COVID COVID-19 Coronavirus Containment Efforts

[Vanadium 50]

The Spanish suddenly went from an average of 179 deaths per day for the week up to 26th May to an average of 1 death per day for the week up to 2nd June.

That's not what the black plot in Wikipedia shows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Spain

My guess is you (well, FT, which is behind a paywall) was looking at a point in time snapshot and things hadn't caught up. For a while the US had exceeded 100,000 fatalities, but the sum of all states and territories had not.

 

[PeroK]

That's not what the black plot in Wikipedia shows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Spain

My guess is you (well, FT, which is behind a paywall) was looking at a point in time snapshot and things hadn't caught up. For a while the US had exceeded 100,000 fatalities, but the sum of all states and territories had not.

The up-to-date figures are here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/

 

[Vanadium 50]

Here is a larger metastudy:
Physical distancing, face masks, and eye protection to prevent person-to-person transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Not surprisingly, they find that all three help.

Every time I start softening my stance on "meta-analyses", and start thinking "maybe it's not so bad". a paper like this comes around.

What they are saying is

1. In a population with an unknown amount of physical distancing and face mask wearing, eye protection helps.
2. In a population with an unknown amount of physical distancing and eye protection wearing, face masks help.
3. In a population with an unknown amount of eye protection and face mask wearing, physical distancing helps.

That's very different from "all three help".

The problem is that the three actions are correlated. If you made a 2x2 of physical distancers and face mask wearers, you would find a lot of people who do both, or neither, and relatively few who only do one. To see the problem, suppose the correlation were 100% but only one is actually effective: all three would still show up as effective, because everyone doing one is also doing the other two.

Of course the correlation isn't 100%, but the problem is still there, just at a lower degree.

 

[sophiecentaur]

That's very different from "all three help".

Where the three populations totally unrelated?
I don't know a lot about meta-analysis but I thought it was supposed to take care of your dilemma as much as possble. I thought it dealt reliably with multiple factors. If not then I am as skeptical as you have been about the system. I mean, it brings into doubt an awful lot of information that's obtained about populations and health. But medics do have some strange attitudes to statistics in general.

I agree that there has to be a certain amount (or a lot) of correlation. It's pretty amazing that details about the 'other two' were not considered important enough to include in any questionnaire / analysis. You'd need to be in the business if you wanted to do any survey of that kind so wouldn't you know?

I have a personal interest in this due to my age so its hard to be dispassionate.

 

[BillTre]

I just read on the local PBS (OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting)) website some of the criteria by which Oregon counties are allowed to go to phase 2. (We (Lane) county) did this on Friday.)

Each county has to spend a minimum of 21 days in Phase 1, and see no significant increase in positive cases. The Oregon Health Authority analyzed county-level metrics to see if counties have sufficiently contained the virus, and if local health departments are adequately testing and tracking cases. State epidemiologist Dean Sidelinger said that the state wants to see that county case numbers over the last seven days aren’t above where they were the week prior.A minimum of 95% of all new cases must be contact traced within 24 hours, and a minimum of 70% of new COVID-19 positive cases must be traced to an existing positive case.

The phase 2 step seems to be: larger numbers of people allowable in groups, things open later.

Being able to contract trace cases (and therefore knowing where the infection came to be), seems like it would be a pretty laborious task (assuming not using the cell phone tracking solution (which ain't happening now anyway!)).
This means that there is a tradeoff between the size of the infected population and the ability of society to successfully undertake the task (ability to get it done), and the investment society wants to put into the task (to fund the required labor).
Thus reductions in numbers of cases should be important to feasibility of doing the tracing.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I have a personal interest in this due to my age so its hard to be dispassionate.

Then do all three. How can it hurt?

Consider a simple case - we're looking at some effect vs. clothing. We see a strong effect with red hats and blue ties. If everyone who wears a red hat wears a blue tie and vice versa, there is no amount of meta-analyzing that will determine if the important factor is the red hat, the blue tie, or both.

 

[mfb]

The up-to-date figures are here:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/

Where do you get single-digit death counts from that source? They adjusted their total deaths down by 2000 on May 25, but that doesn't mean people were resurrected that day, it's just changing how past deaths were counted.

----

15 days without new case in NZ. One active case remains. New Zealand could be the first major* country to eliminate the disease. Iceland was ahead for a while, but keeps finding a few cases, the last one a week ago.

*Not counting places like Fiji: 18 reported cases, the last one late April, all recovered

 

[kyphysics]

Australia is lifting restrictions. Tons are screaming - lift them entirely - we have beaten it. Not so fast - we are in fact tetering as the growth factor (r0 is 1 right now) shows:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...ustralia-growth-factor-covid-19/12132478?nw=0

We need to lift restrictions slowly and be prepared to clamp them on again. I try to explain this in forums out here, but to no avail. Personally I think we are lifting them too fast.

Thanks
Bill

a.) A lot of people don't even know what R0 means, nor are very literate about the virus. They know it's like the flu that's killed a lot of people and has locked the world down, but aren't very literate about the stats and concepts behind it.

b.) Isn't Australia going into winter? Some have said that warmer/summer countries like Australia haven't really been tested yet, as the virus spreads less easily in the summer months (which Australia was in, no?).

 

[PeroK]

Where do you get single-digit death counts from that source? They adjusted their total deaths down by 2000 on May 25, but that doesn't mean people were resurrected that day, it's just changing how past deaths were counted.

The page for Spain (like all countries) gives the daily figures in a graph. But, for Spain they are now so low you can't see them on the graph. Lower down the page there are the figures for each day - you have to expand the data for each day. From May 26th the deaths in Spain are:

280, 1(*), 1, 2, 4, 2, 0, 0, 1, 5, 1, 1

And, for the record, the new case numbers are:

859, 510, 1137, 658, 664, 201 (**), 209, 294, 394, 334, 318, 332

(*) The deaths in Spain suddenly almost stopped on May 27th.

(**) The cases in Spain suddenly went down on May 31st.

 

[mfb]

From May 26th the deaths in Spain are

That's a reporting delay, almost certainly. Wait a week for these numbers. Wikipedia probably uses a Spanish source and has plausible two-digit numbers.Tweet chain about COVID-19 and protests in the US

 

[PeroK]

That's a reporting delay, almost certainly. Wait a week for these numbers. Wikipedia probably uses a Spanish source and has plausible two-digit numbers.

There are several news items about this now.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The up-to-date figures are here:

You can see -1915 deaths on one day. That's probably not what happened. You also see the total number of deaths go down. That's probably not what happened either. And what's really off is those events happened on the same day.

It's likely a redefinition, either of cause of death, or geographically. (something double-counted) These things happen. They are annoying when they do.

 

[PeroK]

You can see -1915 deaths on one day. That's probably not what happened. You also see the total number of deaths go down. That's probably not what happened either. And what's really off is those events happened on the same day.

It's likely a redefinition, either of cause of death, or geographically. (something double-counted) These things happen. They are annoying when they do.

I'm not looking at the one-off readjustments where a large number is added or subtracted on a single day. There are several news items reporting that Spain recorded zero deaths on consecutive days and is generally recording single-figure deaths per day now. Some of these (mostly the ones from 5-6 days) are positive. The most recent ones (including El Pais) are more skeptical. This is from the Telegraph:

Spain’s government has been accused of hiding the death toll from Coronavirus amid changes made to its method of reporting new cases that saw the country’s fatality toll plummet from around 50 per day last week to zero on both Monday and Tuesday.

The accusations of undercounting the impact of Covid-19 come as Spain announces plans to welcome international tourists back to the country from July 1, or possibly during the second half of June.

Make of that what you will.

 

[anorlunda]

The news is saying that the mortality rate is well below 1%, such as 0.4%. Today's news also said for the USA, 110K dead, 500K recovered. If everyone uses the same definitions, shouldn't we have this?

$mortality=\frac{dead}{recovered+dead}=\frac{110}{500+110}=0.18$

It makes my head hurt because those two stats seem to differ by the ratio 45:1.

One way to make both stats true is to assume a huge number of asymptomatic (and not tested) who are never counted as recovered or dead but who are counted when calculating 0.4% mortality. That mean means assuming 27 million asymptomatic. That is 7% of the population, which I guess is possible. But if that is the assumption, how could they not mention it when figures are released?

$mortality=\frac{dead}{recovered+dead+asym}=\frac{110}{500+110+27000}=0.004$

Do they publish their assumptions and methods of counting mortality?

 

[PeroK]

The news is saying that the mortality rate is well below 1%, such as 0.4%. Today's news also said for the USA, 110K dead, 500K recovered. If everyone uses the same definitions, shouldn't we have this?

$mortality=\frac{dead}{recovered+dead}=\frac{110}{500+110}=0.18$

It makes my head hurt because those two stats seem to differ by the ratio 45:1.

One way to make both stats true is to assume a huge number of asymptomatic (and not tested) who are never counted as recovered or dead but who are counted when calculating 0.4% mortality. That mean means assuming 27 million asymptomatic. That is 7% of the population, which I guess is possible. But if that is the assumption, how could they not mention it when figures are released?

$mortality=\frac{dead}{recovered+dead+asym}=\frac{110}{500+110+27000}=0.004$

Do they publish their assumptions and methods of counting mortality?

There must be a large number of uncounted cases in most countries - in any case. We have estimates in the UK that up to 7% (5 million people) may have had the virus, going by random antibody tests etc.

If this is true and we have 40,000-50,000 deaths from COVID-19, that puts the mortality rate at about 1%. And, obviously, if the 0.4% is true, then we must have had more like 12.5 million cases in the UK.

I don't know what the resolution to this is.

That said, in addition to the mortality rate itself, there are two additional factors. 1) How the mortality rate varies across demographics (especially age). There are huge variations across the world in the number of cases to deaths. Generally in western Europe it's 10-20%. Elsewhere it's generally much lower. Russia is about 1%, India about 3%, and the Middle East is recording almost no deaths (e.g. Qatar at less than 0.1%).

And 2) the additional excess deaths caused if the outbreak gets out of control and not only people with COVID-19, but also people requiring emergency hospital treatment of any kind, may die when they otherwise might not.

Who knows what's really going on here.

 

[Vanadium 50]

shouldn't we have this?

No, because it does not include people who have the disease but have neither died nor recovered, i.e. still sick.

If you are using the CDC's 0.4%, that's the rate of fatality given that there are symptoms. They also say 1/3 of the people never develop symptom, so the IFR is actually less. 0.27%. This is for the USA as a whole - numbers would be different at the Boston Nursing Home for Men than for the Missoula Women's Junior College.

Does 0.27% make sense? 110,000 fatalities implies 40 million infected. Of those, 14 million showed no symptoms, 2 million were sick enough to get tested, which leaves 24 million who got sick, but not sick enough to see anyone about it. (We have a forum member who says he is in this category).

Is this possible? One way of looking at it is, if infected, there is a 33% chance there are no symptoms, 62% the symptoms are mild, 5% the symptoms are severe, and a 0.27% chance it's fatal. That sounds plausible. Another way is that 24M people are feeling sick in the middle of a pandemic, bombarded from all sides with the message "You're going to die! You're going to die!" and yet they do nothing about it. This seems unlikely. So there's a tension here.

The only way I can reconcile this is that the vast majority of the 24M have only weak symptoms and they attribute them to something else. If you spend all day working around the house and have fatigue and muscle aches and no other symptoms, your first thought is probably not "I have Covid".

 

[anorlunda]

The only way I can reconcile this is that the vast majority of the 24M

My question is more directed at informing the public instead of confusing the public.
I would write the headline for the TV news as follows.

110 Thousand Dead, 500 Thousand Recovered, 24 Million Infected

Failure to do so feeds the feeling that the real facts are concealed from us. It breeds conspiracy theories.

 

[PeroK]

My question is more directed at informing the public instead of confusing the public.
I would write the headline for the TV news as follows.

110 Thousand Dead, 500 Thousand Recovered, 24 Million Infected

Failure to do so feeds the feeling that the real facts are concealed from us. It breeds conspiracy theories.

One problem is what happens if the CDC is wrong? If the UK decided to gamble on the fatality rate being 0.27, we would be looking at a maximum of 150,000 deaths in the UK if we had gone for minimal lockdown measures. You might argue that even that is too many, but let's say the UK decided to gamble. What happens if the CDC is wrong? And, after 3 months we are looking at 150,000 deaths with the health service overrun and no end in sight?

 

[Vanadium 50]

110 Thousand Dead, 500 Thousand Recovered, 24 Million Infected

People are in one of six categories: Unexposed, exposed, infected, sick, recovered or dead. The easiest to measure are "recovered" and "dead" (and even these have some problems). We know testing positive undermeasures "sick", and way undermeasures "infected".

Here's a plot where I plot case rate vs. inferred infection rate (deaths/0.027%).

You can see things are all over the place, although there is a trend that places without a lot of infections do a better job of counting them than places with a lot of infections (which makes sense). The three highest states are UT, SD and NE, and the four states out to the right are NJ, NY, CT and MA.

Failure to do so feeds the feeling that the real facts are concealed from us. It breeds conspiracy theories.

Others here have argued the reverse - that it's good to make things look worse than they are in order to maximize public compliance.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Regarding the data from Spain, another way of estimating deaths from COVID-19 that does not rely on COVID-19 testing is to track the total number of deaths in a region (from any cause), and compare to the historical baseline. This measure of "excess deaths" can help see how many deaths are potentially being missed.

Of course, there are some limitations to excess deaths. There are some arguments that excess deaths could overstate COVID-19 deaths. For example, hospitals have seen admissions for heart attacks and strokes sharply decrease during the pandemic, so some excess deaths could be due to people avoiding medical care and dying from preventable conditions at home. However, there are also reasons to think that excess deaths could understate COVID-19 deaths. For example, with fewer people on the roads, there have been fewer fatal car accidents during the pandemic, which should decrease the baseline number of expected deaths.

With these caveats in mind, here are some data from The Economist's site that is tracking excess deaths across various locales:

These data fairly clearly show excess deaths leveling off to baseline around May in Spain, so reports of a low number of COVID-19 deaths in Spain are plausible. Remember that Spain's lockdown measures were fairly strict (the Financial Times has a headline saying "Spain's reopening is stricter than America's Coronavirus lockdown"), and other countries with very strict lockdowns have managed to reduce cases to near zero (e.g. China).

Regarding whether Spain is under-reporting cases:

The number of COVID-19 deaths reported vs the total excess deaths is not overtly different than other similar countries. However, the time period for the data in Spain (Mar 10-May 18) do not seem to include the time period for which the numbers were revised (around May 27-31 according to @PeroK's post), so we may have to wait a few weeks to see whether Spain's revisions to their death counts were appropriate.

 

[Bystander]

Has anyone examined mortality as a function of previous polio vaccination? Age, respirators, think iron lung, Salk/Sabin/sugar cubes in childhood in the "fifties," versus adulthood in the "fifties" who are today's geriatric crowd?

 

[Vanadium 50]

The Economist is using Euromomo, which is pretty good. You've outlined many of the issues. Others are:

1. There are "excess deaths" every single year, which suggests that the expectation needs some adjustment.
2. Excess deaths counts things we don't want to include, such as suicides. I don't know why suicide stats lag 4-6 months - I see no reason why they should.
3. Excess deaths is now down to zero (slightly below, in fact) but the number of Covid deaths in Europe is still ~700 per day.

#3 surprised me. What I think is happening is that since Covid strikes the elderly particularly harshly (the median age of fatalities in Massachusetts is 82) the surviving European population is statistically younger and healthier than pre-Covid. Put another way, people who otherwise would have died in June died back in April. This didn't just start happening now - it's just that we can see it now - so even "excess deaths" underestimates Covid.

I'm not saying we should disregard the "excess deaths" metric. I'm just not prepared to conclude that this is the One True Way to calculate things and anyone who does things differently is covering up.

 

[bob012345]

Has anyone examined mortality as a function of previous polio vaccination? Age, respirators, think iron lung, Salk/Sabin/sugar cubes in childhood in the "fifties," versus adulthood in the "fifties" who are today's geriatric crowd?

Are you suggesting a link between Covid-19 deaths and polio vaccines?

 

[Vanadium 50]

One problem is what happens if the CDC is wrong?

If you are talking about science, I think need to be more specific than "I just think it's wrong". If we are talking about public policy, we should probably weigh the costs and benefits and recognize that these are not borne equally.

If you are arguing that the US number doesn't apply directly to the UK, I agree with you (as would the CDC). The UK population is older (average 40 vs 38) so I would expect the relevant number for the UK to be higher. Looking at the high end, the UK has about 6% of their population 80+ and the US it is more like 4%.

The four US states with the highest mortality rates per thousand are NJ, NY, CT and MA, varying from 1.04 to 1.36. All four have had a very large fraction of deaths (around half, up to 60% in MA) in nursing homes. How elder-care facilities respond will make a huge difference to the outcome.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

Has anyone examined mortality as a function of previous polio vaccination? Age, respirators, think iron lung, Salk/Sabin/sugar cubes in childhood in the "fifties," versus adulthood in the "fifties" who are today's geriatric crowd?

Here's what a document from the Global Polio Eradication Initiative says:

There is no evidence that oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) protects people against infection with COVID-19 virus. A clinical trial addressing this question is planned in the USA, and WHO will evaluate the evidence when it is available. In the absence of evidence, WHO does not recommend OPV vaccination for the prevention of COVID-19. WHO continues to recommend OPV as part of essential immunization services to prevent poliomyelitis and as part of global polio eradication efforts.

http://polioeradication.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Use-of-OPV-and-COVID-20200421.pdf

IMHO, there does not seem to be good scientific evidence to suggest that the poliovirus vaccine would provide protection against coronavirus, though if you have seen some compelling scientific publications to suggest otherwise, I would be open to taking a look.

 

[morrobay]

There must be a large number of uncounted cases in most countries - in any case. We have estimates in the UK that up to 7% (5 million people) may have had the virus, going by random antibody tests etc.

If this is true and we have 40,000-50,000 deaths from COVID-19, that puts the mortality rate at about 1%. And, obviously, if the 0.4% is true, then we must have had more like 12.5 million cases in the UK.Who knows what's really going on here.

This answer to this question can only be expected after very widespread public antibody tests. Maybe 80% of any given population.

 

[mfb]

My question is more directed at informing the public instead of confusing the public.
I would write the headline for the TV news as follows.

110 Thousand Dead, 500 Thousand Recovered, 24 Million Infected

Failure to do so feeds the feeling that the real facts are concealed from us. It breeds conspiracy theories.

The 500,000 recovered only include former confirmed cases. The 24 million is an estimate about the total number of people who got infected at some point, most of them recovered by now.
There is just one metric we can measure reliably: If you get the disease and get tested positively, what is your chance to die? But even that needs care because deaths come faster than recoveries, so we can only include cases that were confirmed a while ago, not recent cases.

The one open case in New Zealand recovered. They now have zero known cases, with the last new case 17 days ago.

 

[Astronuc]

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn't confirm community spread in California until February 27, a recent CDC report found that the virus actually began to spread in the country between January 18 and February 9. The US's first Coronavirus death, California autopsies have shown, happened weeks earlier than we originally thought. In Florida, at least 170 people who were later confirmed to have COVID-19 first reported their symptoms from December 31 to February 29, according to the https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article242480931.html.

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-likely-us-anyone-knew-115200361.html

US testing, meanwhile, lagged behind. Labs across the country didn't have functioning test kits until late February, more than a month after the Washington state case was confirmed. By March 15, the country had tested just 39,332 people, according to the Covid Tracking Project. South Korea, meanwhile, had tested more than 268,000 by then.

 

[kyphysics]

VACCINATION QUESTION:
Here' a weird question. Suppose we get an effective vaccine.

Joe - an 80 year old - goes to the doctor's office to get the vaccine. While waiting in the lobby, he catches COVID-19 from Sarah, who is waiting there to see her doctor for a separate reason.

Joe sees his doctor 45 minutes later and gets a vaccine (after he's caught COVID-19 from Sarah). Would a vaccine work if someone has caught COVID-19 already?

You can play around with the time intervals. Suppose Joe gets COVID-19 1...2...3 days prior to his vaccine appointment date/time.

 

[BillTre]

I believe that you can get a rabies immunization after getting bit by a rabid dog.
However, I would expect that these kinds of things would vary from disease to disease.
It could also vary among different people due to variations in their immune systems and how quikly they might react.

 

[kadiot]

Is it true that Singapore abandons PCR as criteria for releasing COVID-19 patients? Why? How about the rest of the world?

 

[Rive]

Would a vaccine work if someone has caught COVID-19 already?

Likely NO. On the 'natural' way to develop immunity would take ~ two weeks (the minimal length of the illness, starting from infection): likely the vaccine would do it within a comparable timeframe. On the other hand, the usual delay between infection and illness is just 3-5 days, but two weeks at most (not exactly clear due the asymptotic cases). So that Joe needs some unusual luck for the vaccine winning the race.

Rabies is a different story. The long incubation period (1-3 months) makes successful vaccination after exposure possible.

Is it true that Singapore abandons PCR as criteria for releasing COVID-19 patients? Why?

It was a news somewhere that PCR tends to provide false positive result even after the illness ended and the patient no longer infectious.

Looks like PCR is too sensitive and might 'fire' on dead (zombie, if you like ) viruses too.

 

[bhobba]

2 Billion doses of Oxford vaccine ready to go by September:
https://fit.thequint.com/coronaviru...-out-2-billion-covid-19-vaccine-doses-by-sept

Fingers crossed it passes phase 3 trials. I read where phase 2 trials were not as good as first hoped - some experts only give it 50-50 - but if it does work what an accomplishment.

UQ's vaccine to start human trials soon - if it shows as much promise as pre-clinical trials suggest (it gave greater immunity than those recovered from the virus) it too will have production ramped up.

Thanks
Bill

 

[mfb]

50/50 for a vaccine candidate is a really promising outlook if it didn't demonstrate benefits yet. 2 billion doses in September would be amazing.

New Zealand will remove all remaining internal restrictions today. The borders will stay closed to most international travel.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200608...-ardern-reveals-move-to-level-1-from-midnight

Countries started looking at "travel bubbles", especially in east Asia: Groups of countries with unrestricted travel between them, potentially with mandatory tests but without longer quarantine. China and South Korea have such an agreement. New Zealand and Australia was discussed before, but we'll see if that happens with NZ beating the virus and Australia still having new cases. Singapore is a candidate for agreements. Japan and Hawaii are interested in that approach, too.
The Schengen area countries opened many of their internal borders again.

 

[bhobba]

50/50 for a vaccine candidate is a really promising outlook if it didn't demonstrate benefits yet. 2 billion doses in September would be amazing.

Just watching a documentary on the Spanish Flu now. We have made enormous progress since then, but if we have 2 billion doses by September, and it works, that shows just what can be done when an all out effort is made using modern technology.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

and Australia still having new cases.

Like the US we are having Black Lives Matter protests with 30,000 or more in close contact. People, including myself, are really worried it may get into Aboriginal communities (so far it hasn't) because if it does it's thought to be like it gets into nursing homes with a tragecly high death rate.

If not then I think a travel bubble with NZ quite likely.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Just after the documentary on the Spanish Flu there is one on the CEPI effort funded by Bill Gates. All are literally working 24/7 because they know its importance. To me it's humbling.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Vanadium 50]

People, including myself, are really worried it may get into Aboriginal communities (so far it hasn't) because if it does it's thought to be like it gets into nursing homes with a tragecly high death rate.

Why would the Aboriginal death rate be comparable to the death rate for the extreme elderly?

 

[bhobba]

Why would the Aboriginal death rate be comparable to the death rate for the extreme elderly?

They have very high rates of co-morbid conditions like Diabeties, Renal failure etc and are in constant contact within those communities:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-51971891

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Joe sees his doctor 45 minutes later and gets a vaccine (after he's caught COVID-19 from Sarah). Would a vaccine work if someone has caught COVID-19 already? You can play around with the time intervals. Suppose Joe gets COVID-19 1...2...3 days prior to his vaccine appointment date/time.

I think in the developed countries they know that one from testing. What would probably be done is you go to a doctor/vaccination centre in your car where you park. A nurse or doctor comes out and gives you the vaccine in the car with the person giving the vaccine in protective gear to protect both people.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Vanadium 50]

They have very high rates of comorbid conditions like Diabeties, Renal failure etc:

But they have very low rates (edit I mean "fractions") of extreme elderly. (Which is another problem, but not this problem). The 80+ fraction, the people most at risk, is 0.6%, compared to 4% for Australians as a whole.

That population skews very young: if you apply the Massachusetts ratios to the Aboriginal population, you get a fatality rate of about one-fifth that of Massachusetts. You are correct that the prevalence of comorbidities is 2-3 times higher, but even if it's a factor of 5 and all fatalities are the results of comorbidities, that just gets you to the general population.

To get to nursing home rates, you need more like a factor of 100.

 

[bhobba]

To get to nursing home rates, you need more like a factor of 100.

Yes - the analogy in that sense is not good.

Thanks
Bill

 

[nsaspook]

50/50 for a vaccine candidate is a really promising outlook if it didn't demonstrate benefits yet. 2 billion doses in September would be amazing.

New Zealand will remove all remaining internal restrictions today. The borders will stay closed to most international travel.
http://web.archive.org/web/20200608...-ardern-reveals-move-to-level-1-from-midnight

Countries started looking at "travel bubbles", especially in east Asia: Groups of countries with unrestricted travel between them, potentially with mandatory tests but without longer quarantine. China and South Korea have such an agreement. New Zealand and Australia was discussed before, but we'll see if that happens with NZ beating the virus and Australia still having new cases. Singapore is a candidate for agreements. Japan and Hawaii are interested in that approach, too.
The Schengen area countries opened many of their internal borders again.

How many asymptomatic carriers and cases are estimated to be in NZ?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-08/coronavirus-update-world-reaches-400000-virus-deaths/12331358

At least half of Singapore's newly discovered Coronavirus cases have shown no symptoms, one of the leaders of the Government's virus task force said.

Singapore has one of the highest infection tallies in Asia, with more than 38,000 cases, because of mass outbreaks in dormitories for its migrant workers.

It has been easing restrictions very gradually, and had reopened schools and some businesses last week after a two-month lockdown.

"Based on our experience, for every symptomatic case you would have at least one asymptomatic case," task force leader Lawrence Wong said.

 

[mfb]

One or two asymptomatic cases would be easy to miss, but they won't stay contagious for that long. You would need a group of many people, infecting each other over time, but all asymptomatic or at least without diagnosis, to have the virus survive that long.

 

[nsaspook]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asy...-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html

Preliminary evidence from the earliest outbreaks indicated that the virus could spread from person-to-person contact, even if the carrier didn’t have symptoms. But WHO officials now say that while asymptomatic spread can occur, it is not the main way it’s being transmitted.

“From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said at a news briefing from the United Nations agency’s Geneva headquarters. “It’s very rare.”

That's good news.

 

[fresh_42]

 

[BillTre]

View attachment 264377

I have strong allergies to pollen right now.
This is how I think of the world, except these would be pollen grains rather than viruses.

 

[ChemAir]

I have strong allergies to pollen right now.
This is how I think of the world, except these would be pollen grains rather than viruses.

I try not to view it this way, but sometimes, my sinuses believe otherwise.

 

[bob012345]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asy...-arent-spreading-new-infections-who-says.html
That's good news.

Gee, that would have been useful information before the lockdowns and 30 million people lost their jobs...

 

[bob012345]

View attachment 264377

If you could see the virus would you still go out? For sure, I'd just walk around it.