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2020-04-29 Science & Technology
Antibody tests support what's been obvious: Covid-19 is much more lethal than the flu
h/t Instapundit
[WP] - Results from coronavirus antibody tests have started to trickle in, and they bolster the consensus among disease experts that the virus is significantly more lethal than seasonal flu and has seeded the most disruptive pandemic in the past century.

"I think it is the worst pandemic since 1918," said Cecile Viboud, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center, alluding to the "Great Influenza" pandemic that claimed an estimated 675,000 lives in the United States.

The new serological data, which is provisional, suggests that coronavirus infections greatly outnumber confirmed covid-19 cases, potentially by a factor of 10 or more. Many people experience mild symptoms or none at all, and never get the standard diagnostic test with a swab up the nose, so they’re missed in the official covid-19 case counts.

Higher infection rates mean lower lethality risk on average. But the corollary is that this is a very contagious disease capable of being spread by people who are asymptomatic — a challenge for communities hoping to end their shutdowns.

The crude case fatality rates, covering people who have a covid-19 diagnosis, have been about 6 percent globally as well as in the United States. But when all the serological data is compiled and analyzed, the fatality rate among people who have been infected could be less than 1 percent.

But as infectious disease experts point out, even a seemingly low rate can translate into a shockingly large death toll if the virus spreads through a major portion of the population.
Doesn't even have to be a major portion - just an essential one, as we're seeing with meat packing plants.
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Monday that the latest antibody numbers in New York City indicate that 25 percent of the population of 8.8 million has already been infected.
Chinese made antibody tests?
The city has recorded more than 12,000 confirmed covid-19 deaths, and lists another 5,000 as probable deaths. That is an infection fatality rate between 0.5 and 0.8 percent, depending on which death toll is factored in. (A spike in all-cause deaths in recent weeks also suggests that some coronavirus-related deaths have not been captured by mortality statistics.)

...Epidemiologists have said somewhere between 40 to 70 percent of the population will likely become infected in the next couple of years if there is no vaccine and the public does not take aggressive measures to limit the spread of the virus.

"Do the math!" said Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist who has been studying the coronavirus since early in the outbreak.

Shaman and his colleagues have developed a model of the coronavirus spread that estimates that only 1 in 12 infections in the United States have been documented in official counts. That leads to an infection fatality rate of 0.6 percent, he said — a figure that roughly matches what has been seen in New York City.

At that rate, the United States could potentially experience 1 million deaths if half the population became infected and no efforts were made to limit the contagion through social distancing, a vaccine or proven therapeutics, Shaman said.
But, at least, the Economy would be saved!
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-29 04:02|| || Front Page|| [11133 views ]  Top

#1 1 million excess deaths?

I think not. Most dying saved <6 months of life.

The economic shutdown has harmed wealth creation considerably and thus health creation and for vastly longer than 6 months. The death toll for the over-reaction of the government "immune system" will lower life expectancy vastly more than COVID has with it's FLU * 6 potency.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2020-04-29 05:47||   2020-04-29 05:47|| Front Page Top

#2 There is no Economy without trust. There is no trust without Social Contract. Israeli economic recovery, long term Swedish depression, and Chinese collapse will illustrate this point.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-29 06:05||   2020-04-29 06:05|| Front Page Top

#3 Sweden's economic problems are caused by islamic-origin invaders not chinese.

Group punishing ALL the young/healthy to slightly postpone death of the extremely sick is a hyper optimised way to destroy any so-called "social contract".

Quarantine the vulnerable is the only way, especially now the enormous state over-reaction (and harm it caused) is being revealed.
Posted by Bright Pebbles 2020-04-29 07:12||   2020-04-29 07:12|| Front Page Top

#4 Group punishing ALL the young/healthy

Actually, I think lockdown is of immeasurable benefit to young people. It gives them opportunity to examine their life and to reevaluate their goals. If even 10% of MBA students decide to drop from college and learn a trade, it'll be a large benefit to society at large (as well as to them personally).
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-29 07:50||   2020-04-29 07:50|| Front Page Top

#5 The logic in the post is a bit confused if you ask me. As they find more people have Wuhan with no effects the lower the lethality gets. The greater transmission rate doesn't really matter if the super-vast majority comes out without knowing they even had the thing.
Posted by Unusonter Thud1455 2020-04-29 10:24||   2020-04-29 10:24|| Front Page Top

#6 ^ exactly. The disease is much less lethal than the absurd doomsday models assumed. In the US we are likely to have no more than 100,000 COVID deaths, making this hardly worse than a bad flu season.

The epicenter of this flu bug is San Francisco and the two counties to its south, which house in total nearly a million Chinese / Chinese-Americans, a large percentage of whom traveled to China during the early days of the coronavirus's spread.

Out of 3.5 million people i.e. roughly 1% of US population this SF / Peninsula region has a grand total of 175 deaths. This us the epicenter. Do the math: it simply is NOT much more lethal than a bad flu strain.
Posted by Lex 2020-04-29 10:39||   2020-04-29 10:39|| Front Page Top

#7 "You will have to test well in your blood to participate in society." Does this sound sort of like the "one drop" rule or Aryan Master Race bullshit?
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-04-29 10:44||   2020-04-29 10:44|| Front Page Top

#8  the United States could potentially experience 1 million deaths if half the population became infected

Bye, bye baristas.
Posted by Skidmark 2020-04-29 11:51||   2020-04-29 11:51|| Front Page Top

#9 Actually, I think lockdown is of immeasurable benefit to young people. It gives them opportunity to examine their life and to reevaluate their goals. If even 10% of MBA students decide to drop from college and learn a trade, it'll be a large benefit to society at large (as well as to them personally).

I think that's the biggest load of bullshit I've come across.

Learn to weld? That's your answer? Ever welded before? Some college boy who just figured out which end of the hammer to use is going to just start framing? Generations sold into indentured servitude for Lucky Numbers is not noble.

You want problems - teach the youngsters to be cows, ruin the entrepreneurial efforts of the middle age and tell them Mega-Low Mart is hiring, make the elders who worked their whole life live their remainder locked in their house, watch those living off savings crash with the value of the dollar, let's watch hospitals and better practice agriculture get shut down but hey Big Chicken Burger is hiring.

Learn to trade. You know, some people just spent four years in trade school like fabrication where the plants are closed and might open. Or culinary school and if you can't name the five mother sauces off the top of your head right now you have no clue how tough that course is. And those jobs don't get teleconferenced in. Who do you want working on your jet engines, the dude who started taking apart engines with his dad at age 10, or the 22 year old college drop out who thinks this is a good time to find out what a spark plug does?

There is a trade joke in these parts - the difference between a farmer and a welder is a welder knows he can't farm.

The real travesty is the person who was like, "4-6 weeks, got it because China is Asshole. Doable, my storm season budget, but doable." is on their third billing cycle being told by politicians with fresh haircuts and blatantly violating not just quarantine guidelines but the very basic precautions, telling them "Nah, we need another 2 to 4 months so we can get the numbers to match the models." being told, "Economy, nah it'll be fine."

Because if and when a real outbreak happens, there are going to be a lot of people who will say shove the models up your ass. Because those people, right now, are being told they must accept the very real and imminent act of becoming modern debt slaves instead of having the choice to maybe, maybe get sick enough to test for Wuhan Flu, and then maybe be sick enough to visit hospital, and then maybe be one of those who are legitimately susceptible to the point they could die.

Telling people that they must lose everything they had, worked for, and ever wanted because some mythical model justifies the end of their livelihoods - for something they are going to catch anyways - is not a good sales pitch.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-04-29 13:02||   2020-04-29 13:02|| Front Page Top

#10 A fine straw man swksvolFF. Now, that you've knocked it down, take a victory lap.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-29 13:06||   2020-04-29 13:06|| Front Page Top

#11 @ #9 - Absolutely that is big-time bovine egesta.
Posted by Clem 2020-04-29 13:29||   2020-04-29 13:29|| Front Page Top

#12 Yeah,why learn a trade when you can sit in a room, mash buttons, and complain your avocado toast is cold.
Posted by bbrewer126  2020-04-29 14:06||   2020-04-29 14:06|| Front Page Top

#13 What a load of horseshit that stripping healthy people's civil liberties provides them a chance to reflect. If this exaggerated crisis has proven one thing, its that there is not even ONE real *leader* among the 50 governors of these United States. Were there even ONE, there would be at least ONE state that would have said "No thanks" to this exaggerated bullshit.
Posted by Crusader 2020-04-29 14:17||   2020-04-29 14:17|| Front Page Top

#14 What a load of horseshit that stripping healthy people's civil liberties provides them a chance to reflect.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-04-29 14:19||   2020-04-29 14:19|| Front Page Top

#15 The new divide: Those who do versus those who spontaneously ejaculate over telling you what to do.
Posted by M. Murcek 2020-04-29 17:54||   2020-04-29 17:54|| Front Page Top

#16 Those who do are saying, Enough, we're gonna get back to work
Posted by Lex 2020-04-29 18:38||   2020-04-29 18:38|| Front Page Top

#17 Per above, the latest fatalities:population ratio for coastal California counties, as of April 27:

San Francisco/San Mateo/Santa Clara:
1:20,000
(178 out of 3.5m pop.)

Napa: 1:67,500 (2 out of 137,000 pop.)

San Luis Obispo:
1:283,000 (1 out of 283,000 pop.)
Posted by Lex 2020-04-29 18:40||   2020-04-29 18:40|| Front Page Top

#18 That's how it works out here, its no time for victory laps, and it doesn't help to mock people getting their heads held in the toilet getting financial swirlies.

To think that people who put years into getting an MBA, no small thing, will just shrug and get a trade job anywhere other than Swift Trucking is wishing, hoping, which are not methods.

Its as wishful as thinking that a National Guard unit can be re-purposed for the trade of Large Animal Meat Processing, and it will cause even more problems.

Ford County, Kansas which includes Dodge City has a population 2010 of about 34,000. There are a total of some 550 confirmed cases even with the expedited testing of food source hubs. Last I heard, 1 hospitalization. No deaths.

If the models are good, including demographics, they would have indicated these trouble spots months ago like my campfire did. So only within the last week policy makers are making this revelation? That isn't good policy, in fact it is more like jerking the wheel.

I don't expect people outside, or even most inside, the United States to understand the culture which sweeps from Central Canada to Central Texas to understand, which is why I report; same as the Greensburg Tornado Outbreak of 2007 when college students were turned away because they lack basic tool and dangerous work place safety skills. This area is trade school central, because when the harvester breaks down in the middle of a wheat field in 100 degree heat we can't just call the AAA Auto Shop. There is a certain about of nobility in that endeavor I have not seen otherwhere.

I know how to weld. If I called myself a Welder, people would throw slag at me. It takes thousands of hours of practice, usually beginning at an early age, and numerous costly fkups to get a good bead on any metal worked on. One has to know metallurgical properties, effects of weather, and of equipment used to make it look like Hollywood does.

And there was a time when the Kansas Guard would have had enough members who were familiar with animal processing during their childhoods to fill that gap, but not today.

Same with any processing, especially in food service. It takes practice, skill, and a bit of abstract thinking to properly and practically get the right cuts of meat.

Now, I'm not a great thinker, I've know too many of them to think otherwise. I do have people ask my opinion, and there is no doubt the expertise here at Rantburg is a contributing factor. I also understand that historic traditions, what we call Culture, have an impact, such as a Quincenera, as a one-time celebration event danger be damned. I even have some olde time Great Inland Sea Salt over there to add as necessary, and I do try to point that out when appropriate. The descendants of pioneers, scouts, both environmental and financial, opinions are all open to discussion.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-04-29 23:09||   2020-04-29 23:09|| Front Page Top

#19 Annnnnd.....Time.

Not sure how many life skills I learned at my first not-family job of dishwashing, such as how to properly un-clog a toilet. The most important, what I didn't want to do as a career.

Those are your local restaurants, not Big Chicken Burger, but I've know plenty of people who did work for BCB who would say the same thing. Night y'all.
Posted by swksvolFF 2020-04-29 23:25||   2020-04-29 23:25|| Front Page Top

18:32 technochitlin
18:19 Angstrom
17:48 49 Pan
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