I mentioned before that I think I have a 50-50 chance of having had Covid-19 in January, in WA state.
Since I live in an outpost 2 hours from Seattle, it's difficult to get into a study, but I want to donate my plasma to help people.

It seems conservative news media is happy, but not not the left wing news.

[www.buzzfeednews.com]

In California, two of the nation’s first big antibody surveys estimated that the true number of coronavirus infections is significantly higher than believed. But scientists are skeptical.

In Silicon Valley, the true number of coronavirus infections could be 50 to 85 times higher than the number of reported ones. And in Los Angeles County, there might be 28 to 55 times more people infected than the official count.

The numbers, covered in the national press and shared widely on social media, suggested that far more people than previously realized have “hidden” infections. If that many people have already gotten sick, it also changes the calculation about how frequently the virus can lead to death. In the US, death rates of confirmed cases are over 5%, a high number driven in part by a lack of diagnostic testing.

But the new numbers out of Northern California suggest the virus may kill a much smaller portion of the wider pool of diagnosed and undiagnosed cases, in this case around 0.12% to 0.2%. That would be closer to the death rate for the flu, which is about 0.1%.

Hospital congestion remains the biggest issue.
With hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients, there are fewer resources for emergencies, heart attacks, strokes, etc.
A lower death rate than expected is nice to hear, but does not change the severity of the issue at hand.

>But scientists are skeptical.

IMO, should get them on board before sharing theories.

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"Just like the flu".

Yeah no. Influenza has a very careful and aggressive program of advance immunization development centered in... um.. China and other Asian countries. That model has been going on for decades.

Without the immunization program the death toll from influenza would be MUCH higher. After all, H1N1 first appeared worldwide in ... 1918. Nowadays it's 'oh get your flu shot'.

In your happiness, you should go out and kiss a Trumper. (Look for no mask and gloves!)

Another Buck "hit-and-run"?

Headline: Scientists are mad.

Article: Scientists are skeptical.

Could be. Eventually we will know. But like S. Pupp said, we still have a problem with hospital capacity.

And like cbelt3 said, the big difference is a vaccine is available for the regular flu.

IMHO, another factor is how contagious Covid-19 is. It appears to be many times more contagious than the regular flu. Also, being an asymptomatic carrier for up to 14 days with Covid-19 appears to be MUCH worse than the regular flu.

And there's a lot we still don't understand with this virus. I saw a segment today saying young healthy people are having strokes from this, because of a clotting problem it creates.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2020 02:47PM by AllGold.

Quote
DeusxMac
Another Buck "hit-and-run"?

Yup. And look at everyone falling for it. If we had the sense, we'd rotate responsibility for answering these posts. One of us would just reply,

Quote

No. Because science.

And just let the thread die there.

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rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future

.

Why let it die when every post pointing out his delusions send an email his way?

I think he has found the mushroom therapy
we've all been hoping for

Buck, you got your subject for this post wrong.

You posted: 0.01 - 0.02%

Actual number from article: 0.12% to 0.2%


You're off by more than a factor of 10x or more. This is indicative of why many people are skeptical of some things you post.

What is the issue? Everybody that wants a test can get a test.

If you really wanted to donate convalescent plasma, read up on how to get tested instead of posting here. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for you to post your test results.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

Quote
Buck
It seems conservative news media is happy, but not the left wing news.

I would like to take issue with the idea that there is a left wing news media, in the sense that the right wingers use the term. If you want to refer to a traditional media that demands fact checking, I can go with that. If you want to depend on Fox News because it tells you what you want to hear, regardless of the merits or veracity, I think I can understand that.

As to the studies at USC and in Northern California, it should be easy to figure out that for the USC study, there were a little over 800 subjects, and out of these, around 35 showed up with some sort of serum antibodies against the corona virus. The researchers understandably recognize that the statistics are weak, and therefore give a wide bracket (like 2 percent up to 5 percent) for what these findings represent. Our local television news media (not left wing by any stretch) then tell us how many this might represent, and give the larger of the numbers when they do so.

What's missing in this conversation is the actual meaning of having antibodies that somehow react against this corona virus. We are also not getting any data as to how tight these antibodies are binding, in the sense that old antibodies made against some long-ago head cold virus might conceivably bind loosely to the new corona virus. In other words, the results might not be meaningful in terms of whether you could get the real virus after testing positive in this sort of antibody screening.

In the best case scenario, in which everybody who tests positive has some immunity (innate or adaptive) against Covid-19, the finding would still be that 95 percent of all of us are at risk, and of this number, we really don't know what fraction will get the bad version, decompensate, and die. In the best case scenario under this set of assumptions, we are looking at a final death toll of up to a million Americans.

And gargling bleach is not going to protect you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2020 03:01PM by Ca Bob.

Yeah, it's just like the flu...


...except that it's going to kill significantly more Americans than the flu, in addition to regular seasonal flu deaths, despite massive efforts at mitigation.

...aaaand unlike the flu we don't have a vaccine. Or effective treatments.

...aaaand unlike the flu no one in the population has any prior immunity.

But yeah, apart from that, it's all much ado about nothing (...if, y'know, 50,000+ additional American deaths is nothing.)

That’s great news, Buck, we don’t have to do anymore social distancing and everything can open up again and the virus will not sicken anymore people than the flu.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.