Some coronavirus hope

[dorchadas]

Yesterday, I saw an article about an LA County antibody study that indicated a much higher number of people had been infected than the official rate. Assuming the numbers are accurate, that 221,000 and 442,000 people who had coronavirus just in LA County is around 25%-50% of the total number of confirmed cases in the entire country currently.

On the one hand, this is really good! On the other hand, it is very bad:

Good
This means the mortality rate and rare of serious complications is much lower than expected. Even taking a place like Italy, with a mortality rate of 7.2%, and lower bound of the LA study numbers, produces a mortality rate of 0.25%, which is much more in line with the flu. That would mean that the major problem with coronavirus is that it's a new disease with no pre-existing immunity, not that it's in itself particularly deadly. It still seems to have a higher mortality curve, but most people who get it have no symptoms, or maybe feel a bit under the weather.

Bad
If the pool of potentially infectious people is that huge, we have nowhere near enough testing capacity to track who's infected, who's immune, and who's in danger. Also, the odds that someone has coronavirus and doesn't even realize it are much higher than we thought, so in order to return to something closer to normal, we'll have to institute randomized testing, including of people who previously tested negative, and probably require wearing masks in public, neither of which we have the capacity for at the moment.

The death rate is still appalling, and reports of lung or heart damage from coronavirus are still cause for concern, but assuming the antibody studies are correct, then it's liable to be a lot less serious in the future than we worried it was. Hopefully.

Comments

[symbioid]

I think this is somewhat good news, like you said, but I have a couple concerns (I have yet to read the article so apologies if they touch on it).

My friend who's a doctor said something about antibody testing studies recently, and posted a screencap of one specific study (I will have to ask him if he has the specific cite on it if you're curious)...

Here's what he said:

People are posting about some studies where they tested a bunch of random people for the antibodies to COVID and found many were positive. They are using this to claim that the disease isn't as severe as people think.

What they DON'T mention is that the test they used is not approved and has false positives for other common coronaviruses that everyone has had.

These studies don't mean anything.

OK and I see further down in his post he comments about the LA Study to a friend...

(His Friend): If that's from the Stanford study, the supposed 3% incidence is actually below the upper predicted number of false positives given the estimated test selectivity range

(Him): Correct. They also used the same test in LA.

(UNDERLINES ARE HIS)



So it looks like if this is the same study, we're probably looking at many false positives. :(

That said, I still think your conclusions are quite sound, and it seems a lot of people just don't get (even not factoring this tests false positives) how utterly contagious this thing is.

I'm glad my roomie finally got us some face masks!

[dorchadas]

The study authors are aware of the criticisms and at least claim they took that into account and are going to release further data on their methods, which is why I mentioned "assuming those numbers are confirmed." And unlike people citing it as an example of why we don't need to worry, the USC vice dean of research specifically says that mortality isn't the only important number, infectiousness is. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss their results. But we'll see when they release their methods and responses to the criticism

I mean, that's effectively what peer review is, after all: "You did this wrong." "No, we didn't, and here's why not."

[symbioid]

Oh thanks for the link on that further results. :)

The term my friend keeps bandying about is "Morbidity" which I think has to do with the illness not the death of it? I keep getting confused (and of course I'm at work) so will try to read up on your link here and the difference between Morbidity and Mortality (I did once, but forgot LOL).

Yeah. I guess the sad thing is, even if the mortality rate is low, that damn infectiousness of it.

It sounds like it's pretty fucking brutal to those who get it and are susceptible.

I read an article last night stating that it primarily gets into the body through the nasal pathways which are full of ACE2 receptors (which surprised me, I had assumed mouth inhalation would have been the primary culprit, but I guess I was prejudiced to see nasal breathing as better/healthier due to cilia protection... never even occurred to me that there are other factors like nasal receptors for a virus to inject, but makes sense).

I'd say "cheers" but, well... you know... Thanks for the link.