whonka wrote:coldfish wrote:jnrjr79 wrote:
I'm no doctor,
Said no one on the Bulls board everjnrjr79 wrote:but my firm belief is hundreds of thousands or millions of people in the US are infected. It's such a crazy virus. Some people get it and never know it - others suffer and die. And it's seriously affecting younger people more often than was initially thought. But until we test everyone (1) for the virus, and (2) for antibodies, we're never really going to know.
There are little tidbits of information out there that indicate widespread infection:
- Studies on the virus itself showing that it has gone through hundreds of thousands or millions of people over a month ago.
- The sheer implausibility that China only let 75,000 people get infected in a city of 11 million while letting the virus run rampant for almost two months.
- The anecdotal stories of parties where everyone gets infected showing incredibly rapid movement.
- The anecdotal celebrity stories. NBA players. Etc. Basically, famous people who got infected and were able to get tested. Virtually all of them show little to no symptoms. We were told that 20% of the cases are severe. If so, why aren't 20% of the celebrities in hospitals right now? It seriously looks like its more like 2% of cases become severe.
I posted this yesterday. I'm certainly no epidemiologist or statistician, but I heavily, HEAVILY disagree with this article. Most particularly with the parts that are saying that millions of people already have it, and that the virus probably already made a round in January and February.
That just does not jive with reality. Even if you assume many cases went undiagnosed, those of us that work in a hospital can physically see what percentage of patients are coming into our hospitals, ICU's, with ARDS. In January, and February, and even early March, it felt approximately at baseline with the severity/volume of ARDS that the hospital seemed to be receiving. It's only right now, the past 2 weeks, and ESPECIALLY this week, that we feel overwhelmed. Hospitals are being shut down in terms of elective clinic visits/procedures and entire units usually used for other purposes are being turned into COVID units, the caseload of regular hospital admissions, cardiology/general medicine admissions, etc, are WAY down. We're converting general floor units into ICUs. This just did not happen a while ago and matches the rising case numbers currently. Ongoing infection is happening NOW, not last month.
I cite again the news article from Craig Spencer from Columbia.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/25/health/coronavirus-covid-hospitals/index.html"The reality is that what we're seeing right now in our emergency rooms is dire," said Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.
"Last week when I went to work, we talked about the one or two patients amongst the dozens of others that might have been a Covid or coronavirus patient," Spencer told CNN's Anderson Cooper Tuesday. "In my shift yesterday, nearly every single patient that I took care of was coronavirus, and many of them extremely severe. Many were put on breathing tubes. Many decompensated quite quickly.
Those models from those articles just don't match the reality/temporal course of what we're seeing right now.
And yes, people keep bringing up the mild cases going undiagnosed which means the true fatality rate is probably lower b/c the denominator is larger. While that is true, please don't forget, when you're in a strained hospital system, the numerator is also larger. Many people die before they even get tested or go unreported.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/coronavirus-update-dead-covid19-doctors-hospitals
I think that's a good counter for the idea that the virus did a round in January. I think that's extraordinarily unlikely.
That said, your information doesn't really cover the current spread. How many infections are needed to generate a hospital visit and when? Does 5 infections 2 weeks ago get one hospital incoming today? Is it 10 from 3 weeks ago? 50? The rule of thumb we were told was that you would get one hospital visit for ever 5 cases. IMO, the number is much larger than that but its only based on strings of partial information.
One of two things is true:
- This is a slow spreading virus that most people don't even catch which causes severe problems in 20% of the cases as reported
- This is a rapidly spreading virus that causes severe problems in a small percentage of the cases
Italy is the worst hit nation and its been going on for a while. As of right now, they are reporting 0.13% of the population caught it and 0.013% died. Even if there are a massive number of unreported deaths, that is a small, small sliver of the population.
In Hubei province, it went unchecked for 2 months and they are reporting 0.1% of the population caught the virus. One out of 1000. That's an astoundingly low percentage. H1N1 infected roughly 60 million americans or 20% in that same time frame. Based on anecdotal data, this should actually spread faster than H1N1.
