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"Coronavirus and the US" or "We are all going to die!!!!"

University Researchers tested all 3000 residents of an Italian village. 70% of those infected were completely asymptomatic.

That doesn't count people with mild symptom who, in the US, are being rejected for testing in most places. In Illinois, you have to be near death and/or immune compromised to be tested. Basically, if you aren't already in need of hospitalization, you won't be tested. So, there is easily another 15% of infected not being tested due to only mild symptoms, meaning 85% of infected are going undiagnosed.

The "good" news is that means the US death rate is much lower in the general population than among the select group getting tested and diagnosed. With a caveat that there are people dying before they get tested, and few tests are being done post-mortem. The bad news is that the infected rate is almost 7 times higher than the official count, meaning the US has about 3.5 million infected already and rising by over 200,000 every day. That will mean about 1 in every 50 Americans infected 2 weeks from now, and much higher than that in urban "hot zones". Very soon, getting groceries in many major cities will make you more likely than not to be withing feet of an infected person (and there's a good chance it will be the checkout clerk), and your take out delivery guy will have a high chance of infection too.

Also, there is a diagnosis-to-death lag of more than a week. IOW, if there were no new cases starting tomorrow, new deaths among the diagnosed would continue for over a month, with the median new death occurring somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks. So, the real death rate among those already diagnosed is today's death count divided by the diagnoses cases from at least 1 week ago. That's a death rate of 7%, using a conservative estimate of only 1 week from diagnosis to death (using 2 week lag, it's 20%). So, if your bad enough to get tested and diagnosed in the US, it's very bad news.
 
Staggering Surge Of NYers Dying In Their Homes Suggests City Is Undercounting Coronavirus Fatalities - Gothamist
If you die at home from the coronavirus, there’s a good chance you won’t be included in the official death toll, because of a discrepancy in New York City’s reporting process. Update: After WNYC/Gothamist's reporting, the city has reversed its position and will count probable COVID-19 deaths that occur at home.

The problem means the city’s official death count is likely far lower than the real toll taken by the virus, according to public health officials.

It also means that victims without access to testing are not being counted, and even epidemiologists are left without a full understanding of the pandemic.
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then
Death Count Expected To Soar As NYC Says It Will Begin Reporting Probable COVID Deaths In Addition To Confirmed Ones - Gothamist
In a statement, Stephanie Buhle, a spokeswoman for New York City’s Health Department, said the city would no longer report only those cases that were confirmed by a laboratory test.

“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and the NYC Health Department are working together to include into their reports deaths that may be linked to COVID but not lab confirmed that occur at home,” she said.

She didn’t say when the city would begin reporting suspected deaths along with the overall count. But the new protocol is likely to add thousands to the toll.
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Chris Hayes on Twitter: "The excess death data in NYC is so so upsetting and staggering and still isn't, as far as I know, being integrated into the official counts." / Twitter
 
ronburgundy said:
University Researchers tested all 3000 residents of an Italian village. 70% of those infected were completely asymptomatic.

That doesn't count people with mild symptom who, in the US, are being rejected for testing in most places. In Illinois, you have to be near death and/or immune compromised to be tested. Basically, if you aren't already in need of hospitalization, you won't be tested. So, there is easily another 15% of infected not being tested due to only mild symptoms, meaning 85% of infected are going undiagnosed.

The "good" news is that means the US death rate is much lower in the general population than among the select group getting tested and diagnosed. With a caveat that there are people dying before they get tested, and few tests are being done post-mortem. The bad news is that the infected rate is almost 7 times higher than the official count, meaning the US has about 3.5 million infected already and rising by over 200,000 every day. That will mean about 1 in every 50 Americans infected 2 weeks from now, and much higher than that in urban "hot zones". Very soon, getting groceries in many major cities will make you more likely than not to be withing feet of an infected person (and there's a good chance it will be the checkout clerk), and your take out delivery guy will have a high chance of infection too.

Also, there is a diagnosis-to-death lag of more than a week. IOW, if there were no new cases starting tomorrow, new deaths among the diagnosed would continue for over a month, with the median new death occurring somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks. So, the real death rate among those already diagnosed is today's death count divided by the diagnoses cases from at least 1 week ago. That's a death rate of 7%, using a conservative estimate of only 1 week from diagnosis to death (using 2 week lag, it's 20%). So, if your bad enough to get tested and diagnosed in the US, it's very bad news.
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I've been saying from the start that everyone is going to be exposed. Most will be infected and some will die. The number of dead will depend on how many get critically ill at once. The other variables have little effect. Even now, as the stock market and PINO are celebrating as if this is over because of a few days of insignificant change in deaths and new reported cases, those numbers are holding strong. In fact in the last few minutes the US broke through the 2k deaths per day barrier (not a barrier) and is logging 33,000+ new cases already today - and that's without the (possibly thousands) of military cases and unknown numbers of military deaths (it's a secret because... makes PINO look bad).
 
 
21% death rate is for infected which were hospitalized, so it does not include people like Chris Cuomo who sits in his basement, not to mention people without any symptoms who don't even know they have the virus. You have to be in pretty bad shape to get to hospital.

And people who go to ventilator have 80% death rate.
 
Dr. Oni Blackstock on Twitter: "“A study found that 75% of front-line workers in the city — grocery clerks, bus and train operators, janitors and child care staff — are minorities. More than 60% of people who work as cleaners are Latino, and more than 40% of transit employees are black.” https://t.co/9pOzUC6U71" / Twitter
noting
Virus Is Twice as Deadly for Black and Latino People Than Whites in N.Y.C. - The New York Times
noting
covid-19-deaths-race-ethnicity-04082020-1.pdf

Confirmed death rate per 100,000 as of April 6
  • Hispanic: 22.8
  • Black: 19.8
  • White: 10.2
  • Asian: 8.4
There was also a glimmer of hope in the state’s hospitalization figures on Wednesday: The number of virus patients in hospitals had increased by 3 percent since Tuesday, the fifth consecutive day that number had increased by less than 10 percent — suggesting that the curve of infection may be flattening.

...
New York City’s racial disparity in deaths is similar to that in other parts of the state, but is actually less pronounced than in other states and cities that have released racial breakdowns of coronavirus cases and deaths.

In Chicago, for example, black people account for 72 percent of virus-related fatalities, even though they make up a little less than a third of the population.

Mr. Cuomo said on Wednesday that some of the difference could be attributed to poorer people having more untreated chronic health problems than more-affluent individuals, making them more likely to die if they contract the virus.

But he said that black and Hispanic people may also be disproportionately represented on the front lines of workers who are at high risk.
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New York’s Inequalities Are Fueling COVID-19 | FiveThirtyEight
Dr. Royal S. Copeland, the field marshal in New York City’s battle against the 1918 influenza epidemic, knew his enemy was more than just a virus. As health commissioner, he oversaw a medical crisis that would eventually kill some 30,000 New Yorkers over three waves of the disease. In Copeland’s estimation, the problem was not only influenza but also the city’s crowded tenements and endemic poverty.

...
East Elmhurst has seen a high rate of individuals tested, and that might be in part because Elmhurst Hospital in neighboring Elmhurst, Queens — “the epicenter within the epicenter,” in the words of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — has set up a testing tent outside the hospital. According to 2018 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 34,118 people live in the 1.1 square miles of East Elmhurst’s 11369 ZIP code. Sixty-four percent of its residents are Latino, and the median household income is $54,121, three-quarters of the median income in New York’s greater metro area. On the neighborhood’s northern border is LaGuardia Airport, and south of that are mosques and diners, a baseball field and blocks and blocks of houses cramped together. On those cramped blocks, the average household size is 3.2 people, 20 percent above the city average.

Nearly 11 percent of all households in ZIP code 11369 are also multigenerational, with three or more generations living under the same roof. It’s possible that the grouping of young and old together in one house could have something to do with higher infection rates. Researchers are still unclear about how many others a person infects when they have the virus, but early estimates were around 2 to 2.5 people. The elderly are more susceptible, and in Italy, doctors believe that the country’s culture of intergenerational living and familial closeness has had disastrous effects during the pandemic; Italy’s rate of death from COVID-19 is among the highest in the world.

Underlying conditions like asthma tend to be more prevalent in crowded environments, according to Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who specializes in public health and chronic disease prevention at the New York Academy of Medicine. The respiratory condition puts individuals at greater risk for COVID-19 complications, and households in city apartments with pests or mold, common problems in public housing units, often have higher rates of asthma, she said.

...
“We say something as simple as ‘your ZIP code should not define your health’ — [but] in New York City, that’s often the story,” said Dr. Torian Easterling, the deputy commissioner of the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, a city agency that addresses racial and social inequities in health. He pointed to high rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension and a lack of access to healthy foods in minority communities as long-standing public health problems that have only been exacerbated by the onset of COVID-19.

During the 1918 pandemic, the white population had a higher rate of infection, according to a 2007 study of the outbreak by Thomas A. Garrett, then an economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve. But that, Garrett surmised, had to do with the fact that the black population in the U.S. was still largely rural; the pandemic was a particular menace to cities. “[T]he nonwhite population in the United States has become much more urban. … A modern-day pandemic may result in greater nonwhite mortality rates because a greater percentage of the nonwhite population in the United States lives in urban areas,” he wrote. Census estimates from 2019 show that the majority of New York City residents are people of color.

Park Slope and the East Elmhurst ZIP code of 11369 are similarly dense, with roughly 32,000 and 31,000 people per square mile, respectively. But life in the neighborhoods is different in other ways that might contribute to their divergent rates of apparent COVID-19 infection. According to the latest Census Bureau count, the most prevalent jobs in East Elmhurst are clerical work, food service and construction. In Park Slope, management, entertainment, education and business are the most common professions. The typical East Elmhurst worker is required to leave home to perform their job, while the lines of work most common in Park Slope are adaptable to teleworking. And Latinos — East Elmhurst’s dominant ethnic group — are more likely than all other Americans to consider COVID-19 a threat to their financial stability, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
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Tracking of cellphones reveals that the top 10% of income have become less mobile than the bottom 10% of income.

Also, AOC is correct about ZIP codes determining one's destiny - something she directly experienced in her childhood when she grew up in Jackson Heights, Westchester County and visited family members in the Bronx. Right-wingers are having a fit about her seemingly making a racial issue out of the virus's impact, but race is entangled with social class, and that's what makes the difference.
 
So 50-75% of infected don't feel any symptoms. And also even though they have no symptoms it can be seen on x-rays.
Plus CNN says 15% of women giving birth were found to be infected in NY I understand. This is scary.
 
Some, if not most, asymptomatic survivors had symptoms. They did not match the serious-case criteria. Mild fever, a bit of a cough, and a little fatigue.
We need #antibodytesting. However, so far no antibody test is accurate. Too many false-positives (perhaps detecting antibodies to unrelated coronavirae).
Getting some back to work, which will happen soon, will surely begin a new wave. Mostly "asymptomatic" I hope. Yah, scary.
 
barbos said:
So 50-75% of infected don't feel any symptoms. And also even though they have no symptoms it can be seen on x-rays.
Plus CNN says 15% of women giving birth were found to be infected in NY I understand. This is scary.
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Why is that scary? That's reassuring.
 
J842P said:
barbos said:
So 50-75% of infected don't feel any symptoms. And also even though they have no symptoms it can be seen on x-rays.
Plus CNN says 15% of women giving birth were found to be infected in NY I understand. This is scary.
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Why is that scary? That's reassuring.
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They are talking about asymptomatic people who are being contagious for 4 weeks.

It means that pretty much everyone is gonna be infected, significant percentage will die and most who don't will probably have complications even if they feel no symptoms whatsoever.
If 15% number is correct that's 2 million infected in NY alone.
I don't understand why are they not testing random people.
 
barbos said:
J842P said:
barbos said:
So 50-75% of infected don't feel any symptoms. And also even though they have no symptoms it can be seen on x-rays.
Plus CNN says 15% of women giving birth were found to be infected in NY I understand. This is scary.
Click to expand...

Why is that scary? That's reassuring.
Click to expand...
They are talking about asymptomatic people who are being contagious for 4 weeks.

It means that pretty much everyone is gonna be infected, significant percentage will die and most who don't will probably have complications even if they feel no symptoms whatsoever.
If 15% number is correct that's 2 million infected in NY alone.
I don't understand why are they not testing random people.
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That pretty much everyone is going to be infected was very likely from the very beginning.

What do you think a significant percentage is? What complications exactly from people with mild-to moderate symptoms, or no symptoms, do you expect?
 
Coronavirus and asthma: The deadly mix of Covid-19, air pollution, and inequality, explained - Vox - "Covid-19 is disproportionately affecting black and brown communities in New York and elsewhere. Air pollution seems to be one reason why."
Mychal Johnson, a Bronx resident and co-founding member of the advocacy group South Bronx Unite, says that in the Bronx, “We already had higher rates of children missing school because they had to go to the hospital for respiratory problems.” Every year, the Bronx has 21 times more asthma hospitalizations than other New York boroughs, and over five times the national average.

The neighborhood, Johnson says, is known as “asthma alley,” and he and his family breathe the emissions of the hundreds of diesel trucks that stream from the neighborhood’s warehouses and along local highways. It is not unrelated that 44 percent of the Bronx is black. Nationwide, black children are 500 times more likely to die from asthma than white children, and have a 250 percent higher hospitalization rate for the condition.

These negative health effects just get worse as you get older. “Throughout your life, you’re accumulating air pollution exposures,” says Rachel Nethery, a biostatistician at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who co-authored the new pre-print. Air pollution exposure in young adults has been linked to abnormal changes in the blood, which can lead to heart disease and high blood pressure later in life, both risk factors for severe and fatal Covid-19 cases. In adults, this has been closely associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
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There is also distrust of the medical profession.
According to the American College of Physicians, “minorities have less access to health care than whites.” During a global pandemic, for example, it’s harder for families who might not already have a primary care physician to access telehealth resources.

Joseph Ravenell, a professor of population health at NYU Langone Health, says that in addition to lack of access, there can be a “level of mistrust” in some communities, in part because of historical unethical practices of using black people as test subjects, as well as previous experiences of racism within the health care system. A 2016 study in PNAS found widespread false beliefs held by medical staff about biological differences between blacks and whites, as well as racial bias in pain assessment and treatment.
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Other problems.
People of color might also have less ability to implement public health recommendations; as Krieger notes, despite a recent CDC recommendation to wear masks when in public, many people of color are justifiably afraid of wearing a mask into a store and being seen as a threat.
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barbos said:
I don't understand why are they not testing random people.
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It's simply because we are not yet that organized. That will come. Random testing is the key to knowing the process, same as quality testing and inspection in any manufacturing enterprise.

I watched some former government official on the CBS news this evening and he said it all. It was reassuring listening to someone who knew their shit and knew what we needed to have in place come the end of summer when people are returning to schools. Political posturing was not present in his delivery.
 
J842P said:
barbos said:
They are talking about asymptomatic people who are being contagious for 4 weeks.

It means that pretty much everyone is gonna be infected, significant percentage will die and most who don't will probably have complications even if they feel no symptoms whatsoever.
If 15% number is correct that's 2 million infected in NY alone.
I don't understand why are they not testing random people.
Click to expand...
That pretty much everyone is going to be infected was very likely from the very beginning.
Click to expand...
In the beginning they thought it was nothing then it would be like flu when a lot but far from most get infected.
What do you think a significant percentage is? What complications exactly from people with mild-to moderate symptoms, or no symptoms, do you expect?
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Looks like at least ~1% are gonna die if everybody is infected.
I expect some permanent lung damage even in asymptomatic patients. And probably more complications later in life
They see the same ground glass opacity regardless whether or not patient feels any symptoms. Which kinda make sense, we know that asymptomatic people are contagious, that means they have large virus load, so something is going on there even if they don't feel it.
 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's district, NY-14, contains 5 of the top 10 zip-code areas that are hardest hit, and the three top ones of these.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'Inequality is a preexisting condition' amid the coronavirus pandemic - ABC News
“When a pandemic like this hits or even any natural disaster like a hurricane, like what we saw in hurricane Katrina or hurricane Maria, they don't happen in a vacuum,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “they happen when communities are disproportionately located on the front line. Here in New York City, about 55% of our front line workers, including grocery store workers, delivery workers and more, are black and brown.”

“It’s tragic, but it is also no surprise that it’s impacting the vulnerable the most,” she said.
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She also says that personal responsibility is only made an issue when it is black and brown people getting hard-hit and not old people. Nobody talks about how irresponsible old people are. She concedes that we must nevertheless do what we can, like quit smoking.
 
Something is fishy with China statistics, it jumped to 4,632 dead
Wuhan (China), the epicenter of the pandemic, today reported 1,290 additional deaths that had not been previously counted and reported, bringing the total number of deaths in Wuhan from 2,579 to 3,869, an increase of 50%, as the result of a revision by the Wuhan New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Prevention and Control. As part of this revision, 325 additional cases in Wuhan were also added. Separately, China's National Health Commission (NHC) reported 26 new cases (and no deaths) in its daily
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