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Covid infection probability study.

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    Posted: September 07 2020 at 8:10am

Abstract Objective: Our objective is to demonstrate a method to estimate the probability of a laboratory confirmed COVID19 infection, hospitalization, and death arising from a contact with an individual of unknown infection status. Methods: We calculate the probability of a confirmed infection, hospitalization, and death resulting from a county-level person-contact using available data on current case incidence, secondary attack rates, infectious periods, asymptomatic infections, and ratios of confirmed infections to hospitalizations and fatalities. Results: Among US counties with populations greater than 500,000 people, during the week ending June 13,2020, the median estimate of the county level probability of a confirmed infection is 1 infection in 40,500 person contacts (Range: 10,100 to 586,000). For a 50 to 64 year-old individual, the median estimate of the county level probability of a hospitalization is 1 in 709,000 person contacts (Range: 177,000 to 10,200,000) and the median estimate of the county level probability of a fatality is 1 in 6,670,000 person contacts (Range 1,680,000 to 97,600.000). Conclusions and Relevance: Estimates of the individual probabilities of COVID19 infection, hospitalization and death vary widely but may not align with public risk perceptions. Systematically collected and publicly reported data on infection incidence by, for example, the setting of exposure, type of residence and occupation would allow more precise estimates of probabilities than possible with currently available public data. Calculation of secondary attack rates by setting and better measures of the prevalence of seropositivity would further improve those estimates.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.06.20124446v2

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UCLA, Stanford Study Finds For Average 50-64 Year Old, Chances Of Dying From COVID-19 Are 1 In 19.1M


A new study from medical researchers at UCLA and Stanford University found the chances of contracting or dying from coronavirus are much lower than previously thought.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 07 2020 at 3:51pm

Oxford university puts the risks at 1.3% for the age group 50 - 59 and 3.6% for the age group 60 = 69  (originally in China, but Italy was comprable although the CFR was a bit higher than China in the 60 - 70 age range, this could be because Italy appears to have had a nastier strain).

There is a reason for the huge difference between the two studies and it is not the time difference between the twain, nor the stellar reputation of the universities in question.  The Oxford study was based on the people who contracted the disease.  The Stamford study was based on the population in total.

Should contact tracing, lockdowns, mask wearing or extra hygene methods be abandoned, the actual numbers would change dramatically upward - away from Stamford's conclusions.  The Oxford cfigures would remain unchanged, except in the case of improved treatment options.  (The use of specific steroids, in very low doses, has already deviated the actual figures downward from the results of this metanalysis by a few hundreths of a percent.


https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 07 2020 at 5:18pm

Originally posted by Technophobe Technophobe wrote:

Oxford university puts the risks at 1.3% for the age group 50 - 59 and 3.6% for the age group 60 = 69  (originally in China, but Italy was comprable although the CFR was a bit higher than China in the 60 - 70 age range, this could be because Italy appears to have had a nastier strain).

There is a reason for the huge difference between the two studies and it is not the time difference between the twain, nor the stellar reputation of the universities in question.  The Oxford study was based on the people who contracted the disease.  The Stamford study was based on the population in total.

Should contact tracing, lockdowns, mask wearing or extra hygene methods be abandoned, the actual numbers would change dramatically upward - away from Stamford's conclusions.  The Oxford cfigures would remain unchanged, except in the case of improved treatment options.  (The use of specific steroids, in very low doses, has already deviated the actual figures downward from the results of this metanalysis by a few hundreths of a percent.


https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

And yet that's not what actually happens, Swedens numbers continue to plummet despite no masks, no lockdowns ect. And Africa's numbers are surprisingly extremely low where none of that is enforced or practiced.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote EdwinSm, Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 07 2020 at 11:15pm

Thanks Techno, that link had some data I was looking for on risk factors,    It is also a good reminder to look in more detail as to what units the report is relating too.  


ps. Sweden's numbers (cases and deaths reported are the units I look at) seem to be steadily increasing.  For the last month or so they seem to report deaths in batches of 5 at a time. OK, this is not a huge amount (and below the current world average on a per-population basis) but the culumative figures are still rising.  Even with this lower rate Sweden is still doing worse than neighbours like Norway or Finland or Denmark, so i am at a loss for why certain segments in America still appeal to that country as a role model.  

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 08 2020 at 3:06am

Sweden's numbers do appear to be dropping.  I would not call it a plummet.  Every other scandanavian country's numbers are dropping too.  Sweden however, has had more deaths per capita.  Wether or not you call Sweden's strategy a success depends on what you most value, economy, small temporary freedoms or life.

I chose the latter.


Is Sweden's coronavirus strategy a cautionary tale or a success story?


August 2020  

 By         Michael Le Page    

                           

Empty streets in Stockholm
Streets in Stockholm’s Old Town were nearly empty in April because of the coronavirus pandemic

IBL/Shutterstock

Sweden was one of the few European countries not to impose a compulsory lockdown. Its unusual strategy for tackling the coronavirus outbreak has been both hailed as a success and condemned as a failure. So which is it?

Those who regard the strategy as a success claim it reduced the economic impact, but it isn’t clear that it did. What is clear is that so far Sweden has had a more protracted outbreak with far more deaths per capita than its neighbours.

While it is sometimes implied that Sweden didn’t have a lockdown, it did. It was just largely voluntary, with only a few legal measures such as a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people.   

“Voluntary restrictions work as well as legal ones,” says the architect of Sweden’s strategy, chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.

This appears to be true, in Sweden at least. The measures did work nearly as well in getting people to change their behaviour. Adam Sheridan at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, for instance, has used data from a bank to compare spending patterns up to April in Sweden and Denmark. Denmark introduced a compulsory lockdown on 11 March, one of the first in Europe.

Sheridan found that spending – an indicator of behaviour as well as economic activity – fell by nearly as much in Sweden as in Denmark: 25 per cent compared with 29 per cent.

Similarly, data from the Citymapper phone app, which helps people plan their travel routes, suggests that travel in Stockholm fell to 40 per cent of the normal level. “That’s a substantial reduction,” says Martin McKee at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, whose team did the analysis. However, there were even bigger falls in other major European cities during compulsory lockdowns, to 20 per cent on average.

So there was a substantial voluntary lockdown in Sweden – yet it wasn’t nearly as effective in reducing the spread of the coronavirus as the compulsory lockdowns in neighbouring Denmark and Norway. Cases and deaths rose faster in Sweden and have been slower to decline.

Sweden has about 8200 confirmed cases per million people as of 12 August, compared with 1780 in Norway and 2560 in Denmark. (For the UK it is 4600 and the US 15,400.)

Sweden has had 57 deaths per 100,000, compared with five in Norway and 11 in Denmark. (For the UK it is 70 and the US 50.)

Sheridan’s analysis suggests that young people – whose spending makes little contribution to the overall economy – were least likely to change their behaviour and might have undermined the voluntary lockdown. Among people aged between 18 and 29, spending dropped far less in Sweden than in Denmark.

Read more: We must think globally not nationalistically to beat the coronavirus

Tegnell, meanwhile, says the high death rate in Sweden was related to the failure to prevent infections in care homes. Matters have now been improved, he says. Half of Sweden’s deaths were in care homes up to mid-May.

What about the economy? “This has never been done to save the economy. It’s been done to save public health,” says Tegnell. And that means public health in a broad sense, he adds, not just the coronavirus.

That said, Sheridan’s spending comparison suggest that the economic impact was only slightly reduced by not imposing a more effective compulsory lockdown. “It’s very little in economic costs for saving a larger number of lives,” he says.

What’s more, recent data released by another bank suggests that spending in Denmark has recovered faster than in Sweden, says Sheridan.

Others have claimed that Sweden suffered less of an economic decline on the basis of initial estimates of GDP for the second quarter of 2020. Sweden’s fell by 8.6 per cent, less than the estimated average of 11.9 per cent for the European Union as a whole.

However, those making such claims fail to point out that several countries that did impose compulsory lockdowns did as well or better. GDP fell 8.4 per cent in the Czech Republic, for instance, and just 5.1 per cent in Lithuania, the lowest in the EU.

What’s more, many of the countries that fared worst, including the UK, Spain and Italy, rely heavily on tourism, unlike Sweden. A more telling comparison would be with Norway and Denmark, but these figures aren’t available yet.

What all the researchers agree on is that it isn’t over yet. There might be second waves in Denmark and Norway that Sweden avoids because so many people there have already been infected, although it is too soon to compare figures, not least because it is the summer holidays in Sweden during which time the country all but shuts down anyway. Comparisons are further complicated by the fact that Sweden hasn’t relaxed its approach at all, unlike the other countries.

Achieving herd immunity was one of Tegnell’s original aims – but antibody surveys suggest only about 20 per cent of people in Stockholm have been infected, similar to levels in London and New York. That is far short of near the 70 per cent level estimated to be needed.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote WitchMisspelled Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 08 2020 at 8:42am

"Voluntary restrictions work as well as legal ones, ..."

That bears repeating.  However, I'd like to add that since the legal restrictions aren't unilaterally being obeyed here, I have little faith the voluntary restrictions would work for the U.S.  

But then, apparently the average Swede has the good sense God gave a chicken...

But I would also like to put forth the fact that all of Scandinavia and Western Europe prohibited Swedes travelling into their country when these countries were opening up again.  

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 08 2020 at 3:01pm

Comparing Sweden with the USA

Is not logical.....

350million 

To 10 million

I would guess that the average education of Swedes is far better than the education of the average US citizen

And the Swedes are more likely to pull together and do the right thing,

Where in the US you have a lot of differing views.....

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 08 2020 at 8:53pm

Apparently god gave chickens and Swedes more sense than New Yorkers, because even chickens are smart enough not to stick COVID patients in with the most vulnerable group to COVID, the elderly. 

And none the less Swedens COVID infection rate and death rate continues to go down, despite not enacting draconian COVID measures. It's doing better than some countries that did including the US, Italy, Spain and the UK. And didn't crater their economy.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 08 2020 at 8:59pm

Originally posted by carbon20 carbon20 wrote:

Comparing Sweden with the USA

Is not logical.....

350million 

To 10 million

I would guess that the average education of Swedes is far better than the education of the average US citizen

And the Swedes are more likely to pull together and do the right thing,

Where in the US you have a lot of differing views.....

And yet you've compared AU to the US on so so many occasions. LOL well that explains it.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 09 2020 at 3:10am

CONTEXT!  CONTEXT!!  CONTEXT!!!  

Overall comparisons are less than helpful - at least when it comes to hard data.  

But per-capita comparisons could be more appropriate in an illustrative sense.  Even then, look at the borders, demographics and finances before reaching the most tentative of conclusions.  For instance, comparing the US with Mexico is unfair to Mexico, as Mexico is poorer and more dependant on tourism.  (Mind you, the US has far higher case and death totals even then.  Mexico has a population just under  1/2  that of the US and around  1/10  of the cases.  The US does less badly in comparison of death totals, but that is probably directly proportional to its finances.)  

Like the US, Sweden is a rich country Like the US, it appears to have put personal freedom and economics ahead of human life when it came to selecting which scientists to listen to and also in common with the US it has both oceanic and land borders.  Therfore it is probably a reasonable choice for comparison.

 

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote WitchMisspelled Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 09 2020 at 4:30am

Originally posted by Technophobe Technophobe wrote:

CONTEXT!  CONTEXT!!  CONTEXT!!!  

Overall comparisons are less than helpful - at least when it comes to hard data.  


Neither is cherry-picking with intent to incite.  

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 09 2020 at 10:22am

Originally posted by WitchMisspelled WitchMisspelled wrote:

Originally posted by Technophobe Technophobe wrote:

CONTEXT!  CONTEXT!!  CONTEXT!!!  

Overall comparisons are less than helpful - at least when it comes to hard data.  


Neither is cherry-picking with intent to incite.  

Estimates of the individual probabilities of COVID19 infection, hospitalization and death vary widely but may not align with public risk perceptions.

UCLA, Stanford Study Finds For Average 50-64 Year Old, Chances Of Dying From COVID-19 Are 1 In 19.1M

 

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 09 2020 at 10:26am

Originally posted by Technophobe Technophobe wrote:

CONTEXT!  CONTEXT!!  CONTEXT!!!  

Overall comparisons are less than helpful - at least when it comes to hard data.  

But per-capita comparisons could be more appropriate in an illustrative sense.  Even then, look at the borders, demographics and finances before reaching the most tentative of conclusions.  For instance, comparing the US with Mexico is unfair to Mexico, as Mexico is poorer and more dependant on tourism.  (Mind you, the US has far higher case and death totals even then.  Mexico has a population just under  1/2  that of the US and around  1/10  of the cases.  The US does less badly in comparison of death totals, but that is probably directly proportional to its finances.)  

Like the US, Sweden is a rich country Like the US, it appears to have put personal freedom and economics ahead of human life when it came to selecting which scientists to listen to and also in common with the US it has both oceanic and land borders.  Therfore it is probably a reasonable choice for comparison.

 

 

The UCLA/Stanford study cited used hard data to come to their conclusions as to the probabilities of infection and death as a result of COVID. The hard data shows rather long odds on dying or infection. 

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Technophobe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 09 2020 at 11:25am

Good grief, AI!  You are not that stupid, so you must be being deliberately obtuse.  

Context again!  

BOTH studies were hard data from deeply respected universities and the Oxford study was a meta-analysis (therefore lots of differing sets of hard data).  Again, BOTH studies posed differing hypotheses and were therefore conducted within vastly different operational parameters.  

Currently, the chances of dying from covid19 are very, very small (as demonstrated by the Stamford study), but they are subject to the risk of a dramatic rise, should control measures be relaxed (as demonstrated by the Oxford study).  Theoretically, the reason for the low numbers in the Stamford data-set are twofold, one, the CFR itself (nasty, but no Ebola) and two, the (currently) low frequency of cases in the general population  (which has been demonstrated elsewhere to be subject to sudden and dramatic change).  The Stamford study was not ambitious; as it made no attempt to extrapolate potential changes in the disease's demographics it dealt only with the hard facts as they are right NOW.  

NEITHER study framed the parameters for the question: "How much higher would the overall death rate rise, should any health services be overrun by this highly contagious disease?"  Whereas, to point out the results from Stamford without at least posing this question, gives (without using any incorrect information) a false sense of security.

This site is not only frequented by people of University education, nor uniquely frequented by scientists or medical professionals.  If those points were to stand without precise qualification and expansion, people could be unintentionally, catastrophically mislead.

I am not arguing your post was wrong, far from it.  You were spot on, scientifically accurate.  I am arguing that helping people make informed judgements is the purpose of this site, not making yourself look good by winning arguements, playing mind-games or having the last word.  

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote KiwiMum Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 09 2020 at 6:30pm

Well said Techno.

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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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote EdwinSm, Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 10 2020 at 2:20am

A different take on probability.  

Originally posted by "BBC Live News "BBC Live News wrote:

The risk of dying from coronavirus "doubles every six years", Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, a statistician at the University of Cambridge, has said.

"A 20-year-old has double the risk of a 14-year-old," he told the BBC, adding: "It's like a horrible form of compound interest." 

"The real danger points, in a sense, are intergenerational meetings. At the moment, the people who are getting the virus are the 20-29s - if 5,000 get it, there may be one death if you're unlucky, there will be other sort of long-term conditions as well. 

"But if 5,000 people my age - 67 - get it, there would be about 75 deaths, and for people older, in their 80s, it would be 10 times that many. 

"So it shows the crucial care is where the generations meet, and I think what this shows is that, for the young, anyone over 55 should be treated with caution, respect, in terms of masks and the distance and so on."

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 10 2020 at 3:16am

As far as I'm concerned,chump has deliberately put the lives of His people at risk, purely for political gain......

just to get a second term to equal his nemesis Mr Obama......

it's disgusting.......opps sorry wrong thread.....

busy stressed day.....lol

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 10 2020 at 3:19am

Sun's down,Beer o'clock......

all's well, 

Cheers all, bottoms up, 

Another day tomorrow......

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AI Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 10 2020 at 12:06pm

Originally posted by carbon20 carbon20 wrote:

As far as I'm concerned,chump has deliberately put the lives of His people at risk, purely for political gain......

just to get a second term to equal his nemesis Mr Obama......

it's disgusting.......opps sorry wrong thread.....

busy stressed day.....lol

Well take one of these 4 X's daily and you may want to double up on the dosage starting Nov 4th.


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