4 ms·

There are large swathes of the population that have been infected asymptomatically: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-antibodies-test-ny.h

There are large swathes of the population that have been infected asymptomatically: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-antibodies-test-ny.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti... There are similar studies and similar findings in both the US and Europe. tl;dr The virus is much less lethal for the average person than models predicted before we had more data.

watwut 6y ago
CFR is case fatality ration and is literally defined as "people who we know are sick to people who died". It does not mean overall lethality and it never meant that. CFR is not prediction nor model, it is input into the mode. Asymptomatic non tested population is literally not supposed to be counted into CFR.
- nostrebored 6y ago
  'asymptomatic non tested population' is an interesting way to refer to people with covid 19 antibodies found via immunoassays. This sizeable population shows that our cfr estimates have enough error to be meaningless.
  - watwut 6y ago
    CFR does not have "error rate" this way. It is just defined differently then you thought it is defined. You thought it is mortality, it never was. It is the only number available at the beginning of epidemic (no matter which one). "asymptomatic non tested population" is the most exact description of people who were not tested, had no symptoms and therefore don't count as "cases". Yes, we measure them by measuring antibodies if precise tests are available.
joshuamorton 6y ago
> There are large swathes of the population that have been infected asymptomatically: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti.. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti.... No, there are tests that have high false-positive rates. The studies in both the US and Europe used similarly flawed tests and didn't correctly account for the false-positive rates of those tests. [0] There are two ways to think through how these results are flawed: the first is that the false positive rates of the tests is vastly higher than the prior (which we'll assume is approximately the confirmed case rate per capita) is. There were three studies, NYC, Santa Clara, and one in Europe that I know of. All three tests had false positive rates over 2%, and one test had a false positive rate of like 10%. So when a study shows that a large percent of the population have the virus, and that percentage is suspiciously similar to the false-positive rate of the test, you pause. The second is a much more grokkable one. Let's assume that 2% of people in Santa Clara were infected (per the study), then 40,000 people are infected, and of them around 2000 people were symptomatic enough to get tested and be hospitalized/tested (per available stats). Or 5% of infections are symptomatic enough to get noticed, ish. Then we'd see that NYC would have ~3.5 million people infected now, or something like 40%. So we'd expect to see 40% (or more actually) of people tested in NY and NYC test positive for covid. But we don't[1]. We see that as NY adds more tests, the positive rate of the more reliable tests is going down, because they can test more people and because NY appears to be over the hump. At peak, 20% of people were testing positive daily, now it's down to closer to 10%. And note that most of the tests are going to people who have some symptoms of something, which is why it's that high. 40% of NY residents were infected, we'd expect to see more than 40% of the tests positive, but we don't. If you do the same calculation but with death rate, you find that there are more people in NYC with Covid than live in NYC. In conclusion: those studies are bad because the tests they use are unreliable. [0]: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw... [1]: https://health.data.ny.gov/d/xdss-u53e/visualization https://health.data.ny.gov/d/xdss-u53e/visualization
- stateofnounion 6y ago
  Are you equally skeptical that we have a test that reliably detects Covid? And I suppose all of the 2+ dozen studies done are completely inaccurate as well? List below includes the revised study from Ioannidis. Your criticisms are from a preprint. May 4: 370 workers test positive in Missouri. None had symptoms. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/triumph-foods-outbreak-missouri/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/triumph-foods-outbreak-mis... May 1: revised Santa Clara study: 2.8% of the population had antibodies. Study came out on April 14. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v... May 1: Dutch Royal Institute of Health 13884 healthcare workers test positive in the Netherlands. 9 have died. 0.06% CFR among healthcare workers 3% hospitalization rate 6/9 underlying conditions 9/9 above 45 https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/covid-19-en-zorgmedewerkers-30-april-2020 https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/covid-19-en-zorgmedewerkers-3... May 1: 15.5% seroprevalence in German Community. 0.36% IFR https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf/%24FILE/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Str... April 30: partial results give 61% of population infected in Bergamo https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_aprile_30/coronavirus-bergamo-primi-risultati-test-61percento-positivi-85e8e36c-8a6b-11ea-94d3-9879860c12b6_preview.shtml https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_aprile_30/cor... April 27: 36% infected in homeless shelters https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765378?guestAccessKey=a5d28066-8f72-4633-a291-90b472754093 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765378?gu... April 27: Governor of NY claims their study indicate 24.7% on the island. Up to 2.7m people in nyc had covid : https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cuomo-outlines-reopening-roadmap-for-new-york-as-daily-deaths-hit-lowest-level-in-weeks/2390949/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cuomo-outlines-reopeni... April 26: 96% symptom free out of 3300 positive https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prison... April 26: 17,000 healthcare workers tested positive, 60 dead in Italy https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Bollettino-sorveglianza-integrata-COVID-19_16-aprile-2020.pdf#page=13 https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Bolletti... April 26: Seroprevalence in Kobe Japan 300x to 800x higher then expected https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079822v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079822v... April 26: 25% of seroprevalence in Iran, 0.08 to 0.12% IFR. 518k to 777k infected https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079244v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079244v... April 24: between 123k and 221k cases in Miami-Dade https://www.miamidade.gov/releases/2020-04-24-sample-testing-results.asp https://www.miamidade.gov/releases/2020-04-24-sample-testing... April 24: Denmark 1.7% seroprevalence 0.082% death rate among 17-70 real-time screening / antibodies test https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075291v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075291v... April 23: governor of ny tweets that 13.9% of the state could have virus https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1253352837255438338 https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1253352837255438338 April 22: Sweden health official claims 20% of Stockholm could be infected, weeks away from herd immunity https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-stockholm-could-see-herd-immunity-in-weeks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-st... April 22: LA County could have between 223k and 442k cases. Mortality between 0.1% and 0.3% http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/mediapubhpdetail.cfm?prid=2328 http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/media... April 22: 5.5% of residents could be positive in Geneva county https://www.hug-ge.ch/medias/communique-presse/seroprevalence-covid-19-premiere-estimation https://www.hug-ge.ch/medias/communique-presse/seroprevalenc... April 22: 20% of Stockholm infected, heard immunity weeks away https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-stockholm-could-see-herd-immunity-in-weeks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-st... April 20: Up to 10% of the people in Wuhan developed antibodies. 1.2M https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25904 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25904 April 19: 49% of the population of Orties developed antibodies. About 50x official stats. https://www.stol.it/artikel/chronik/flaechendeckende-tests-in-st-ulrich https://www.stol.it/artikel/chronik/flaechendeckende-tests-i... April 17: 32% of the residents tested for antibodies in Chelsea Massasuchets could have had Covid https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third... April 16: 3% of blood donors have antibodies in Netherlands https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-antibodies https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-... April 15: 50% homeless test positive in a Boston Shelter https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-universal-testing-results-boston-homeless-shelter/Z253TFBO6RG4HCUAARBO4YWO64/ https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-uni... April 15: Coronavirus probably dozens of times more common then official stats https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/number-of-people-with-coronavirus-infections-may-be-dozens-of-times-higher-than-the-number-of-confirmed-cases https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/number-of-people-with-coron...

watwut 6y ago

CFR is case fatality ration and is literally defined as "people who we know are sick to people who died". It does not mean overall lethality and it never meant that. CFR is not prediction nor model, it is input into the mode. Asymptomatic non tested population is literally not supposed to be counted into CFR.

nostrebored 6y ago
'asymptomatic non tested population' is an interesting way to refer to people with covid 19 antibodies found via immunoassays. This sizeable population shows that our cfr estimates have enough error to be meaningless.
- watwut 6y ago
  CFR does not have "error rate" this way. It is just defined differently then you thought it is defined. You thought it is mortality, it never was. It is the only number available at the beginning of epidemic (no matter which one). "asymptomatic non tested population" is the most exact description of people who were not tested, had no symptoms and therefore don't count as "cases". Yes, we measure them by measuring antibodies if precise tests are available.

joshuamorton 6y ago

> There are large swathes of the population that have been infected asymptomatically: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti.. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-anti.... No, there are tests that have high false-positive rates. The studies in both the US and Europe used similarly flawed tests and didn't correctly account for the false-positive rates of those tests. [0] There are two ways to think through how these results are flawed: the first is that the false positive rates of the tests is vastly higher than the prior (which we'll assume is approximately the confirmed case rate per capita) is. There were three studies, NYC, Santa Clara, and one in Europe that I know of. All three tests had false positive rates over 2%, and one test had a false positive rate of like 10%. So when a study shows that a large percent of the population have the virus, and that percentage is suspiciously similar to the false-positive rate of the test, you pause. The second is a much more grokkable one. Let's assume that 2% of people in Santa Clara were infected (per the study), then 40,000 people are infected, and of them around 2000 people were symptomatic enough to get tested and be hospitalized/tested (per available stats). Or 5% of infections are symptomatic enough to get noticed, ish. Then we'd see that NYC would have ~3.5 million people infected now, or something like 40%. So we'd expect to see 40% (or more actually) of people tested in NY and NYC test positive for covid. But we don't[1]. We see that as NY adds more tests, the positive rate of the more reliable tests is going down, because they can test more people and because NY appears to be over the hump. At peak, 20% of people were testing positive daily, now it's down to closer to 10%. And note that most of the tests are going to people who have some symptoms of something, which is why it's that high. 40% of NY residents were infected, we'd expect to see more than 40% of the tests positive, but we don't. If you do the same calculation but with death rate, you find that there are more people in NYC with Covid than live in NYC. In conclusion: those studies are bad because the tests they use are unreliable. [0]: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw... [1]: https://health.data.ny.gov/d/xdss-u53e/visualization https://health.data.ny.gov/d/xdss-u53e/visualization

stateofnounion 6y ago
Are you equally skeptical that we have a test that reliably detects Covid? And I suppose all of the 2+ dozen studies done are completely inaccurate as well? List below includes the revised study from Ioannidis. Your criticisms are from a preprint. May 4: 370 workers test positive in Missouri. None had symptoms. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/triumph-foods-outbreak-missouri/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/04/us/triumph-foods-outbreak-mis... May 1: revised Santa Clara study: 2.8% of the population had antibodies. Study came out on April 14. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v... May 1: Dutch Royal Institute of Health 13884 healthcare workers test positive in the Netherlands. 9 have died. 0.06% CFR among healthcare workers 3% hospitalization rate 6/9 underlying conditions 9/9 above 45 https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/covid-19-en-zorgmedewerkers-30-april-2020 https://www.rivm.nl/documenten/covid-19-en-zorgmedewerkers-3... May 1: 15.5% seroprevalence in German Community. 0.36% IFR https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf/%24FILE/Streeck_et_al_Infection_fatality_rate_of_SARS_CoV_2_infection2.pdf https://www.ukbonn.de/C12582D3002FD21D/vwLookupDownloads/Str... April 30: partial results give 61% of population infected in Bergamo https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_aprile_30/coronavirus-bergamo-primi-risultati-test-61percento-positivi-85e8e36c-8a6b-11ea-94d3-9879860c12b6_preview.shtml https://bergamo.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/20_aprile_30/cor... April 27: 36% infected in homeless shelters https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765378?guestAccessKey=a5d28066-8f72-4633-a291-90b472754093 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765378?gu... April 27: Governor of NY claims their study indicate 24.7% on the island. Up to 2.7m people in nyc had covid : https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cuomo-outlines-reopening-roadmap-for-new-york-as-daily-deaths-hit-lowest-level-in-weeks/2390949/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/cuomo-outlines-reopeni... April 26: 96% symptom free out of 3300 positive https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prison... April 26: 17,000 healthcare workers tested positive, 60 dead in Italy https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Bollettino-sorveglianza-integrata-COVID-19_16-aprile-2020.pdf#page=13 https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Bolletti... April 26: Seroprevalence in Kobe Japan 300x to 800x higher then expected https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079822v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079822v... April 26: 25% of seroprevalence in Iran, 0.08 to 0.12% IFR. 518k to 777k infected https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079244v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.26.20079244v... April 24: between 123k and 221k cases in Miami-Dade https://www.miamidade.gov/releases/2020-04-24-sample-testing-results.asp https://www.miamidade.gov/releases/2020-04-24-sample-testing... April 24: Denmark 1.7% seroprevalence 0.082% death rate among 17-70 real-time screening / antibodies test https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075291v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20075291v... April 23: governor of ny tweets that 13.9% of the state could have virus https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1253352837255438338 https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo/status/1253352837255438338 April 22: Sweden health official claims 20% of Stockholm could be infected, weeks away from herd immunity https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-stockholm-could-see-herd-immunity-in-weeks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-st... April 22: LA County could have between 223k and 442k cases. Mortality between 0.1% and 0.3% http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/mediapubhpdetail.cfm?prid=2328 http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/media... April 22: 5.5% of residents could be positive in Geneva county https://www.hug-ge.ch/medias/communique-presse/seroprevalence-covid-19-premiere-estimation https://www.hug-ge.ch/medias/communique-presse/seroprevalenc... April 22: 20% of Stockholm infected, heard immunity weeks away https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-stockholm-could-see-herd-immunity-in-weeks.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/22/no-lockdown-in-sweden-but-st... April 20: Up to 10% of the people in Wuhan developed antibodies. 1.2M https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25904 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.25904 April 19: 49% of the population of Orties developed antibodies. About 50x official stats. https://www.stol.it/artikel/chronik/flaechendeckende-tests-in-st-ulrich https://www.stol.it/artikel/chronik/flaechendeckende-tests-i... April 17: 32% of the residents tested for antibodies in Chelsea Massasuchets could have had Covid https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third-200-blood-samples-taken-chelsea-show-exposure-coronavirus/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/17/business/nearly-third... April 16: 3% of blood donors have antibodies in Netherlands https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-antibodies https://nltimes.nl/2020/04/16/3-dutch-blood-donors-covid-19-... April 15: 50% homeless test positive in a Boston Shelter https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-universal-testing-results-boston-homeless-shelter/Z253TFBO6RG4HCUAARBO4YWO64/ https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-uni... April 15: Coronavirus probably dozens of times more common then official stats https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/number-of-people-with-coronavirus-infections-may-be-dozens-of-times-higher-than-the-number-of-confirmed-cases https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/number-of-people-with-coron...