Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

I mean it suggests about 4.5 million people have had it, but I think Spain's only had about 200-250k confirmed cases. So doesn't it mean lots of people had it either without symptoms or very mildly?

True. It is just hard to stomach that it caused such havoc with only one tenth of the population catching it so far.

[Agelastus]

The regional government of Andalucía has given the preliminary results for the nationwide immunity survey (results for just that region): 1%. They are one of the regions that have controlled the virus the best, but it's still ridiculously low. This was obtained after testing 16,000 people.

Full nationwide results are expected in around 3 weeks.

Apparently they are releasing the full preliminary results later today. Headline is "under 9%".

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

Unless I am misunderstanding the nature of the survey if it's close to 9% that would be approximately 4.2 million people in Spain who have contracted the virus. Of which they've officially detected around 270000.

We don't know how many of them are symptomless, of course, but at the least that's nearly 4 million people with symptoms mild enough not to need contact with hospitals or other testing locations.

Edit: Darn, took far too long composing this post.

[celedhring]

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

I mean it suggests about 4.5 million people have had it, but I think Spain's only had about 200-250k confirmed cases. So doesn't it mean lots of people had it either without symptoms or very mildly?

Edit: On that - celed do you know if, as well as taking the test they did a survey on symptoms people have had in the last months? Would be interesting to see.

Yes, they did. Not sure what amount of info we're getting today though (this is just the first wave of the survey).

[celedhring]

4-ish million infected also matches quite well with taking our excess mortality statistics and applying a 1% lethality rate, fwiw.

[Barrister]

There are like, 30 vaccines being tested? Pretty sure some will work. There are actually few viruses we don't have a vaccine for, and only HIV has seen significant resources poured into it.

actually, there are quite a few viruses that do not have a vaccine.  Even if one does not count the flu and cold viruses.

I hope you are right.  But a lot of those tests are trying formulations already made for other things that researchers hope will have some positive results. There is hope, but normally it takes 10 years.  Of course a lot more effort is being poured into this so we will see.

Problem with the flu is it is a multitude of different strains and mutations.

Problem with the common cold is it is actually a whole bunch of different viruses of different types.

We won't know for sure, but SARS-CoV-2 is a single virus that doesn't appear to mutate rapidly.  It does look like a good candidate for a vaccine.

Sure, but the claim was that there are few viruses that don't have a vaccine.  That is not accurate even if one excludes the flu and colds.  You decided to address the things I excluded.

But what viruses are out there where there's a pressing need for a vaccine, where we don't have one?

There's HIV, but that's because HIV is a retrovirus.  Covid is not a retrovirus.
ummm... Ebola?  Pretty rare, and with googling I see they've actually made a vaccine for it.
Zika?  STill a very new virus, mostly local to a few areas, and guess what - vaccines are in development.
Lots of other disease that still plague humanity (such as Lyme, TB, malaria) are bacterial or parasitic.

[celedhring]

Yeah, what I meant is that there's few viruses where we have poured resources without obtaining a working vaccine. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

[DGuller]

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

Depends on how you define massive.  In NYC, if 25% figure is correct, it means that 9 out of 10 cases are unconfirmed.

[Barrister]

Yeah, what I meant is that there's few viruses where we have poured resources without obtaining a working vaccine. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

No, you were clear.  It was CC I was disagreeing with when he said "actually, there are quite a few viruses that do not have a vaccine."

Aside from cold and flu (which he put aside himself), and aside from HIV (which is a retrovirus), I can not think of any virus that causes significant risk to human health where we do not have a vaccine, or do not have a vaccine under development.

[DGuller]

4-ish million infected also matches quite well with taking our excess mortality statistics and applying a 1% lethality rate, fwiw.

Yeah, when it comes to COVID-19, pretty much every statistic points to a 1% infection fatality rate.  Even the rule of thumb that contracting COVID-19 doubles your existing mortality risk points to a 1% IFR, as the average mortality rate of humans is around 1%.

[crazy canuck]

Based on their data, the researchers estimated that closing schools is not enough on its own to stop an outbreak, but it can reduce the surge by about 40 to 60 percent and slow the epidemic's course

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/health/coronavirus-children-transmission-school.amp.html

As I say it's not zero risk, but schools were kept open in Iceland and in Sweden, they've been open in Denmark for about a month with from my understanding lots of evidence that the risk to children is very low and the role they play in transmission is also very low (e.g. in Denmark R was 0.9 before schools re-opened, it's now 0.7). I think there's been re-openings in states in Australia and Germany too, plus they have been re-opened in France, Netherlands and Switzerland and the WHO have issued considerations on re-opening schools because that's what's being observed. The major risk seems to be adults interacting with each other - e.g. parents dropping kids off, teachers and parents. So the important point is to stagger school opening and closing times etc so adults can also socially distance.

Worth saying this only applies to primary schools. Secondary schools are more risky and I don't think anyone's devised a way to open them yet.

You should read the article - the impact depends very much on how well the infection has been contained.  So, for example, opening schools in the US will be very harmful, and not so much on other countries that have had better outcomes.  ie you can't draw a conclusion from the experience in Denmark, Iceland and Sweden to places that have been markedly worse.

[alfred russel]

Doesn't that mean that the massive number of sympton-less infected people is pretty much a myth?

I mean it suggests about 4.5 million people have had it, but I think Spain's only had about 200-250k confirmed cases. So doesn't it mean lots of people had it either without symptoms or very mildly?

True. It is just hard to stomach that it caused such havoc with only one tenth of the population catching it so far.

To keep things in perspective (using US numbers). Approximate dead by cause of death in 2020:

Heart Disease: 183,986
Cancer: 170,247
Covid-19: 83,644

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929
(for heart disease and cancer I just used 2017 and used that rate for 2020)

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, what I meant is that there's few viruses where we have poured resources without obtaining a working vaccine. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Again, not really accurate. A lot of money has been spent trying to find vaccines for some viruses with no success. A very good example is HIV.  But also consider respiratory syncytial virus - something that is not much of concern to the general public but is probably the thing that is going to kill me some day (if COVID doesn't get me first) because there is no effective vaccine for me to take.  There are a number of other viruses that harm us, if you dig a little deeper, that have no effective vaccine.

Also consider the difficulty in finding a vaccine for any strain of corona virus in the past.

hopefully with all the resources being thrown at this - including my small contribution to the protein folding at home project  a vaccine can be developed.  But it is not easy and will take time.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-vaccine/art-20484859

[alfred russel]

I think saying that without vaccine we'll never live a normal life again is just nuts.  If we won't ever develop a vaccine, I'm pretty sure the whole world is going to just say fuck it and hope for the best.  Putting COVID-19 in mortality terms, if you get it, your annual mortality doubles.  If you had a 0.2% chance of dying that year, it now becomes 0.4% chance, and if you had a 5% chance of dying, it becomes a 10% chance.  It's not something to dismiss, but frankly it's not bad enough to be living in a permanent siege mode.

That is the method I was using earlier in the thread. Another way is the effect to your term of life - apparently some analysis showed this takes 10 years off of expected life for those that have died (on average). If that holds true, and 100% of the population gets the disease 1 time with a 1% mortality, that takes off about a month of life per capita.

[crazy canuck]

There are like, 30 vaccines being tested? Pretty sure some will work. There are actually few viruses we don't have a vaccine for, and only HIV has seen significant resources poured into it.

actually, there are quite a few viruses that do not have a vaccine.  Even if one does not count the flu and cold viruses.

I hope you are right.  But a lot of those tests are trying formulations already made for other things that researchers hope will have some positive results. There is hope, but normally it takes 10 years.  Of course a lot more effort is being poured into this so we will see.

Problem with the flu is it is a multitude of different strains and mutations.

Problem with the common cold is it is actually a whole bunch of different viruses of different types.

We won't know for sure, but SARS-CoV-2 is a single virus that doesn't appear to mutate rapidly.  It does look like a good candidate for a vaccine.

Sure, but the claim was that there are few viruses that don't have a vaccine.  That is not accurate even if one excludes the flu and colds.  You decided to address the things I excluded.

But what viruses are out there where there's a pressing need for a vaccine, where we don't have one?

There's HIV, but that's because HIV is a retrovirus.  Covid is not a retrovirus.
ummm... Ebola?  Pretty rare, and with googling I see they've actually made a vaccine for it.
Zika?  STill a very new virus, mostly local to a few areas, and guess what - vaccines are in development.
Lots of other disease that still plague humanity (such as Lyme, TB, malaria) are bacterial or parasitic.

I think you just made part of my point -  there are a number of things (including viruses) that we have tried to find vaccines to prevent, without success.  Corono virus is one of those things that has eluded us thus far.  This is a novel strain but work on finding a corono virus vaccine is not new.

[Barrister]

Yeah, what I meant is that there's few viruses where we have poured resources without obtaining a working vaccine. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Again, not really accurate. A lot of money has been spent trying to find vaccines for some viruses with no success. A very good example is HIV.  But also consider respiratory syncytial virus - something that is not much of concern to the general public but is probably the thing that is going to kill me some day (if COVID doesn't get me first) because there is no effective vaccine for me to take.  There are a number of other viruses that harm us, if you dig a little deeper, that have no effective vaccine.

Also consider the difficulty in finding a vaccine for any strain of corona virus in the past.

hopefully with all the resources being thrown at this - including my small contribution to the protein folding at home project  a vaccine can be developed.  But it is not easy and will take time.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-vaccine/art-20484859

The reason we can't get a vaccine for HIV is that the human body doesn't recognize HIV as an infection, thus the immune system doesn't respond to HIV.  COvid-19 does get fought off by the immune system, thus a vaccine should be available.

I hadn't heard of RSV.  It's a disease that almost everyone gets within their first 2-3 years of life, is almost always harmless, but can potentially be dangerous to older adults.  There has been work on a vaccine, but I suspect it hasn't had a lot of resources put towards it.

We haven't ever really needed a human coronavirus vaccine before.  The couple of strains that regularly circulate amongst humans aren't particularly dangerous.  Work was put forward on SARS, but then stopped once the disease was finished.

You'll be happy to know also that there is a vaccine for one form of coronavirus - canine coronavirus.  Of course that is a vaccine for dogs, but still it exists.