Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

It suffers from two serious flaws: (1) using total cases instead of per capita (so that larger countries are inherently overrepresented), and

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(2) it fails to give the context that some countries (USA) have accelerated testing tremendously, leading to a big rise in cases (meaning the big rise was in test results, not in cases). So the graph is highly distorted.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

Question: where is the daily info graph Kull and others have posted that shows daily testing trends? Thx

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ORIGINAL: obvert

Question: where is the daily info graph Kull and others have posted that shows daily testing trends? Thx

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ORIGINAL: Kull

quote:

ORIGINAL: obvert

Question: where is the daily info graph Kull and others have posted that shows daily testing trends? Thx

Actually you were probably looking for this chart. As noted in an earlier post, I find the Spanish totals to be highly suspect:

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

A study regarding travel bans, social distancing, etc in China.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20029843v3

quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I found the presentation yesterday interesting. When it came under criticism for a variety of things, it caught me by surprise. My immediate thought was, "Oh, no, I posted something that was flawed. Darn it."

But as I've looked at the criticisms carefully, and read back through my original post, I've discovered that the criticisms are flawed and that those who make them have various levels of bias or misunderstanding.

That helps me to better understand perspectives going forward and knowing how to present data.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

I saw the article at the link a few days ago - an analysis of the passengers on the Diamond Princess that was quarantined in Japan (?) back in January (?). I don't know anything about the author or his qualifications (probably not medical), but this raises a lot of questions about the response to COVID-19.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/

Some highlights - "some 83% (82.7% – 83.9%) of the passengers never got the disease at all"

"slightly less than half the passengers (48.6% ± 2.0%) who got the disease showed NO symptoms"

"There were a total of 7 deaths among those on board. All of them were in people over seventy"

7/~3635 = .0019257 or 1.9% death rate (3635 is my estimate from the first graph of the total number of pax. IIRC ALL of them were tested before they were allowed to leave the ship.

A question - the 83% who didn't get the disease; are they still carriers? Or did they test negative? The article doesn't say. I would assume that those who showed no symptoms WERE infected AND were carriers, and could infect others when they got home.

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ORIGINAL: Kull

I am not a medical professional, but to me the Diamond Princess is the closest thing we have to a coronavirus infection laboratory. Or at least a contained environment, where you might be able to look at the numbers and draw some conclusions. As far as we can tell, the virus began with a single passenger who boarded on 1/20 in Japan and departed in Hong Kong on 1/25. He was diagnosed in Hong Kong 6 days later, which is when the cruise line was notified and the saga began.

There's an article (mostly anecdote and innuendo) on what happened aboard during this period. Although readers are advised to have a large grain of salt close to hand, it does suggest that there was a fair amount of chaos involving the process of testing and treatment, and the entire environment was hardly "hospital sterile". Which, for our purposes, is actually kind of ideal since in that sense it's pretty close to what we're going to see as and when this thing rises up elsewhere.

Some numbers:

- 2/1: There were 3700 passengers and crew when the cruise was routed back to Yokohama
- 2/4: The ship arrived and was placed in quarantine.
- 2/6: Announced that 41 passengers/crew tested positive (41)
- 2/9: 66 more positives (107)
- 2/11: 39 positives (146)
- 2/16: 67 positives (213). "High risk" individuals identified, 67 of which tested negative, 12 of these to be disembarked.
- 2/18: 169 positives (382)
- 2/19: Quarantine period ends. 600 "guests" who tested negative allowed to depart (will undergo additional 14 day quarantine in their home countries)

At that point I can't find additional sources to give us the daily counts, but as of today, this website says the numbers are:

- 3/1: 705 cases, 7 deaths, 100 recovered, 36 "serious/critical"

So let's do some math:

- If we assume the contagion started on 1/20, it took 43 days to infect 705 of 3700 (19%)
- 7 of 705 have died, so the mortality rate (among those exposed) is 1%
- At least some of the 36 "serious/critical" cases could still succumb, so the worst case fatality rate would be 6% (although that's clearly unlikely)

The takeaways:

- "Local" fatality rates could get pretty high when/if this thing gets into vulnerable populations. Nursing homes or old age communities could be scary places.

- It's hard to imagine any environment "more communal" than a cruise ship, yet with unrecognized and uncontained spread underway for 16 days, we still have a pretty low contagion rate which appears to have maxed out at 19%.

- That's not nothing, but it certainly implies that if people take reasonable precautions, they should be pretty safe. And for those who are not in the "high risk" categories, it's more likely to hit you as an extremely nasty case of the flu. Unpleasant yes, but not the end of the world.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kull

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

I saw the article at the link a few days ago - an analysis of the passengers on the Diamond Princess that was quarantined in Japan (?) back in January (?). I don't know anything about the author or his qualifications (probably not medical), but this raises a lot of questions about the response to COVID-19.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/

Some highlights - "some 83% (82.7% – 83.9%) of the passengers never got the disease at all"

"slightly less than half the passengers (48.6% ± 2.0%) who got the disease showed NO symptoms"

"There were a total of 7 deaths among those on board. All of them were in people over seventy"

7/~3635 = .0019257 or 1.9% death rate (3635 is my estimate from the first graph of the total number of pax. IIRC ALL of them were tested before they were allowed to leave the ship.

A question - the 83% who didn't get the disease; are they still carriers? Or did they test negative? The article doesn't say. I would assume that those who showed no symptoms WERE infected AND were carriers, and could infect others when they got home.

Back on March 2nd (feels like years ago) I posted an analysis of this, and I still think it's relevant:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kull

I am not a medical professional, but to me the Diamond Princess is the closest thing we have to a coronavirus infection laboratory. Or at least a contained environment, where you might be able to look at the numbers and draw some conclusions. As far as we can tell, the virus began with a single passenger who boarded on 1/20 in Japan and departed in Hong Kong on 1/25. He was diagnosed in Hong Kong 6 days later, which is when the cruise line was notified and the saga began.

There's an article (mostly anecdote and innuendo) on what happened aboard during this period. Although readers are advised to have a large grain of salt close to hand, it does suggest that there was a fair amount of chaos involving the process of testing and treatment, and the entire environment was hardly "hospital sterile". Which, for our purposes, is actually kind of ideal since in that sense it's pretty close to what we're going to see as and when this thing rises up elsewhere.

Some numbers:

- 2/1: There were 3700 passengers and crew when the cruise was routed back to Yokohama
- 2/4: The ship arrived and was placed in quarantine.
- 2/6: Announced that 41 passengers/crew tested positive (41)
- 2/9: 66 more positives (107)
- 2/11: 39 positives (146)
- 2/16: 67 positives (213). "High risk" individuals identified, 67 of which tested negative, 12 of these to be disembarked.
- 2/18: 169 positives (382)
- 2/19: Quarantine period ends. 600 "guests" who tested negative allowed to depart (will undergo additional 14 day quarantine in their home countries)

At that point I can't find additional sources to give us the daily counts, but as of today, this website says the numbers are:

- 3/1: 705 cases, 7 deaths, 100 recovered, 36 "serious/critical"

So let's do some math:

- If we assume the contagion started on 1/20, it took 43 days to infect 705 of 3700 (19%)
- 7 of 705 have died, so the mortality rate (among those exposed) is 1%
- At least some of the 36 "serious/critical" cases could still succumb, so the worst case fatality rate would be 6% (although that's clearly unlikely)

The takeaways:

- "Local" fatality rates could get pretty high when/if this thing gets into vulnerable populations. Nursing homes or old age communities could be scary places.

- It's hard to imagine any environment "more communal" than a cruise ship, yet with unrecognized and uncontained spread underway for 16 days, we still have a pretty low contagion rate which appears to have maxed out at 19%.

- That's not nothing, but it certainly implies that if people take reasonable precautions, they should be pretty safe. And for those who are not in the "high risk" categories, it's more likely to hit you as an extremely nasty case of the flu. Unpleasant yes, but not the end of the world.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

A question - the 83% who didn't get the disease; are they still carriers? Or did they test negative? The article doesn't say. I would assume that those who showed no symptoms WERE infected AND were carriers, and could infect others when they got home.

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ORIGINAL: Kull

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ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

A question - the 83% who didn't get the disease; are they still carriers? Or did they test negative? The article doesn't say. I would assume that those who showed no symptoms WERE infected AND were carriers, and could infect others when they got home.

Specific to that question, 100% of passengers and crew were tested. Going one step further, 100% of those who tested negative were put into a mandatory, enforced (as in they were put in camps/hotels) quarantine. Do you remember the video from a few weeks ago, showing the drunks in Ukraine attacking a convoy of buses? The people on board those buses were Diamond Princess passengers enroute to an old TB ward in the Ukraine where they would be quarantined and undergo observation. Most of them weren't even Ukrainians.

So it's highly unlikely that any of the Diamond Princess passengers and crew were able to infect their home populations. I doubt that any left quarantine without taking and passing a test AFTER the quarantine period ended.

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ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

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ORIGINAL: Kull

quote:

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

A question - the 83% who didn't get the disease; are they still carriers? Or did they test negative? The article doesn't say. I would assume that those who showed no symptoms WERE infected AND were carriers, and could infect others when they got home.

Specific to that question, 100% of passengers and crew were tested. Going one step further, 100% of those who tested negative were put into a mandatory, enforced (as in they were put in camps/hotels) quarantine. Do you remember the video from a few weeks ago, showing the drunks in Ukraine attacking a convoy of buses? The people on board those buses were Diamond Princess passengers enroute to an old TB ward in the Ukraine where they would be quarantined and undergo observation. Most of them weren't even Ukrainians.

So it's highly unlikely that any of the Diamond Princess passengers and crew were able to infect their home populations. I doubt that any left quarantine without taking and passing a test AFTER the quarantine period ended.

Kull, thanks for that. With 1665 messages, and counting, and a 70+ year old memory, I don't recall seeing your earlier message.

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

It can't be that. That number almost certainly applies to just hospitalized cases. It was very weirdly low and stable for a week or so. Then a sudden jump today. Rational trends can't explain it. It's human error or neglect almost certainly, either in how the USA compiled or reported or by the table creator in updating.

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ORIGINAL: geofflambert

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/childrens-covid-19-risks-unique-chinese-studies-find

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/us-studies-offer-clues-covid-19-swift-spread-severity

I'm curious about death-by-pneumonia for this. In the case of the flu, pneumonia is frequently caused by secondary infections, but nobody seems to have good numbers on how often that's the case. I'm wondering if Covid 19 is more likely to cause pneumonia directly and thus be the direct cause of death. Sure would like to know average length of time between infection and death, I'm suspecting it's shorter with this.

Copper is proving (as with other pathogens) to be a lethal surface to the virus. Wish all hospitals could switch from plastic, aluminum and stainless steel surfaces to copper, brass and bronze. In terms of doorknobs and push plates this would be a good thing everywhere and I hope building codes start reflecting that.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

The Spanish number here looks off considering they had about 30,000 tests done the day (or two?) before. I looked a bit farther and found a Reuters article that mentioned they have just gotten a shipment of 600k tests!

Looks like they're using them, but this mentioned it was supposed to be 80k a day. They say that 6 million more are on the way. This could be very interesting. The most proven way to slow a breakout is extensive testing, isolation and contact tracking like South Korea. Can they turn this tide?I hope so.

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ORIGINAL: Kull

quote:

ORIGINAL: obvert

The Spanish number here looks off considering they had about 30,000 tests done the day (or two?) before. I looked a bit farther and found a Reuters article that mentioned they have just gotten a shipment of 600k tests!

Looks like they're using them, but this mentioned it was supposed to be 80k a day. They say that 6 million more are on the way. This could be very interesting. The most proven way to slow a breakout is extensive testing, isolation and contact tracking like South Korea. Can they turn this tide?I hope so.

It's simply not believable. As in, "out and out lies". How does a country that has on-going out of control growth across 2/3 of it's provinces suddenly complete more tests than South Korea? A country which started testing before Spain and is the paragon of fast testing?

It wouldn't surprise me if 90% of their "tests" consisted of a thermometer.