Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[DGuller]

What would the number of dead be in Georgia and Florida if the virus still was as lethal as it was in the New York outbreak? Improved health care makes it quite useless to compare death rates, the relevant rate to compare would be the infection rate.

Isn't this a case of no-one here foreseeing the fall in lethality? If the virus was still as deadly as it was in April I imagine that both Georgia and Florida would be quite overwhelmed right now.

I foresaw the lethality dropping, only because I thought the medical community compounded the carnage greatly in the early months of the pandemic.  However, the extent to which the lethality really has dropped is up for debate.  I think lack of testing early on when NYC had its dark days makes its infections numbers look way better than they really were.  I can easily see NYC alone having 1,000,000 cases had it been tested the way Florida is tested today.

[Threviel]

Yes, but improved health care makes ICU stays shorter, sometimes significantly so. Without that Georgia, based on numbers above, would probably be swamped right now.

So it cannot only be an under-estimate of the number of infected in NY.

[DGuller]

Yes, but improved health care makes ICU stays shorter, sometimes significantly so. Without that Georgia, based on numbers above, would probably be swamped right now.

So it cannot only be an under-estimate of the number of infected in NY.

It probably is true that health care is improved, but I'll just be the devil's advocate in order to eliminate other possibilities.  Are you basing this conclusion on something like the average stay in ICU statistic?  One thing I can think of is that Georgia may be admitting more people in ICUs to begin with, with the extra being less sick, because they have room, so ICUs really are ICUs rather than a pre-morgue.

[alfred russel]

There are so many potential factors. Testing has increased dramatically, health care may have improved, the population that is getting covid may have changed (such as the high risk populations may be successfully isolated, the low risk may be taking less care), if you are looking at hospitalizations or ICU statistics the admission criteria may have changed (anecdotally that is the case), the virus may have mutated (seems unlikely to be driving a global trend that has emerged in the last couple months).

[The Minsky Moment]

The original antibody test results were 20% for NYC so 1 million actual cases is quite possible.

[Barrister]

Alberta has announced that kids are going back to school full time in the fall, though with "social distance measures" in place, but not minimums on class size.

[Sheilbh]

The original antibody test results were 20% for NYC so 1 million actual cases is quite possible.

Yeah. I mean New York had a really massive outbreak. NYC antibody numbers are higher than anywhere in Europe, except for Bergamo. By contrast the antibody results in Sweden I think showed a peak of about 7.5% and their sstrategy is, generously, what some US states seem to be trying now. I think the nearest to NYC are Madrid and London which are around 15%.

[Barrister]

The original antibody test results were 20% for NYC so 1 million actual cases is quite possible.

Yeah. I mean New York had a really massive outbreak. NYC antibody numbers are higher than anywhere in Europe, except for Bergamo. By contrast the antibody results in Sweden I think showed a peak of about 7.5% and their strategy is, generously, what some US states seem to be trying now. I think the nearest to NYC are Madrid and London which are around 15%.

I think a lot of north america is converging on the more-or-less Swedish model - control the outbreak so any spread is slow and contained, but don't expect to get numbers to zero.

Which is a little bit different than Sweden's initial "build up herd immunity" strategy as well, because it doesn't sound like they are doing that now.

[Caliga]

Alberta has announced that kids are going back to school full time in the fall, though with "social distance measures" in place, but not minimums on class size.

Good luck with your pending massive outbreak dude.

[Barrister]

Alberta has announced that kids are going back to school full time in the fall, though with "social distance measures" in place, but not minimums on class size.

Good luck with your pending massive outbreak dude.

It's generating a lot of talk to be sure.  In contrast, I know University of Alberta is going all-online for next year.

What are other jurisdictions doing for school in the fall?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I get that impression. As I say the difference between many US states and Sweden is that Sweden is doing it deliberately while many states seem to be doing it by accident/default (the North-East could be a bit of an exception).

There is a query if it works. You know if immunity lasts 6-8 months but you've got community spread then things could get nasty when the winter wave hits, which I think it will. Arguably you're in a better place if you've mostly eliminated it and you can identify outbreaks and selectively lockdown areas in winter (on this spoke to someone in Leicester - where they've been on local lockdown for, I think 4 weeks, he said they're getting an update on 1 August).

Also the places that are nearest to herd immunity levels are Bergamo and New York (40% and 20% respectively). They did not have great outcomes. So it's not entirely clear to me that you can get there in a sort of controlled way without Bergamo or New York mortality rates. It's kind of stating the obvious but the single biggest correlation to death rates is size of oubtreak, so if you're getting to herd immunity levels or accepting a certain level of cases the IFR is still, probably somewhere around .7%.

[Barrister]

Yeah I get that impression. As I say the difference between many US states and Sweden is that Sweden is doing it deliberately while many states seem to be doing it by accident/default (the North-East could be a bit of an exception).

There is a query if it works. You know if immunity lasts 6-8 months but you've got community spread then things could get nasty when the winter wave hits, which I think it will. Arguably you're in a better place if you've mostly eliminated it and you can identify outbreaks and selectively lockdown areas in winter (on this spoke to someone in Leicester - where they've been on local lockdown for, I think 4 weeks, he said they're getting an update on 1 August).

Also the places that are nearest to herd immunity levels are Bergamo and New York (40% and 20% respectively). They did not have great outcomes. So it's not entirely clear to me that you can get there in a sort of controlled way without Bergamo or New York mortality rates. It's kind of stating the obvious but the single biggest correlation to death rates is size of oubtreak, so if you're getting to herd immunity levels or accepting a certain level of cases the IFR is still, probably somewhere around .7%.

Which is why I said people aren't really shooting for herd immunity - it's just too costly in terms of infections and deaths.

The evidence is still coming in, but looks pretty good in terms of long-term immunity to Covid once you have it, by the way.  The reports of decreasing anti-body results over time were rather misleading.

https://www.vox.com/2020/7/22/21324729/getting-covid-19-twice-immunity-antibodies-vaccine-herd-immunity

[Sheilbh]

What are other jurisdictions doing for school in the fall?

Most places in Europe have already re-opened schools and have largely had them open since the back-end of May. England has failed on this but will be re-opening in September. There's quite a lot of guidance on how to do it (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools), but I don't know the details.

My friends who are teachers never stopped working - either for key worker classes and lately the year groups that have gone back in some schools.

Scottish schools are aiming to re-open in August (basically to catch up on some of this year). The plan in Scotland is, I think, that there'll be less social distancing by then because they're aiming to have covid largely suppressed.

[Oexmelin]

Quite frankly, a lot of the "back to school" moment seems predicated, much like a lot of the pushback to distancing measures, by the inconvenience of having kids at home. That seems to be the constant concern, as jurisdictions I have heard from keep twisting and turning and flipflopping about the how, why, when, etc. There's been half a dozen different scenarios proposed in Quebec at least, and nothing guarantees - despite constant reassurances to the contrary  - that they will hold in the next few months.

The joke circulating right now amidst high school teacher and college professor friends, is that we will teach in-person, except for students who require otherwise, in groups that will be physically distanced, except when classes cannot be modified, in which case, they will have visors, or mask, or both, or none - and that, in any case, we should modify our pedagogy for distance learning, in case we need to go back to the distance learning scenario, but keep it flexible, so that we can indeed begin teaching in person, except for students who require otherwise...

[Valmy]

Yeah this back to school business is a huge mess and we have few answers despite being less than a month away from re-opening.