COVID-19 #13 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Disease

[Ran]

KTH and SciLifeLab have come back with results of blood samples from Stockholm, taken on median date of April 11th, from 450 or so 20-74 year olds. Their test is the one that has very high sensitivity and specificity, according to the university, due to testing against multiple COVID-19 proteins.

 

The result is that 10% had IgG by that time, suggesting that around the end of March 10% of Stockholms population was infected. This is tracking very well with the mathematical model that predicted about 26% infected on May 5th, and the continually falling ICU and hospital cases seems suggestive that herd immunity is playing a role in the reduction of spread. They've sent out 1,000 more surveys (and really urging people to respond) of a random selection of Stockholmers to build more data.

This is very specific to Stockholm and its population of 1.2 million people, however.

  

23 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

IIRC the US intelligence agencies think that that is what happened.

No. An unnamed "senior intelligence official" claims that the majority of intelligence agencies believe this, but this official appears to be speaking only to right-wing media outlets. This is not to be trusted until more reliable outlets have the information. This is basically the Bush-era playbook of anonymous information to receptive outlets to build up a twisted case.

All ODNI (which coordinates agencies) has been willing to say is that's it no manmade or genetically manipulated, and that they believe it originated in China.

[The Anti-Targ]

There is no meaningful herd immunity at 26% infection rate in a virus that has a R0 of 2+ without infection control measures being taken. If only 1:4 people you come in contact with, randomly either has the virus already or is immune then you are still exposing 75% of the people you come in contact with. That's not herd protective in any way shape or form. If you want anything like herd immunity to start kicking in then you will want at least 2/3 of the people you randomly come in contact with to be immune. There is something else going on, or infection and hospitalization spikes come in waves.

Yesterday Sweden had 230ish new cases and 403 serious / critical cases (according to worldometer) and 10 deaths. Today it's got 404 new cases, serious / critical cases have risen to 455 and 90 deaths have been reported. Something curious has been happening with Sweden's daily new cases and daily deaths for quite a while. Both graphs have a remarkably good and regular wave pattern with pretty distinct peaks and troughs and quite a substantial amplitude. If the wave pattern continues then the daily case number is back on the rise and should reach a peak in about 3 days then start tailing off again, and the serious / critical number would do about the same.

[The Anti-Targ]

54 minutes ago, Werthead said:

It is concerning, but the alternative is that we all stay home for 2 years+, some for 5 years as the vaccine is distributed, which are both unworkable, or we let tens of millions of people die, which is also unworkable. Or we all move to New Zealand, which is also unworkable.

Phase 1 clinical trials have started on people only 5 months after the world really realised this diseases was a problem. And only 4 months after the WHO deigned to call it a pandemic. They are going to very quickly be able to tell if there is an immune response to the vaccine. It will take a bit longer to be happy that it's safe to go to phase 2.

[JoannaL]

51 minutes ago, Ran said:

All ODNI (which coordinates agencies) has been willing to say is that's it no manmade or genetically manipulated, and that they believe it originated in China.

I found an interesting and -in my opinion- balanced article about the Wuhan lab theory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/chinese-lab-conducted-extensive-research-on-deadly-bat-viruses-but-there-is-no-evidence-of-accidental-release/2020/04/30/3e5d12a0-8b0d-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html

 

from the article: "On Thursday, the U.S. intelligence community released an assessment formally concluding that the virus behind the coronavirus pandemic originated in China. While asserting that the pathogen was not man-made or genetically altered, the statement pointedly declined to rule out the possibility that the virus had escaped from the complex of laboratories in Wuhan that has been at the forefront of global research into bat-borne viruses linked to multiple epidemics over the past decade.."

So this is something not proven, but something to look into - in my opinion an international investigation would be much better and much more transparent than secret intelligence information...

 

[Ran]

43 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

There is no meaningful herd immunity at 26% infection rate in a virus that has a R0 of 2+ without infection control measures being taken.

26% reduces R from 1 to R .74. It reduces R 2 to R 1.48. And so on.

Sweden has no intention of changing its social distancing recommendations at this time. It's merely noted that the effects of herd immunity will help reduce the spread of transmission well before 60-80%.

Quote

Yesterday Sweden had 230ish new cases and 403 serious / critical cases (according to worldometer) and 10 deaths.

Worldometer reports daily deaths that are in fact as many as 10 days prior to when they happened. It is substantially better to look at the actual tabulated data from Swedish authorities, or to use rolling 7 day averages. The "waves" disappear but the earlier reported plateau in Stockholm is now clearly a decline, which matches the increasing reduction of ICU and hospital bed occupancy.

 

 

[JoannaL]

Here is the Heinsberg study now as full prepublication in english:

https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf/%24FILEh/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf

 

as mentioned before: infection/fatalty rate 0,37

that would mean around 1,8 mio infections in Germany (if you base it on the  6700 deaths)

 

 

 

[Werthead]

Herd immunity is not realistically achievable in a practical timeframe with a virus where 30-45% of people who get it are asymptomatic but the majority of that group do not produce any antibodies or very low levels of antibodies, so they have to be exposed to it again (and maybe a third time) to make sure they get the virus and then produce an effective number of antibodies. This is then pointless if they are not immune for life (which is certainly not yet proven), or if the time taken for immunity to dissipate is less than the time for a vaccine to be produced (which is probable). And if the virus mutates like the season flu and remains as fatal or becomes moreso in the process, all bets are off. Society as we know it cannot continue if hundreds of thousands of people from every age group and every walk of life are dropping dead every single year (as opposed to the flu where the annual death count is vastly smaller and mainly impacts the very elderly).

It looks like the South Korean model for contact tracing, perhaps combined with treatments using blood plasma and maybe remdesivir and other treatments as they become available, is the way out of this until a vaccine is fully available, and people are going to have to suck up the privacy issues. The countries that refuse (with the USA at the top of the list) are going to have really huge problems, ones that will become more prevalent once the death toll reaches the point where everyone has been impacted to one degree or another.

[Fez]

Per a retrospective serological test, France is now reporting they had a case all the way back on December 27 (article is in French).

If it's not a false positive, this massively changes the timeline of things. And means that maybe some of the folks who've talked about having a really bad flu in December or January actually really did have the virus.

[Zorral]

The globe is reopening.  In three months the hospitals, morgues, burial pits will be overflowing.  So what was the point of us all going through lockdown at all to just have this?

Why are They acting as though the supply of doctors, nurses and other essential personnel is infinite?

S

[Fez]

Just now, Zorral said:

The globe is reopening.  In three months the hospitals, morgues, burial pits will be overflowing.  So what was the point of us all going through lockdown at all to just have this?

Why are They acting as though the supply of doctors, nurses and other essential personnel is infinite?

Because our leaders, at least in the US, are fucking morons. They didn't do the work to prepare people for the enormity of the task and they didn't do the work on their end to get the infrastructure in place to have a safe re-opening. In some countries, maybe things will work out; especially if they keep heavy boarder restrictions in place. Here in the US, we're just giving up though:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-updates.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20200504&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta&regi_id=45647227&segment_id=26577&user_id=df3c2b8d0a66a280f12aa869bceffc0e

Quote

 

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

 

 

[rotting sea cow]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

Per a retrospective serological test, France is now reporting they had a case all the way back on December 27 (article is in French).

If it's not a false positive, this massively changes the timeline of things. And means that maybe some of the folks who've talked about having a really bad flu in December or January actually really did have the virus.

This is freaking weird. Someone in this forum was saying that there was a weird pneumonia outbreak back in November. Maybe the Chinese are right and it didn't come from China? But on the other hand, why the problems only started in end of January (for China) and March for the rest of the World.

Maybe there is a similar virus, creating a very similar immune response? Just wild speculation

 

[rotting sea cow]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

There is no meaningful herd immunity at 26% infection rate in a virus that has a R0 of 2+ without infection control measures being taken. If only 1:4 people you come in contact with, randomly either has the virus already or is immune then you are still exposing 75% of the people you come in contact with. That's not herd protective in any way shape or form. If you want anything like herd immunity to start kicking in then you will want at least 2/3 of the people you randomly come in contact with to be immune. There is something else going on, or infection and hospitalization spikes come in waves.

Thing is, that people do not interact randomly with other people. There are segment of the population with more interaction and the disease will burn through these people faster than through the rest of population, slowing the spread. Being the Swedish culturally more socially distanced plus additional measures, it might have already burned through the fuse and now will go through the candle wick.

 

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Yesterday Sweden had 230ish new cases and 403 serious / critical cases (according to worldometer) and 10 deaths. Today it's got 404 new cases, serious / critical cases have risen to 455 and 90 deaths have been reported. Something curious has been happening with Sweden's daily new cases and daily deaths for quite a while. Both graphs have a remarkably good and regular wave pattern with pretty distinct peaks and troughs and quite a substantial amplitude. If the wave pattern continues then the daily case number is back on the rise and should reach a peak in about 3 days then start tailing off again, and the serious / critical number would do about the same.

I've seen that too. My guess is just reporting of the cases. Most of the countries show a slowdown on weekends too.

 

[Zorral]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-updates.html

Quote

 

The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.
As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June
1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

“There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow,” the C.D.C. warned.

The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation right back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system grew overloaded.

[....]

... Mr. Gottlieb said Americans “may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal.”

[....]

The situation has devolved most dramatically in parts of rural America that were largely spared in the early stages of the pandemic. As food processing facilities and prisons have emerged as some of the country’s largest case clusters, the counties that include Logansport, Ind., South Sioux City, Neb., and Marion, Ohio, have surpassed New York City in cases per capita.

[....]

 

All this by way of saying that deathcultchief and all his minions have no intention, no desire to stop these deaths -- which is yours, mine, your loved ones' deaths -- and even all those gun toting liburty open up! no masks!

If this were an sf novel the goodreaders would point fingers and laff.

[Paxter]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

The globe is reopening.  In three months the hospitals, morgues, burial pits will be overflowing.  So what was the point of us all going through lockdown at all to just have this?

The Swedes would answer - no point at all. 

I think more governments are realising that, having failed to stop the virus in its early stages (like Taiwan, S Korea, Aus, NZ), they are just going to have to live with the consequences. 

But I personally I agree with you. Having sacrificed the economy and locked down, you might as well keep the fiscal tap flowing and wait until a much more significant decrease in active cases. 

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

This is freaking weird. Someone in this forum was saying that there was a weird pneumonia outbreak back in November. Maybe the Chinese are right and it didn't come from China? But on the other hand, why the problems only started in end of January (for China) and March for the rest of the World.

Maybe there is a similar virus, creating a very similar immune response? Just wild speculation

 

In early January I had what I called the Cold From Hell. It started in late December, and I would feel better but if I went out and did something normal, like go shopping, I would feel much worse. I slept a lot. I felt well enough to have Christmas dinner with friends, then got worse the next day. I drank wine at dinner. My friends' son had started as GM of a very trendy brew pub three blocks away, so I met them for a drink on New Year's Eve, feeling better after sleeping a lot for 6 days. The next day I was really sick (hey, alcohol is supposed to make Covid-19 worse) and my dry cough got so bad I went to see the doctor on the 3rd. He asked me pointed questions that in retrospect sound like Covid-19 symptoms (he happens to be Chinese) and finally said I didn't have pneumonia and likely had 'a virus of some kind', and gave me a prescription for a codeine cough syrup, because the dry cough was so bad I could not sleep at night. The next four days I was sicker than I had ever been in decades, losing all sense of taste so I didn't eat anything except broth and a piece of dry toast, and actually fainted for the first time in my life one day when I went to use the bathroom. I may have lost my sense of smell as well, because I was so stuffed up all of a sudden I couldn't breathe through my nose. It took me until the end of January to fully recover.

Did I have Covid-19? Or some mutation? I actually suspect that in early April I caught Covid-19, because of dry cough, shortness of breathe, weird aches and pains, and strange and aweful paranoia at night (which I have heard people with confirmed cases report).

Whatever was going around in December/January was something weird.

[Maithanet]

The idea of the shutdown was to get the number of active cases down (eradication was never possible) and to buy time.  The US wasted two months from Jan 15-Mar 15, and thus was far far behind the curve.  Since Mar 15, the US has done a bit better, testing is now at levels it should have been April 1, and many hospitals have expanded capacity and improved procedures to handle COVID beyond where they were in March. 

But its still extremely scary to think that the country could be looking at 5-10X the new infections in a month's time as businesses open and social distancing is eased up.  The only consolation is that the WH memo may have been a worst case scenario leaked specifically to get a reaction from Trump. 

[williamjm]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

It looks like the South Korean model for contact tracing, perhaps combined with treatments using blood plasma and maybe remdesivir and other treatments as they become available, is the way out of this until a vaccine is fully available, and people are going to have to suck up the privacy issues. The countries that refuse (with the USA at the top of the list) are going to have really huge problems, ones that will become more prevalent once the death toll reaches the point where everyone has been impacted to one degree or another.

It feels like we haven't got much to lose by at least trying to follow the South Korean model, it's not as if attempting it interferes with the other strategies (aside from the let's infect everyone to get herd immunity insanity). It's going to be hard to make it work and it may well fail (Singapore aren't looking too great right now) but even if it provides some temporary respite it still seems worthwhile to try.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

Per a retrospective serological test, France is now reporting they had a case all the way back on December 27 (article is in French).

If it's not a false positive, this massively changes the timeline of things. And means that maybe some of the folks who've talked about having a really bad flu in December or January actually really did have the virus.

Based on what we know of the speed and spread of the virus, it seems highly improbable. If there were cases in France in December, it would have been in the full swing of the pandemic a good six to eight weeks before actually was the case, unless the initial people infected didn't spread it to anyone else for some reason.

We did have a bad cold season at the end of last year and the start of this, and colds are caused by other-but-related coronaviruses, so it's most likely a conflated reading from that.

Quote

Why are They acting as though the supply of doctors, nurses and other essential personnel is infinite?

It is interesting seeing health care professionals in several countries preparing to go on strike because of inadequate supplies of PPE. If economies reopen and we simply let the cases flow in and bodies be piled high on the streets outside, I can see doctors and nurses simply refusing to work because what's the point? If the government has committed to a policy of letting the virus sweep through the population and kill millions, then all the doctors and nurses can do is save a relatively small number against the overwhelming risk of themselves being killed because they have no protective gear.

[Raja]

29 minutes ago, williamjm said:

 (Singapore aren't looking too great right now)

Just to put a little context behind this as I'm seeing a lot of 'Look, Singapore strategy of contact tracing etc isn't working either so we have no options' (Not saying you are saying this specifically, but it's defo a take away going around).

This is a *slightly* unique cluster - I lived in Singapore for a decade and their abhorrent treatment of migrant workers ( mostly from South Asia) is the reason why they have had such a spike of cases, I don't think it is necessarily a reflection of the drawbacks of their overall strategy, but not having the foresight to recognize an at risk group.

These migrants live in dorms, and *very* cramped dorms with bunk beds, they are overcrowded, full of men, don't have adequate cleaning supplies. Rooms can have 30 men, with 80 men sharing one toilet which isn't clean. They are shunned to the outskirts of the city so they are out of the way and out of mind of the citizens of the country.

This cluster has exploded the way it has because of neglect, acceptance that brown & black people can live like this, and general ignorance and hostility towards migrant workers.

[rotting sea cow]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

In early January I had what I called the Cold From Hell. It started in late December, and I would feel better but if I went out and did something normal, like go shopping, I would feel much worse. I slept a lot. I felt well enough to have Christmas dinner with friends, then got worse the next day. I drank wine at dinner. My friends' son had started as GM of a very trendy brew pub three blocks away, so I met them for a drink on New Year's Eve, feeling better after sleeping a lot for 6 days. The next day I was really sick (hey, alcohol is supposed to make Covid-19 worse) and my dry cough got so bad I went to see the doctor on the 3rd. He asked me pointed questions that in retrospect sound like Covid-19 symptoms (he happens to be Chinese) and finally said I didn't have pneumonia and likely had 'a virus of some kind', and gave me a prescription for a codeine cough syrup, because the dry cough was so bad I could not sleep at night. The next four days I was sicker than I had ever been in decades, losing all sense of taste so I didn't eat anything except broth and a piece of dry toast, and actually fainted for the first time in my life one day when I went to use the bathroom. I may have lost my sense of smell as well, because I was so stuffed up all of a sudden I couldn't breathe through my nose. It took me until the end of January to fully recover.

Did I have Covid-19? Or some mutation? I actually suspect that in early April I caught Covid-19, because of dry cough, shortness of breathe, weird aches and pains, and strange and aweful paranoia at night (which I have heard people with confirmed cases report).

Whatever was going around in December/January was something weird.

Oh, hopefully you are feeling better. Viruses have been weird this season, everybody agrees. I myself complained in this very same forum about a bad flu I got mid February. Never felt so bad despite vaccine. After recovered I was coughing my way all through mid March to the distress of my coworkers. However, I don't think I had COVID19, Symptoms were quite different to those reported by other people, including in this forum.

By New Year eve, however, I got some weird virus that only made me cough for two or three days. Didn't really feel bad or feverish or difficulty of breathing or whatever. Just cough. I don't think I had cough ever since I left childhood. What was that?