Coronavirus and You - Page 248

On September 07 2020 00:24 warding wrote:
If you look at the serology studies coming out of India, nearly all indicate very seroprevalence, above 50% in some cities. That hints that the case numbers recorded are not necessarily bad signs from an epidemiological point of view. The wave seems to have already come and done its thing in most urban areas. It may simply be that the virus is so widespread that whoever you test you're likely to find traces is virus rna.

India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% below the age of 35. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan; and, by 2030, India's dependency ratio should be just over 0.4.

On September 07 2020 17:46 warding wrote:
You can detect rna on a pcr test many weeks or even months after infection. You're not detecting active or infectious virus, you're detecting the remnants of a past infection. So if you do a lot of tests on a population where 20%-50% has been infected, you're going to detect a lot of past and not necessarily active cases.

As for the death undercount, we have a pretty good idea of the IFR per age group. Given India's population structure, it's not reasonable to assume millions of dead. Wouldn't we be hearing different reports from India if that were the case? Amui you posted a quote where it said 65% of India's population was under 35. The IFR for those ages is negligible, wherever you look, ie:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v4

There just aren't that many 80 year olds in India.

On September 07 2020 18:24 Gorsameth wrote:
Don't simply look at fatality rates under proper medical care and assume the same will hold true without proper care.

On September 07 2020 20:23 Geisterkarle wrote:
I just looked at the graphs of "our" Europe hotspot, Spain:

> http://www.dkriesel.com/_media/coronaplot-spain.png

Case numbers are currently even higher as in April! But while people died "like flies" back then, currently death are just in the two-digits! And while death probably "trailing behind" the cases, I don't think in the slightes, that death count will rise to the "old" numbers!

I can think of three reasons for that "change":
1. Health support and medical treatment got way better!
While that is certainly true, I still heared somewhere recently, that even today if you have to go to the hospital and get ventilated, that like 60% are not getting out of there alive. That is still a really high number. So I don't think that could explain the numbers...
2. Most new cases are young, healthy people.
As we know, most deaths are older people. Maybe now "only" the young "partypeople" are getting infected and they are not severly hit. Could be...
3. More testing.
Yeah, sorry to say similar things as the "beloved" leader of holy USA, but actually that could be it! I admit, I don't know how Spain is handeling it, but here in Germany back in Apri tests for infections were "reserved" for peple in critical jobs (hospital etc.) and people with symptoms! Now, everyone can test themself, if they want to! Espacially people that got back from holiday used that possibility! Of course more cases are found! Even people that got no symptoms!

Maybe you have more ideas...

On September 08 2020 01:54 warding wrote:
I find spanish numbers sometimes hard to understand/trust. In their case I'd look at hospitalizations to see how it's doing.

On your point 3. More testing, it actually may be a number of different phenomena:
- More testing means you're catching a bigger % of total real infections compared to the first waves, ie. you may be catching more of the assymptomatics;
- More testing means you're having a bigger number of false positives.
- More testing now may be catching more people who were infected in the first wave but weren't diagnosed then, and either still have remnants of virus RNA in their bodies or may have an early virus re-infection that hasn't been beaten down by their immune systems yet - generating an immune response may not mean the virus can't enter again an replicate a little bit.

On September 08 2020 05:18 Sapaio wrote:


Pretty sure that you won't catch people that were infected in the first wave. The test for convid is in throat or as I saw on first episode on hard knocks the nose. But the test for people on longer being sick and having grained anti stoffer (can not remember the English word) is a blood sample.

On September 15 2020 17:34 Starlightsun wrote:
Geez what an idiot. Hope they throw the book at her.

On September 15 2020 17:08 zatic wrote:
So apparently a woman attached to the US army in Southern Germany showed Covid symptoms. She was tested and ordered to quarantine until her results got back.

Instead, she went bar hopping. On top of setting of an infection chain in the community, she is probably also responsible for as of today 24 US army personnel testing positive, and caused the US army hotel she was working in to be locked down for 2 weeks. She is the sole superspreader who caused the big red blob in the South:



https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/isigcv/us_woman_faces_hefty_fine_after_causing/

She is facing a fine and might be prosecuted with criminal charges. Even though it shouldn't matter, her being American doesn't exactly help the discussion of the case over in Germany.