Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19) and Tinnitus

[FGG]

It could have been that after the corrupt people were gone, the testing began reflecting the true scores.

Atlanta is in a different state. But if your assumption is that increased test scores in an area probably come from corruption, than I can see why you would arrive at that.

 

[Bill Bauer]

It's weird that COVID-19 would act like All other known respiratory viruses.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...naturally-vaccine-not-needed-former-director/

 

[Bill Bauer]

Atlanta is in a different state.

If it were in the same state, Riley results would have been more credible. It would mean that someone had looked into those results and found no foul play.

if your assumption is that increased test scores in an area probably come from corruption, than I can see why you would arrive at that.

It's not an assumption! My assumption is that if something is real, it could be replicated elsewhere. New York is spending crazy amounts per student and Riley results aren't being replicated. I don't think government officials are particularly efficient, but surely they could look up what was done at Riley (hiring extra teaching assistants isn't a huge breakthrough and is being done at many other places) and surely they might as well spend the money on something that has a proven track record. Now, if they were to know that it's all BS, then yes that would explain their lack of enthusiasm for trying that policy themselves.

Another assumption of mine is that I can see how corruption involving a percent of one percent of the budget going on for years and not being noticed. But wasting/stealing over 50% of one's budget for decades isn't something that is likely to happen. In Baltimore they are spending the money (perhaps the efficiency of that spending could be improved by something like 10%, but surely it can't be Doubled, as that would mean incredible corruption and mismanagement that hasn't been pointed out for decades), and not getting any result, making it that much less likely that Riley had Actually gotten the results they bragged about.

Atlanta and Riley are in different states, but both reported huge improvements that happened on a short time scale. I wish you could let us know the time when Riley reported their outstanding results. If it happened around 2009, then there is your explanation - once Atlanta officials got caught, Riley officials stopped lying/cheating and everyone had conveniently forgot about the "miracle".

In any case, Atlanta officials were dumb and their results looked Impossibly good. Either Riley officials were smarter and reported more reasonable improvements, or the local politics ensured that despite the improvements being unreasonable, and despite knowing about Atlanta, nobody insisted on looking into how those improvements came about.

 

[linearb]

Atlanta is in a different state. But if your assumption is that increased test scores in an area probably come from corruption, than I can see why you would arrive at that.

I don't think there's anything here that's very hard to understand; or contradictory. I don't think there's uniformity in the tests being used, and even if there were, still nowhere (in the US) is doing comprehensive grid testing. We don't have antibody tests which are good enough to be useful in testing specific people, they are only slightly useful in looking at overall trends. Cased-based testing and testing based on "who wants to be tested?" can give you a ton of data but it's not the kind you need to understand prevalence and spread; likewise, the number of people you have in ICUs can give you some information about prevalence and spread, but not really tell you anything about the CFR / IFR.

Getting good, accurate data about a pandemic in realtime is not something that's ever even been attempted before, and we shouldn't be surprised by the difficulties we're having. The easiest way to convince me of some kind of conspiracy would be if all the numbers did line up in perfect little rows in the middle of a novel event that's stressing parts of the healthcare, employment and entitlements apparatus in a way that's never happened before.

This isn't to suggest we won't eventually have good data, and a solid understanding of how many orders of magnitude more dangerous than influenze COVID-19 is; it's just going to take time, and having that calm 20,000 foot view is not a critical priority during an event that's killing thousands of people a day.

 

[Bill Bauer]

a solid understanding of how many orders of magnitude more dangerous than influenze COVID-19 is

Why are you excluding the possibility that it is less dangerous than influenza?

They had to lay off 1.4 million healthcare workers due to a crisis that never came,
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/10/853524764/amid-pandemic-hospitals-lay-off-1-4m-workers-in-april
so if there is a flare up Now, the healthcare system might Actually finally get overwhelmed.

 

[Bill Bauer]

a solid understanding of how many orders of magnitude more dangerous than influenze COVID-19 is

 

[Bill Bauer]

 

[Bill Bauer]

 

[Luman]

OK, here's the latest scoop from NYC. As of a day or two ago, the antibody blood test to determine if you've already had COVID-19, and the swab test for active COVID-19, are now more accessible. I just returned from a local urgent care clinic, where I took the antibody test. The results, I was told, will be available on their website, within 3 to 5 days, for me to view using a code or password, that I was assigned. I think that I already had COVID-19, in March, and in a few days, will know for certain.

This wave of the disease is virtually over, here. About 75 percent of people in the streets, are still wearing masks, including me, but we are no longer crossing the street to avoid others. In fact, the whole atmosphere is much better and now and, with these tests, the panic that the government unleashed, may subside a bit, and perhaps things might start opening up sooner than we thought.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Stanford Professor and Nobel Prize Winner: (at around 27:17) "the excess deaths from Corona are actually 15% more than the flu season of 2017/18". He has a lot more to say

 

[linearb]

OK, here's the latest scoop from NYC. As of a day or two ago, the antibody blood test to determine if you've already had COVID-19, and the swab test for active COVID-19, are now more accessible.

The antibody tests aren't nearly sensitive enough to be useful to give any individual much confidence about whether or not they are exposed; the false positive and negative rates are well into measuarable peccentages.

These tests could be useful for grid testing and understanding relative prevalence and spread, but everyone seems to either have insufficient tests for this purpose or forgotten the basics of disease control.

In fact, the whole atmosphere is much better and now and, with these tests, the panic that the government unleashed, may subside a bit, and perhaps things might start opening up sooner than we thought.

This sounds like the situation in Tehran when they reopened a few weeks ago; their new case count is accelerating again. I hope places in the US fare better... Since being isolated doesn't change my life very much, we're just going to be cautious and see how things unfold. Meanwhile, I have a new job to focus on...

 

[Luman]

The antibody tests aren't nearly sensitive enough to be useful to give any individual much confidence about whether or not they are exposed; the false positive and negative rates are well into measuarable peccentages.

These tests could be useful for grid testing and understanding relative prevalence and spread, but everyone seems to either have insufficient tests for this purpose or forgotten the basics of disease control.

This sounds like the situation in Tehran when they reopened a few weeks ago; their new case count is accelerating again. I hope places in the US fare better... Since being isolated doesn't change my life very much, we're just going to be cautious and see how things unfold. Meanwhile, I have a new job to focus on...

We took the new Abbott Architect antibody test, supposed to be very accurate.

Abbott (NYSE: ABT) today highlighted University of Washington research showing that its COVID-19 blood antibody test had 99.9% specificity and 100% sensitivity among people tested 17 days after the start of symptoms.......
The University of Washington research, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, included the testing of 1,020 serum specimens collected prior to SARS-CoV-2 circulation in the United States. There was only one false positive — indicating a specificity of 99.9%

There were 125 patients who had already tested RT-PCR positive for SARS-CoV-2 — with 689 excess serum specimens available. After running the Abbott assay on the 689 specimens, there was 100% sensitivity (ability to exclude false negatives) at 17 days or more after symptoms began.
The research also involved running the Abbott tests on samples from 4,856 people in Boise, Idaho, collected over one week in April as part of the Crush the Curve initiative. The testing detected 87 positives for a positivity rate of 1.79%.

https://jcm.asm.org/content/early/2020/05/07/JCM.00941-20

 

[GregCA]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ry-highest-coronavirus-death-rate-per-capita/

 

[linearb]

We took the new Abbott Architect antibody test, supposed to be very accurate.

Abbott (NYSE: ABT) today highlighted University of Washington research showing that its COVID-19 blood antibody test had 99.9% specificity and 100% sensitivity among people tested 17 days after the start of symptoms.......
The University of Washington research, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, included the testing of 1,020 serum specimens collected prior to SARS-CoV-2 circulation in the United States. There was only one false positive — indicating a specificity of 99.9%

this is much, much better than the prior tests. If this is accurate and we can get this rolled out in a hurry, we can get a much more accurate grip on how many people have actually been exposed.

I am fully expecting we're going to be in a situation (at least in places like NYC) where there are continuing measures of various kinds very long term, and returns to more severe distancing measures as case counts spike various places.

Understanding the genetics of this virus is also more and more important. Everyone expected this to just decimate third world countries, but according to a relative who has specialized in studying and identifying infectuous disesease, especially in sub-sarharan africa -- the virus is there, and it's just not "doing much". This has led to speculation that people in these ares may be getting continual exposure to other zoonotic coronavirus which affords a degee of cross protection. (Also, these countries universally have exceedingly high mortality for people under the age of 5, so anyone who lives past that probably has an immune system that's already been trained to kill some tough mudder shit).

We've already seen that the IMHE models were not very good, but, they were also based on earlier interventions and more compliance with lockdown measures than have been possible in the US. I think 200K by the end of the year seems likely at this point, but also that there is going to be massive gaming of these numbers in both directions and it's going to take more effort than I'll give it to really dig in.

 

[all to gain]

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has reportedly been hospitalized with coronavirus.
He is the latest in a number of high profile politicians to get the virus. If he dies, things will get really hot up here.

Poots is trying to use this virus to his advantage. There was supposed to be a nationwide vote on changing the constitution which would allow him to stay in power until he drops dead, but it was postponed. Likewise, the military parade to commemorate 75 years since the end of the war was postponed. Now there is talk that they might both be held on 24 June. This is a blatant move to play on the patriotic feelings of people so they vote for the change or to make people who aren't that bothered to stay at home or simply go and watch their local military parade.

 

[Luman]

@linearb
I just received my COVID-19 Antibody test results: Negative.

I thought that I'd had it, from when I was a sick for a couple of weeks in March, but it was apparently something else.

 

[Nobody19]

Those of you who want to help understand Covid-19 from home, there are several distributing computing projects out there like Folding@Home and Rosetta@Home who are throwing their full weight at understanding Covid-19.

https://foldingathome.org/
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/

 

[Bill Bauer]

 

[linearb]

On the positive side, Sweden's number of new cases has peaked

That's a bold claim

In Canada, the individual rate of death from COVID-19 for people under 65 years of age is six per million people, or 0.0006 per cent.

This is a fairly hilarious statistic because it's not CFR or IFR it's literally the death rate. That is, given that the overall exposure rate in Canada is relatively tiny, owing in no small part to lockdown measues. Once 10x as many people have contracted it, then it will be 10x this rate, etc. The people who wrote this article are clearly credentialed well enough to understand the basis there, and mention this number without any mention of CFR/IFR?

This is just as much "politically oriented disinfo" as anything else. Just like basically everything being written about C19 in either direction.

I agree with the authors stated idea that we need a rational and apolitical response to this crisis. I don't necessarily think they actually believe that, though.

 

[Bill Bauer]

That is, given that the overall exposure rate in Canada is relatively tiny, owing in no small part to lockdown measues.

You have a point.

Once 10x as many people have contracted it, then it will be 10x this rate, etc.

I think at least 5% (and possibly as many as 10-20%) of Canadians have already had it. And of course once 70% have had it, herd immunity sets in and we don't need to worry about the rest getting it. If this is correct, then it can get at most 5-20 times what it is now. Meaning that the rate will be in the range of from "30 per million" to "120 per million". These are still tiny, tiny risks (120 per million is equivalent to 0.012%) - the kind of risks that we have been ignoring every single day of our lives.

 

[Bill Bauer]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...for-the-nhs-says-woman-who-started-the-ritual
The clapping ritual has been going on all of that time! Amazing. Hopefully this is some sort of Ironic Monty Python styled humour.

 

[linearb]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/andrew-cuomo-new-york-coronavirus-catastrophe

As someone who has hated Andrew Cuomo for a long time this article is music to my ears, F this guy

 

[Bill Bauer]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/andrew-cuomo-new-york-coronavirus-catastrophe

As someone who has hated Andrew Cuomo for a long time this article is music to my ears, F this guy

The article doesn't mention the fact that people died because Cuomo sent COVID-19 patients to nursing homes(!)

New estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that COVID-19 may have an infection fatality rate as low as 0.26%, a number that is double the seasonal flu but significantly lower than earlier estimates.

https://justthenews.com/politics-po...fection-fatality-rate-could-be-low-026-nearly

 

[linearb]

The article doesn't mention the fact that people died because Cuomo sent COVID-19 patients to nursing homes(!)

https://justthenews.com/politics-po...fection-fatality-rate-could-be-low-026-nearly

Totally with you that Cuomo is, and has always been garbage. Putting a shine of polish on garbage and putting a spotlight on it still makes it garbage.

I don't like that justthenews link, at all, because it appears to be disingenuous in multiple places. First:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week continued that trend, releasing a list of what it called "COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios." That document laid out five different scenarios for public health experts and government officials to consider, one of which the agency called its "current best estimate" of the parameters of the viral pandemic.

That scenario states that the overall fatality rate of infections that show symptoms is around 0.4%. Yet the CDC says it estimates that around 35% of all infectious are asymptomatic, meaning that the total infection fatality rate under the agency's "best estimate" scenario is around 0.26%, or a little more than twice that of the seasonal flu.

The article mentions five CDC scenarios, but then does all this math based only on the best case scenario? That's silly, there's a reason the CDC did five different projections; only assessing the happy path means you assume you're living in the best of all possible worlds; this seems unlikely.

The CDC estimates that as many as 60,000 Americans die of the flu in an average year, meaning—if the agency's current estimates are correct—the U.S. could still see tens of thousands of more deaths before the fatalities begin to recede.

This is playing the same game in the opposite direction -- 60,000 is the general upper bound for a bad flu year, but the range CDC gives is 12,000 - 60,000 (https://www.health.com/condition/cold-flu-sinus/how-many-people-die-of-the-flu-every-year) -- in fact, if we look back over the last 10 years, there's only one year which has hit that (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html)

The disease itself also appears to spread more easily than seasonal influenza, meaning even if COVID-19's infection fatality rate were equal to that of the flu, the total number of deaths from it would still likely exceed that of influenza simply because it would infect more people.

Yet the lower numbers, if accurate, are an encouraging sign that the disease is not as lethal as was earlier estimated.

I don't see how A follows B here, because we're responding to C-19 radically different than we've ever responded to the flu in my lifetime in America. It spreads more easily, and the article here provides absolutely no reason why it's harping on "the lower numbers".

We have 5 models there, from the CDC. I think anyone doing this kind of deep dive on one of the spectrum and not the other is more than suspect, whichever direction it's pointing in.

Nothing has really changed, since the lockdown started. The virus is still out there, we have 100,000 dead with relatively low exposure and fairly extreme measures implemented. As those measures are relaxed, we'll have an increase in cases.

It's interesting to look at what's going on in Germany now, since they are "ahead" of us, in that they locked down, unlocked, had cases start to skyrocket, locked down again and are now trying to figure out how to proceed. It looks like there was general national unity until pretty recently, but now that is fracturing.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...wn-measures-thuringia-second-wave-coronavirus

 

[linearb]

for more "numbers being all over the map", https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2766121

This apparent equivalence of deaths from COVID-19 and seasonal influenza does not match frontline clinical conditions, especially in some hot zones of the pandemic where ventilators have been in short supply and many hospitals have been stretched beyond their limits. The demand on hospital resources during the COVID-19 crisis has not occurred before in the US, even during the worst of influenza seasons....

These statistics on counted deaths suggest that the number of COVID-19 deaths for the week ending April 21 was 9.5-fold to 44.1-fold greater than the peak week of counted influenza deaths during the past 7 influenza seasons in the US, with a 20.5-fold mean increase (95% CI, 16.3-27.7).5,6

I'm not going to believe anyone's CFR/IFR numbers until we're two years past a vaccine and people are doing longitudinal studies and metaanalysis of literally everything published during all this. However, based on the variance and the spread, my personal belief at this time is that this virus is much nastier than any flu that's happened during my lifetime, and also has the potential for long term damage which we still do not understand. That could certainly turn out to be overblown, or limited to specific demographics, but again, until we have more data, I am limiting risk.

Note that the timeframe this JAMA paper is looking at includes the horrific 2018 60k flu year, as well.

 

[Bill Bauer]

The article mentions five CDC scenarios, but then does all this math based only on the best case scenario?

You didn't read it right. It wasn't "the best case scenario" - it was "the current best estimate". So they used the figures that CDC considers to be most likely to be true/the closest to the true value.

This is playing the same game in the opposite direction -- 60,000 is the general upper bound for a bad flu year, but the range CDC gives is 12,000 - 60,000 (https://www.health.com/condition/cold-flu-sinus/how-many-people-die-of-the-flu-every-year) -- in fact, if we look back over the last 10 years, there's only one year which has hit that (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html)

They shouldn't have used the absolute values. Multiple sources state that 0.1% fatality rate is a reasonable estimate for the flu. Here the best estimate is 0.25%, so 2.5 times more than the average value.

I don't see how A follows B here, because we're responding to C-19 radically different than we've ever responded to the flu in my lifetime in America. It spreads more easily, and the article here provides absolutely no reason why it's harping on "the lower numbers".

Makes sense.

As those measures are relaxed, we'll have an increase in cases.

I agree that it is logical to expect this. But what we observe isn't consistent with the above.

These statistics on counted deaths suggest that the number of COVID-19 deaths for the week ending April 21 was 9.5-fold to 44.1-fold greater than the peak week of counted influenza deaths during the past 7 influenza seasons in the US, with a 20.5-fold mean increase (95% CI, 16.3-27.7).5,6

That hasn't happened in the EU. I guess the above is what you would expect to happen if the authorities in New York send infected people to nursing homes. Initially I assumed that people were sent Back to the nursing homes where they used to live before being diagnosed with COVID-19. Then I read that that 20-year old guy who beat up a nursing home resident wasn't working there - he was diagnosed as having COVID-19 and was sent to that nursing home for quarantine.

until we have more data, I am limiting risk.

Of course the risk should be limited whenever the cost of limiting the risk is relatively low.

 

[Bill Bauer]

his virus is much nastier than any flu that's happened during my lifetime

The toll (2020, population 320 million) matches 100,000 killed in the United States by the pandemic of 1968 (population 200 million) and is closing in on the outbreak of 1957-58 (population 172 million), which killed 116,000.

There will have to be over 216 million deaths to exceed the death rate of 1957 flu.

In 2020, hospitals have a financial incentive to classify deaths as being related to COVID-19.

 

[linearb]

The JP Morgan study looks forward 7 days, for a virus that can have an undetectable transmissible period of almost twice that; that's the primary issue I have seen called out about it.

You didn't respond to the JAMA paper.

The toll (2020, population 320 million) matches 100,000 killed in the United States by the pandemic of 1968 (population 200 million) and is closing in on the outbreak of 1957-58 (population 172 million), which killed 116,000.

There will have to be over 216 million deaths to exceed the death rate of 1957 flu.

We're not going to get to 216 million but we're going to blow through 100K soon (almost certainly have already, but 3-day weekend reporting lag), and I suspect 200K in fall/winter, if we don't get there by late summer as a result of the behavior that's happening now. (If we don't get there by late summer as a result of the behavior that's happening now, it will also be a strong data point in favor of relaxing some things).

In 2020, hospitals have a financial incentive to classify deaths as being related to COVID-19.

"Incentive" is kind of a tricky word and I don't agree with that conclusion.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/

 

[Bill Bauer]

We're not going to get to 216 million but we're going to blow through 100K soon

I meant to write 216,000 deaths. Note, at the time they weren't histrionic about it and did the right thing and didn't have a shutdown. You do a shutdown for a Black Death, and not for a super bad flu.

You didn't respond to the JAMA paper.

Which one was that?

JP Morgan study looks forward 7 days, for a virus that can have an undetectable transmissible period of almost twice that; that's the primary issue I have seen called out about it.

Are you saying that the CDC used JP Morgan study to come up with their "most likely estimator" for the fatality rate?

as a result of the behavior that's happening now

I believe Cuomo is no longer sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, so it ought to be ok from here on out.

"Incentive" is kind of a tricky word

Your link is clear about it:

Recent legislation pays hospitals higher Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients and treatment

Now, the amount of Evidence that will be uncovered depends on who is looking for the evidence, and their own set of incentives. Also it depends on what counts as fraud. Of course the person needs to test positive for COVID-19 for their death to qualify for the higher payment. If the person would have died a month from now had they not contacted COVID-19, but as a result of coronavirus they died Now, a month earlier, then I wouldn't call it a COVID-19 death, but of course it isn't fraud to call it that.

In any case, people respond to incentives, hospitals had an incentive to count cases as COVID-19, thus the reported numbers should be judged with a grain of salt.

 

[Bill Bauer]

"Incentive" is kind of a tricky word and I don't agree with that conclusion.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/

LOL

The sixth name on

is Jordan Haynes who was murdered

but is being counted as having died from COVID-19.