses-neti-pots-safe

Seems like a pretty decent risk vs reward if done properly. It’s good if you have allergy problems to begin with.

[scaredyclassic]

Nap hard.
Take it ez.

[Diego Mamani]

[quote=spdrun]We never had a hard lockdown in the US … even in NYC in March-May, there were no travel restrictions to speak of, parks were open, many stores were open, de-facto outdoor dining and bars existed.

Sweden didn’t have it right. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan had it right … “soft” lockdowns combined with contact-tracing via apps, zealous testing programs, widespread mask use, etc. I don’t get why so many people are getting their titties in a bind about mask use here in the USA — it’s the socially least costly way of controlling viral spread.[/quote]

You are absolutely right!

[utcsox]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=The-Shoveler]IMO Lock-downs, forced biz closing and school closing is not really doing much to prevent the spread in SoCal and USA and is doing far more harm than good.

Like NYC and Sweden I think we are close to burnout.
Its about run its course IMO.
Lock-downs did not really do much IMO.[/quote]

LOL[/quote]

LOL is exactly right.

“Swedes are not sticking to coronavirus recommendations as well as in the spring and public gatherings will now be limited to eight people, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said, down from a previous upper limit of 300”

As a known conservative like to said, “facts don’t care about your feelings”, or in this case, opinions.

https://news.trust.org/item/20201116135516-ilta9

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