Tracking the next pandemic: Avian Flu Talk |
60% of cases on Aircraft carrier are asymptomatic |
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AI
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Posted: April 16 2020 at 9:32am |
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sweeping testing of the entire crew of the coronavirus-stricken U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt may have revealed a clue about the pandemic: The majority of the positive cases so far are among sailors who are asymptomatic, officials say. The possibility that the coronavirus spreads in a mostly stealthy mode among a population of largely young, healthy people showing no symptoms could have major implications for U.S. policy-makers, who are considering how and when to reopen the economy. It also renews questions about the extent to which U.S. testing of just the people suspected of being infected is actually capturing the spread of the virus in the United States and around the world. The Navy’s testing of the entire 4,800-member crew of the aircraft carrier - which is about 94% complete - was an extraordinary move in a headline-grabbing case that has already led to the firing of the carrier’s captain and the resignation of the Navy’s top civilian official. Roughly 60 percent of the over 600 sailors who tested positive so far have not shown symptoms of COVID-19, the potentially lethal respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, the Navy says. The service did not speculate about how many might later develop symptoms or remain asymptomatic. “With regard to COVID-19, we’re learning that stealth in the form of asymptomatic transmission is this adversary’s secret power,” said Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham, surgeon general of the Navy. The figure is higher than the 25% to 50% range offered on April 5 by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force. ‘DISCONCERTING’ DATA FOR PENTAGONDefense Secretary Mark Esper, speaking in a television interview on Thursday, said the number of asymptomatic cases from the carrier was “disconcerting.” “It has revealed a new dynamic of this virus: that it can be carried by normal, healthy people who have no idea whatsoever that they are carrying it,” Esper told NBC’s “Today” morning show. Such data present challenges to the Pentagon, which is deployed around the world, sometimes in confined environments like submarines, ships and aircraft. Testing the entire military is not yet feasible, given still-limited testing capacity, officials say, and detecting enough cases without tests is impossible if most cases are asymptomatic. The U.S. coronavirus death toll - the highest in the world - surged past 31,000 on Thursday after doubling in a week. It also claimed the life of a sailor from the Theodore Roosevelt this week. Five other members of the crew are hospitalized. NUMBERS UNKNOWNStill, the case of the Theodore Roosevelt offers a case study for researchers about how the virus spreads asymptomatically in a confined environment among mostly younger adults. That cohort has been somewhat underrepresented in the epidemiological data so far, said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The findings are of enormous interest because the proportion of people who are asymptomatic is just simply not known,” Schaffner said, when asked about the Navy’s data. Vice Admiral Phillip Sawyer, a deputy chief of naval operations at the center of the Navy’s coronavirus response efforts, presented the 60% figure in a call with a small group of reporters on Wednesday. But he declined to speculate about the implications. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-military-sympt-idUSKCN21Y2GB |
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AI
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I think that more and more the data is showing that potentially a very large segment of the population already infected are asymptomatic and that another equally as large if not larger segment of the population only have mild symptoms. The actual CFR is going to be only slightly higher or equal to a bad flu year I'm betting once all of those actually infected with the virus are accounted for. |
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AI
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Goffman co-authored a new study that tested more than 200 pregnant women admitted for delivery in two New York City hospitals for coronavirus whether they showed symptoms or not. Thirty-three women tested positive, but 29 of them showed no symptoms, according to the results published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-nearly-pregnant-women-had-123622151.html |
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Thorne!
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I wonder if they followed up to see how many of the asymptomatic cases developed symptoms later, and also if they accounted for the 30-40% of the false positives that the PCR tests have been shown to have. |
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AI
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We went from almost no one to a huge influx of COVID-positive people, with the really interesting twist that most of them were asymptomatic, they did not have symptoms,” Jim O’Connell, president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless, said in a recent interview with Boston.com. https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/04/16/boston-homeless-care-covid-19-update |
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AI
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I'm sure the navy is watching to see if any of those asymptomatic cases develop symptoms. And even if you knock 30-40% of all cases testing positive out of the equation, that is still a large % asymptomatic. Of course then we'd also have to account for the false negative's as well who are asymptomatic. With any tests there is always false positives and false negatives, that is just the reality of testing. Their aim for the coronavirus PCR test is 90% accuracy. |
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KiwiMum
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It's an interesting idea but it doesn't sit with any of the data already published. If you're suggesting that 60% of people are asymptomatic but positive and therefore the virus has already spread widely in the population, then 60% of all tests where ever they are conducted should return a positive result and this is not what we're seeing anywhere, the US included. |
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Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.
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FluMom
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Here is a better study...why are 60% of people asymptomatic???? What makes these people not show symptoms??? Blood, sex, age, genetics, vitamins, statins, blood pressure meds, vaccinations taken, smoker, non smoker....what caused these people to have the virus but not be really sick? |
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AI
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"During an April 5 White House Coronavirus Task Force media briefing, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases put the number of asymptomatic cases "somewhere between 25 and 50%." Beijing: China for the first time publicized a breakdown of people testing positive for the novel coronavirus without outward signs of being sick, revealing that those among them who remain symptom-free throughout infection are in the majority. Among 6,764 people who tested positive for infection without showing symptoms, only one fifth of them — 1,297 — have so far developed symptoms and been re-classified as confirmed cases, China’s National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said at a briefing in Beijing Wednesday. However, a recent WHO report states that among infected people, 80% are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. The exact split between mild and no symptoms is unclear, however, as is the basis on which the asymptomatic cases were identified.
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AI
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Technophobe
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Not one study but many, FluMom. I think I can hazard a guess at one factor of the many, temperature. There is a culture of being the 'tough guy' (even the women) in the forces. They are then less likely to take a tylenol if they habe 'a bit of a temperature'. This bug does not like temperatures over 104*C. So the: 'Only wimps take pain meds' attitude can really pay off. General good health, diet and reasonably low age groups all add up to less serious problems. But that is the tip of yet another iceberg, there is still loads we do not know about this bug. |
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How do you tell if a politician is lying?
His lips or pen are moving. |
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AI
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KiwiMum
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No, what I'm saying is that if there was a great many asymptomatic cases in any population, and therefore the spread was much wider than was previously thought, then this would show up in testing, and it's not. At the moment most countries are testing thousands of people and only showing up a small percentage as positive, so where are the asymptomatic cases? If they have it, they'll give a positive test result. I'm deducing that by looking at the statistics that are being published. The numbers don't back up your assertions. In my country they've just started doing random tests on people at supermarkets to see if they can find any asymptomatic carriers. So far they haven't found any. But they've only just started it, and it will be interesting to see if they do. They've picked supermarkets and supermarket workers particularly because they come into contact with so many people each day and would be the ideal silent spreaders in the community. |
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Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.
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AI
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And maybe the testing in NZ is flawed and that is why they haven't found any asymptomatic cases. And I seriously doubt that they haven't found any asymptomatic cases or that the testing in NZ is flawed to that degree, so there has to be another reason for what you claim is true. https://www.businessinsider.com/real-number-of-coronavirus-cases-underreported-us-china-italy-2020-4 |
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Technophobe
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Another possibility is a different strain. |
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How do you tell if a politician is lying?
His lips or pen are moving. |
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AI
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The first large-scale community test of 3,300 people in Santa Clara County found that 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested were positive for antibodies -- a number suggesting a far higher past infection rate than the official count. Based on the initial data, researchers estimate that the range of people who may have had the virus to be between 48,000 and 81,000 in the county of 2 million -- as opposed to the approximately 1,000 in the county's official tally at the time the samples were taken. “Our findings suggest that there is somewhere between 50- and 80-fold more infections in our county than what’s known by the number of cases than are reported by our department of public health," Dr. Eran Bendavid, the associate professor of medicine at Stanford University who led the study, said in an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer. Clearly there is a very very large percentage of undetected and uncounted asymptomatic and mild cases. It's far more widespread than previously thought. Which is both good news and bad news. |
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KiwiMum
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We've only had 1400 cases here and under lock down, we now have 600 active cases. We've had 11 deaths and we have 15 people in hospital, 2 in critical condition. We don't have the kind of widespread cases you have in the UK or in the USA. We've still got another week of lockdown to go. We had 8 new cases yesterday and are doing on average 2600 tests a day. Hopefully we'll be virus free soon. |
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Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.
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AI
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Interesting if you take the very low end of that antibody study and apply a magnitude of X50 to the infection rate of the total confirmed infected in the US and then apply deaths attributed to COVID19 you come up with a CFR of .10 % which is comparable to the seasonal flu. And if you use the high end of X80 magnitude it has a lower CFR than the seasonal flu at .06% Clearly they need to do more antibody testing to validate that it is as widespread as the data is starting to indicate. |
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