Mega-Thread: Coronavirus Pandemic

[PhaelixWW]

By extraordinary I mean more deaths than usual. That's not happening.
There are no reports of overrun healthcare, nothing like Hart Island burials making rounds in the news, and the largest African economy has 2800 cases with a population of 200 million.
Is it really just underreporting?

Speak of the Devil...

Coronavirus: Tanzania hospitals overwhelmed - US

The US embassy in Tanzania has warned that there is a risk of "exponential growth" of Covid-19 cases in the country at a time when the government is not releasing data on new cases.

It added that the risk of contracting the virus in the largest city, Dar es Salaam, was "extremely high."

President John Magufuli has accused local health officials of exaggerating the health crisis.

On 29 April, the last day official data was released, there were 509 cases.

Of these, 21 people died.

While Tanzanian authorities have downplayed the extent of the pandemic, videos of night burials shared on social media have caused some to call into question the government's approach.

President Magufuli has been widely criticised for refusing to order churches and mosques to close and for saying prayers "can vanquish" the virus.

Last week, President Magufuli revealed that he secretly had animals and fruits samples tested at the national health laboratory in charge of coronavirus and that a papaya (paw-paw), a quail bird, and a goat had returned positive results.

He later closed the laboratory and suspended the head.

The Tanzanian president is among several African leaders who have received orders for a herbal tonic touted by the president of Madagascar as a cure for Covid-19.

But the World Health Organization has warned against using untested medicine.

The US embassy statement advised Americans living in Tanzania to stay at home and limit interactions with people other than those they live with.

It went on to claim that hospitals in Dar es Salaam are overwhelmed and warned that due to the limited capacity of the healthcare system in the country, patients may face life-threatening delays for medical care.

[MCMLXXXII]

Speak of the Devil...

Coronavirus: Tanzania hospitals overwhelmed - US

I don't think he'll reply to this.

[PhaelixWW]

Another article. This one is from FT.com, but is paywalled, so here's a free version:

Mystery deaths in Nigeria provoke fear of unrecorded coronavirus surge

Scores of mysterious deaths in northern Nigeria have sparked speculation that coronavirus may be moving untracked through Africa’s most populous nation, which has reported few confirmed cases but conducted fewer tests than other countries with smaller populations.

Ten weeks after Nigeria reported sub-Saharan Africa’s first coronavirus cases, the country has recorded 4,400 infections out of a population of more than 200m. That is compared with about 4,300 cases in Ghana, where the population is only 30m, 10,000 cases in South Africa and 9,400 cases in Egypt.

Nigerian officials concede that the low count is due in part to limited testing. Nigeria has tested just 27,000 samples, compared with about 356,000 tests in South Africa, which has a population less than a third of the size.

The country’s response is led by a group of well-respected doctors, but has been hobbled by decades of under-investment in healthcare and a global supply chain for equipment, medicines and chemicals that appears to have largely shut out developing countries. Last month, Nigeria was so desperate for testing supplies that Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, head of the country’s Centre for Disease Control, was forced to put out an urgent call for so-called RNA extraction kits on Twitter, including his email address at the bottom for any supplier who wanted to respond.

Health minister Osagie Ehanire has been candid about the healthcare system’s vulnerability and the need for people to follow government guidelines on mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing. But officials have also acknowledged that it may be difficult for the poorest Nigerians to comply and case counts are now rising by hundreds each day, just as economically challenging lockdowns are being eased.

Last week, Lagos, Africa’s largest city, relaxed its restrictions, allowing the millions of inhabitants who live hand-to-mouth to go out to earn for the first time in five weeks, leading to scenes of crowded markets and banks flooded with customers withdrawing money.

On the other side of the country, patients at a government isolation centre in north-eastern Gombe state protested in the streets at what they said was mistreatment. In one of many videos circulating on social media, a healthy-looking patient referenced a conspiracy that the pandemic was an elite money-making scheme.

“They said we have coronavirus. Look at us?” she said in Hausa, according to a translation by Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper. “Do we look sick? Do you see any sign of sickness in us? Look at us very well and see!”

Idayat Hassan, director of the Abuja-based Centre for Democracy and Development, said such videos showed a “clear failure” by the government to build trust and explain asymptomatic transmission.

“Both the citizens and government seem not to understand the gravity of this invisible enemy,” she said. “The disbelief is of course linked to the history of public corruption, so corona to many [people] is just another oil boom for public officials to loot the treasuries.”

Mistrust had not been helped by the rumours of unexplained deaths in some states, Ms Hassan added.

Late last month in Kano state, the north’s commercial centre, gravediggers told local media they were burying far more bodies than usual, despite few officially confirmed cases of the virus and just as the government laboratory conducting Covid-19 tests in the state shut after staff tested positive. A government team led by a forensic pathologist is expected to release a report on the deaths soon.

Last week, an official from Jigawa state, east of Kano, told TV news that roughly 100 people had died of Covid-19-like symptoms in a single municipal area, only for state officials to contradict him days later. In neighbouring Yobe, state officials disputed local news reports that 155 people had died within six days of symptoms related to the disease.

[Gaidax]

Yeah various shit countries doing a Schrödinger's Coronavirus scheme.

[Coolthulhu]

Just to note, asthma isn't really a risk group for this, as odd as it sounds. Also similarly seeing less prevalence of smokers in the category, presumably due to Nicotine (still don't smoke cause of the host of other issues).

It sounds odd because it's odd to give so much credit to a study which IIRC had a sampling pool of 24 patients (lol), against older but wider observations - which is also the reason why the CDC, WHO, ECDC all agree that, and I quote from the ECDC FAQs, "Allergies, including mild allergic asthma, have not been identified as a major risk factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection or for a more unfavourable outcome in the studies available so far. Moderate to severe asthma on the other hand, where patients need treatment daily, is included in the chronic lung conditions that predispose to severe disease."

Likewise, as to the absurdity according to which people with already ravaged lungs (read: smokers) might be protected just because nicotine is a cholinergic agonist and might play some role in preventing the cytokine storm from happening,

"It is obviously inappropriate to suggest that anyone should initiate smoking or to continue to smoke due to the well-established smoking-related morbidities and the large number of potentially toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke. Furthermore, it is unlikely that any other compound in tobacco cigarette smoke, besides nicotine, would be implicated to the potential benefits observed in smokers. Moreover, due to the adverse effects of smoking and the fact that many smokers would suffer from co-morbidities (such as cardiovascular disease, COPD etc.), it is expected that the potential benefits of nicotine would be blunted when observed in smokers." [source]

[PhaelixWW]

BBC has made a short and simple video about what exactly USA did and did not do and when compared to other countries to limit the start of outbreak as much as possible.
(yeah yeah, BBC is bad and all that).

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us...ntain-outbreak

Best part about this video was the clip of Trump actively downplaying the coronavirus in late February, as a kid in the background can't stop coughing.

[Coolthulhu]

Best part about this video was the clip of Trump actively downplaying the coronavirus in late February, as a kid in the background can't stop coughing.

Coughs into his elbow though. Good kid.

[Easo]

And Russia keep having 10k+ cases per day while the death count is abnormally low.
Then again, there are rumours that the average mortality in country has risen, but the official statistics are a month away? Not sure, have to recheck.
P.S.
Moscow's major Sobjanin thinks that Moscow alone has 300k infected. Take note of that...
https://www.interfax.ru/moscow/707615
https://ren.tv/news/v-rossii/695245-...id-19-v-moskve
was also noted in English:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52620015

About those burning ventilators, which Russia also sent to USA - States won't use them:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52649018

Best part about this video was the clip of Trump actively downplaying the coronavirus in late February, as a kid in the background can't stop coughing.

While it is unlikely he had the plague, the symbolism is nice.

[PhaelixWW]

Oof. Another very important thing to consider:

NYTimes: Just Because You Test Positive for Antibodies Doesn’t Mean You Have Them

In a population whose infection rate is 5 percent, a test that is 90 percent accurate could deliver a false positive nearly 70 percent of the time.

Whether you think the country is reopening too fast or too slowly (or whether you think “it depends”), almost everyone agrees that testing should be critical to the next phase of our coronavirus existence. In particular, antibody tests that detect whether a person has developed immunity to the virus seem to offer a promising path forward.

But what does a positive antibody test mean? It means you should feel confident that you can work, shop and socialize without getting sick or infecting others, right?

Not so fast.

The confidence that we should have in antibody tests depends on a key factor that is often ignored: the base rate of the coronavirus. The base rate is the actual amount of infection in a known population. In the United States, that appears to be between 5 percent and 15 percent.

This simple fact is essential to understanding the accuracy of an antibody test. Yet overlooking this fact is also one of the most common decision-making errors made, so much so that it has its own name: the base rate fallacy.

Here’s an example. If you took an antibody test that was 90 percent accurate, and it determined that you had coronavirus antibodies, how confident should you be that you actually have those antibodies?

Most people say about 90 percent, with the average answer being above 50 percent. This makes sense. After all, 90 percent accuracy is pretty high.

But the predictive value of an antibody test with 90 percent accuracy could be as low as 32 percent if the base rate of infection in the population is 5 percent. Put another way, there is an almost 70 percent probability in that case that the test will falsely indicate a person has antibodies.

The reason for this is a simple matter of statistics. The lower prevalence there is of a trait in a studied population — here, coronavirus infection — the more likely that a test will return a false positive. While a more accurate test will help, it can’t change the statistical reality when the base rate of infection is very low.

If this shocks you, you’re not alone. The base rate fallacy is not only common, it’s also almost universal, even among those that should know better. Doctors themselves make these errors. In fact, one of the most referenced studies demonstrating the base rate fallacy took place among students at Harvard Medical School.

So what does this mean as the country begins to open?

Mostly it means we have to educate ourselves to safeguard our own health. And it means that we’re all at risk of getting infected and spreading the virus, even if we’ve had a positive antibody test.

So we have to be circumspect. Just because a test is highly accurate, that may not be as comforting as it first appears.

To be sure, antibody tests are important, and we should encourage greater access to these tests. But we should also view them with thoughtful reflection, informed predictions as to their accuracy and, at the very least, good decision-making.

[Gorsameth]

Oof. Another very important thing to consider:

NYTimes: Just Because You Test Positive for Antibodies Doesn’t Mean You Have Them

I need an ELI5 on this because I don't see how the base infection ratio has any bearing on how a 90% accuracy test is wrong 70% of the time.
Got it now.

[Tuor]

One of the most afected countries in the world, France, its still long away from hiting herd imunity, second wave is not out of question.
https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abc3517

[Breccia]

Ugh.,.

Fifteen states are now investigating strange child deaths they believe are corona-related. So is the UK. It's called "pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome" or something, this is just fucking depressing.

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I need an ELI5 on this because I don't see how the base infection ratio has any bearing on how a 90% accuracy test is wrong 70% of the time.

That's because most people don't know how false positives work.

Let's make up some numbers. Ten thousand people get the test. 10 people are actually sick. The test is 90% accurate.

That means the test will be positive for 90 sick people, and nearly nine thousand healthy people, purely by numbers, making almost 99% of positive-testing people healthy.

I intentionally used hyperbolic numbers to make the point obvious, by the way.

[Gorsameth]

Ugh.,.

Fifteen states are now investigating strange child deaths they believe are corona-related. So is the UK. It's called "pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome" or something, this is just fucking depressing.

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That's because most people don't know how false positives work.

Let's make up some numbers. Ten thousand people get the test. 10 people are actually sick. The test is 90% accurate.

That means the test will be positive for 90 sick people, and nearly nine thousand healthy people, purely by numbers, making almost 99% of positive-testing people healthy.

I intentionally used hyperbolic numbers to make the point obvious, by the way.

yeah, got it now.

[PhaelixWW]

I need an ELI5 on this because I don't see how the base infection ratio has any bearing on how a 90% accuracy test is wrong 70% of the time.

It's not wrong 70% of the time.

Think about it this way. Let's say there were 10000 people, and 5% (500) had antibodies. A test with 90% accuracy would mean that of the 500 recovered, 450 would correctly test positive, and 50 would falsely test negative. Then of the remaining 9500 people, 8550 would correctly test negative, and 950 would falsely test positive.

So, as expected, you have 8550+450 = 9000 testing accurately, and 950+50 = 1000 testing inaccurately, right?

But it also means that you'd have a total of 450+950 = 1400 total positive results, out of which only 450 are actually correctly positive. That means that if you test positive, you'd only have a 32.1% (450/1400) chance of it being correct. On the other hand, if you tested negative, you'd have a 99.4% (8550/[8550+50]) chance of it being correct.

Does that make more sense?


EDIT: Pah, I took my time writing.

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For reference, the FDA has a list of the serology tests that have been cleared through the EUA process.

You'll notice, for example, that even the first one on the list, with a 100% sensitivity (positive result accuracy; lower numbers result in more false negatives), and a 99.0% specificity (negative result accuracy; lower numbers result in more false positives) yields only an 84.0% PPV (positive predictive value) at 5% prevalence.

[Cynep]

We're nowhere near herd immunity yet.

Yes, I know that. That's why I was talking about a long fat tail - that had to be the price - and called the thinning of the tail good news.

Recurring thought I'm trying to convey in this thread was that it is good and noble for the 98% that wouldn't have died anyway from Covid, to suffer a bit in order to increase chances of the vulnerable 2%. But at some point the ongoing suffering (and destroyed lives) of the 98% will start to outweigh the possible suffering (and lost lives) of the 2% IMHO. For example, most of the children can't afford private tutors and are suffering permanent damage to their education now. (don't you dare downplaying importance of education)

Still, if deaths can be prevented without causing severe problems to other people, it's a good thing.

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And yes, it's just as dumb as it sounds.

Thank you for explaining.

(Yes, my family and I are watching Sarah Connor Chronicles now and "pauper" word was inspired by 12 Monkeys TV show)

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Because Republicans refuse to take precautions and Guidelines from the CDC and other Medical experts when Re-Opening as well as many other Issues.

Republicans are also actively smearing people like Fauci and other Scientists.

Prepare your Mind to be Blown by the Following Link: the best governor of them all is a Republican.
"According to a new poll, 83 percent of voters approve of the job Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has done during the coronavirus pandemic."

[szechuan]

For example, most of the children can't afford private tutors and are suffering permanent damage to their education now. (don't you dare downplaying importance of education)

Hyperbolic BS.

But at some point the ongoing suffering (and destroyed lives) of the 98% will start to outweigh the possible suffering (and lost lives) of the 2% IMHO.

And at some point The Coronavirus will start Causing Health problems again because the virus isn't going away.

[Belize]

Prepare your Mind to be Blown by the Following Link: the best governor of them all is a Republican.
"According to a new poll, 83 percent of voters approve of the job Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has done during the coronavirus pandemic."

He's an outlier that's taken measures early, your gotcha attempt is pathetic at best.

[stevenho]

Speak of the Devil...

Coronavirus: Tanzania hospitals overwhelmed - US

While anything is possible in Africa, a solitary voice of some embassy or supposed "facts" from the good gravedigger folks are too much of a reach to draw conclusions.
But thanks for digging this stuff up, was an interesting read.

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It might be more that the average life expectancy is 61 for a male and 65 female, meaning the expected deaths in the dangerous range (75+) will be very low

The dangerous range is 75+?
That's fantastic news tbh.

[Shadowferal]

you were bitching quite awhile back about not being able to go to the gym.

That would be impossible to prove since I've always said I don't do gyms. I always workout at home.
It seems to me you have a bug up your ass regarding me, enough so you'd create this narrative about me.
But feel free to search my posts...it should pass the time.

[trapmaster]

Best part about this video was the clip of Trump actively downplaying the coronavirus in late February, as a kid in the background can't stop coughing.

That's the best thing i ever seen expect i think the kid choked himself from trump's bullshit by inhaling his bullshits wrongfull hence that's why he can't stop coughing.