corona virus alerts - Latest cruising Information for vessels/locations/rules

[Cool Hand Luke]

Having said the above... NJ still allows sailing with immediate family members. Wife and I sailed by the USS Comfort in NYC last week. But the USCG was watching with 50 cal guns in their boats that could turn my SO409 into Swiss cheese [emoji893]

[delmarrey]

Quarantine Might Be Pointless!

Antibody tests suggest that coronavirus infections vastly exceed official counts

Study estimates a more than 50-fold increase in coronavirus infections compared to official cases, but experts have raised concerns about the reliability of antibody kits.

Widespread antibody testing in a Californian county has revealed a much higher prevalence of coronavirus infection than official figures suggested. The findings also indicate that the virus is less deadly than current estimates of global case and death counts suggest. But some scientists have raised concerns about the accuracy of kits used in such studies because most have not been rigorously assessed to confirm they are reliable.

An analysis of the blood of some 3,300 people living in Santa Clara county in early April found that one in every 66 people had been infected with SARS-CoV-2. On the basis of that finding, the researchers estimate that between 48,000 and 82,000 of the county’s roughly 2 million inhabitants were infected with the virus at that time — numbers that contrast sharply with the official case count of some 1,000 people reported in early April, according to the analysis posted today on medRxiv. The work has not yet been peer reviewed.

The results are some of the first of more than a dozen ‘sero-prevalence surveys’ being carried out in cities worldwide to try to estimate populations’ true infection rates, in the absence of widespread diagnostic testing. The World Health Organization is also running a global sero-prevalence study, known as Solidarity II.

Many surveys are using commercial antibody kits to detect antibodies against the virus in blood samples. The presence of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies reveals that a person had been infected for at least a week earlier, even if they have had no symptoms.

CONTINUED.........

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0

[Sand crab]

New York, Connecticut and New Jersey to reopen marinas.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...-kick-n1187136

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by delmarrey

[1] Quarantine Might Be Pointless!
[2] Antibody tests suggest that coronavirus infections vastly exceed official counts
CONTINUED.........
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0

Interesting, but I see no logical relationship between your headline [1], and the linked study [2], nor does the author offer any such corresponding opinion.

[smbdyiam2]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Interesting, but I see no logical relationship between your headline [1], and the linked study [2], nor does the author offer any such corresponding opinion.

My thoughts as well looks like best bet is stay home . If you are not working on the problem you are the problem.

[delmarrey]

Originally Posted by smbdyiam2

My thoughts as well looks like best bet is stay home . If you are not working on the problem you are the problem.

[Quote=nature . com] An accurate IFR can improve models being used to decide public-health responses. If a disease turns out to be less deadly than previously estimated, this could reframe discussions around the measures being introduced to contain it, and their economic and social impact, says Neeraj Sood, a health economist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who is leading a separate antibody study in Los Angeles and is also a co-author in the Santa Clara study. “We are trying to prevent the spread of disease, but at the same time we have rising unemployment in the US because of the preventive measures, so there is a trade-off here,” he says.

The Santa Clara team estimated an IFR for the county of 0.1–0.2%, which would equate to about 100 deaths in 48,000-82,000 infections. As of 10 April, the county's official death count was 50 people. The study's IFR is lower than the IFR used in models by researchers at Imperial College London, which estimated an IFR for Great Britain on the basis of data from China to be 0.9%. In another study, the same group estimated an IFR for China of 0.66%, and a study of deaths on the Diamond Princess cruise ship estimated an IFR of 0.5%.

Figures vary in different places for several reasons, including the age distribution of the population and the extent of testing.

Fatality rate estimates have been revised down over time as more people have been tested and researchers have gained more insight into less-severe cases, as happened with swine flu in 2009, says Eran Bendavid, a population-health researcher at Stanford University who led the Santa Clara study. [Quote/]

IAWs if the death rate it no higher then a seasonal virus, we are going thru this quarantine for drill. Most people are not showing symptoms, or just minor symptoms. There are many more infections then what we know at this time.

From what I heard from a Doctor in NYC today is that most fatalities are mostly complicated by obesity. https://youtu.be/1I0xXxgvsBY

Countries can go back to work if they follow certain procedures. The healthy working class are less likely to acquire a fatal case. All others would need to take extreme measures to protect themselves.

[Woodland Hills]

[QUOTE=delmarrey;3120895]

Originally Posted by nature . com

An accurate IFR can improve models being used to decide public-health responses. If a disease turns out to be less deadly than previously estimated, this could reframe discussions around the measures being introduced to contain it, and their economic and social impact, says Neeraj Sood, a health economist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who is leading a separate antibody study in Los Angeles and is also a co-author in the Santa Clara study. “We are trying to prevent the spread of disease, but at the same time we have rising unemployment in the US because of the preventive measures, so there is a trade-off here,” he says.

The Santa Clara team estimated an IFR for the county of 0.1–0.2%, which would equate to about 100 deaths in 48,000-82,000 infections. As of 10 April, the county's official death count was 50 people. The study's IFR is lower than the IFR used in models by researchers at Imperial College London, which estimated an IFR for Great Britain on the basis of data from China to be 0.9%. In another study, the same group estimated an IFR for China of 0.66%, and a study of deaths on the Diamond Princess cruise ship estimated an IFR of 0.5%.

Figures vary in different places for several reasons, including the age distribution of the population and the extent of testing.

Fatality rate estimates have been revised down over time as more people have been tested and researchers have gained more insight into less-severe cases, as happened with swine flu in 2009, says Eran Bendavid, a population-health researcher at Stanford University who led the Santa Clara study. [Quote/]

IAWs if the death rate it no higher then a seasonal virus, we are going thru this quarantine for drill. Most people are not showing symptoms, or just minor symptoms. There are many more infections then what we know at this time.

From what I heard from a Doctor in NYC today is that most fatalities are mostly complicated by obesity. https://youtu.be/1I0xXxgvsBY

Countries can go back to work if they follow certain procedures. The healthy working class are less likely to acquire a fatal case. All others would need to take extreme measures to protect themselves.

Have ever lived in an American working class neighborhood? That’s where you find the highest levels of obesity as well as the highest levels of smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. To even use a term like “healthy working class” displays a profound ignorance of just what it is like to be on the lower strata of American society. The “working class” are one of the most at risk groups in America!

[transmitterdan]

People should learn the difference between IFR and CFR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_f..._fatality_rate

In epidemiology, a case fatality rate (CFR) — sometimes called case fatality risk — is the proportion of deaths from a certain disease compared to the total number of people diagnosed with the disease for a certain period of time.

The term infection fatality rate (IFR) also applies to infectious disease outbreaks, and represents the proportion of deaths among all the infected individuals. It is closely related to the CFR, but attempts to additionally account for all asymptomatic and undiagnosed infections.

People keep wanting to compare COVID-19 to seasonal influenza. That is not possible for a myriad of reasons:
1) No vaccine for COVID-19 but the vaccine for common flu reduces infection rate by 50%
2) No one knows the COVID-19 infection rate. But most experts agree is it many times higher than the confirmed case rate.
3) We don't know how long anti-bodies of the corona virus that causes COVID-19 remain in a typical person. Some corona virus anti-bodies don't hang around long.

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by delmarrey

Quarantine Might Be Pointless!

Antibody tests suggest that coronavirus infections vastly exceed official counts

Study estimates a more than 50-fold increase in coronavirus infections compared to official cases, but experts have raised concerns about the reliability of antibody kits.

Widespread antibody testing in a Californian county has revealed a much higher prevalence of coronavirus infection than official figures suggested. The findings also indicate that the virus is less deadly than current estimates of global case and death counts suggest. But some scientists have raised concerns about the accuracy of kits used in such studies because most have not been rigorously assessed to confirm they are reliable.

An analysis of the blood of some 3,300 people living in Santa Clara county in early April found that one in every 66 people had been infected with SARS-CoV-2. On the basis of that finding, the researchers estimate that between 48,000 and 82,000 of the county’s roughly 2 million inhabitants were infected with the virus at that time — numbers that contrast sharply with the official case count of some 1,000 people reported in early April, according to the analysis posted today on medRxiv. The work has not yet been peer reviewed.

The results are some of the first of more than a dozen ‘sero-prevalence surveys’ being carried out in cities worldwide to try to estimate populations’ true infection rates, in the absence of widespread diagnostic testing. The World Health Organization is also running a global sero-prevalence study, known as Solidarity II.

Many surveys are using commercial antibody kits to detect antibodies against the virus in blood samples. The presence of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies reveals that a person had been infected for at least a week earlier, even if they have had no symptoms.

CONTINUED.........

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01095-0

Posting a so fast and furious I can’t keep up.

I was just going to post commenting on Cumos statement that social distancing has reduced the R to under 1.

Maybe.

But suppose, as your article notes, the asymptomatic infection rate is very high. Would it not look EXACTLY like social distancing? How could you distinguish?

So maybe we are not seeing effects of social distancing but of emerging herd immunity?

If it comes out to be true, some people are gonna be p’ed off.

Then there is this, a 100 day comparison of deaths due to pneumonia, clue and virus.

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...98&oe=5EC12DC8

[delmarrey]

[QUOTE=Woodland Hills;3120924]

Originally Posted by delmarrey

Have ever lived in an American working class neighborhood? That’s where you find the highest levels of obesity as well as the highest levels of smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. To even use a term like “healthy working class” displays a profound ignorance of just what it is like to be on the lower strata of American society. The “working class” are one of the most at risk groups in America!

That would be 42% of America.
I said the “healthy working class”, not that the working class WAS healthy. In my trade you had to have a bit of good physical health or you didn’t last long on the job.

Here’s today’s stats. Make your own assessment.

.

[hpeer]

Del,

I was editing my post to include that graphic as you posted.

[hpeer]

Another very interesting and scholarly analysis of NYC hospitalization from a different angle. I alluded to this above but here is the link. Clearly shows the conditions that lead to bad outcome.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...794v1.full.pdf

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by hpeer

... So maybe we are not seeing effects of social distancing but of emerging herd immunity? ...

Indeed.
Or, perhaps, we are seeing that the aliens, who started this whole thing, are going back to their home planet.

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Indeed.
Or, perhaps, we are seeing that the aliens, who started this whole thing, are going back to their home planet.

Gord,

It’s not like you to be sarcastic.

What do you find incredulous in my statement?

I’ll grant that if social distancing starts early and stringently enough it can work. It has here in Dominica.

But when it has been delayed to the point where a significant amount of the population has already had the bug, then it’s efficacy is decreased. If enough have had the bug then it’s very decreased. Each person who has had the virus and now has antibodies is effectively “distanced” from the population. The math is the same.

[Discovery 15797]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

People should learn the difference between IFR and CFR.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_f..._fatality_rate

In epidemiology, a case fatality rate (CFR) — sometimes called case fatality risk — is the proportion of deaths from a certain disease compared to the total number of people diagnosed with the disease for a certain period of time.

The term infection fatality rate (IFR) also applies to infectious disease outbreaks, and represents the proportion of deaths among all the infected individuals. It is closely related to the CFR, but attempts to additionally account for all asymptomatic and undiagnosed infections.

People keep wanting to compare COVID-19 to seasonal influenza. That is not possible for a myriad of reasons:
1) No vaccine for COVID-19 but the vaccine for common flu reduces infection rate by 50%
2) No one knows the COVID-19 infection rate. But most experts agree is it many times higher than the confirmed case rate.
3) We don't know how long anti-bodies of the corona virus that causes COVID-19 remain in a typical person. Some corona virus anti-bodies don't hang around long.

Absolutely agree. That is why it is important that accurate antibody testing get underway asap as it is in California and soon Washington state. The antibody testing will tell us much more than the molecular testing currently going on that only provides the gross CFR denominator. Antibody testing can also help science better understand potential for 'herd immunity' (which is something that both sides of the argument are merely guessing about). (BTW...the 'herd immunity' concept was not what stopped SARS or MERS epidemics; it was rapid isolation and containment of those infected and at high risk.)

Also, the CFR is not the people who test positive for SARS-COV2, it is/should be the number of people who develop covid-19 symptoms. (Just as the cause of death should be directly attributable to covid-19, and not assumed.)

Some individuals accused me of 'comparing' influenza with covid-19 after I refuted the statement...

The absolute worst flu season imaginable doesn’t do anything like this.

I suspect most people are only comparing raw numbers such as death count. This is exactly what I did when I refuted that statement. Numerically, the US has experienced Influenza outbreaks with higher death counts over a 4 month period compared to the number of deaths in the US from Covid-19 in 2 months.

Also, people continue to make ridiculous assertions regarding raw data as if it applies equally to the population as a whole, or that the horrible situation in New York is equally applicable to other parts of the country (which we know is not true). And we also know that influenza affects a larger set of the population as a whole compared to covid-19. And, sadly even the experts make a vague and unsubstantiated comparison between this virus to influenza instead of previous coronavirus outbreaks (e.g. influenza A and B recur yearly, SARS and MERS were contained with no recurring outbreaks) which could also cause people to assume this will be similar in some way to influenza.

Not only is it unwise to try to "compare" the SARS-COV2 epidemic with Influenza epidemics (again raw number comparisons are pointless), I think we may not be able to compare the effects between the 3 known strains of the virus. The original in Wuhan, the one that affected the west coast of the US, and the one from Europe primarily infecting the east coast of the US. Fortunately, studies still suggest that mutation is quite slow (which somewhat negates mutation conspiracies). Here is a good site for genetic tracking of the virus...they have a great visual on how it spread along with the different genetic variation tracing.

IMHO, the first part of your last statement is KEY! We don't know. Nobody really knows.

I have never witnessed so many so-called experts be so blatantly wrong or rush out with wild a$$ speculation in the absence of meaningful data. Of course, we have also never witnessed such draconian measures to stop the spread of a virus. Perhaps it is not the precautions people are upset with. Maybe it is the random guessing and contradictory information by 'experts.' Maybe it is the arbitrary nature of executive orders (e.g. Starbucks allowed to stay open but you can't buy seeds, plants, or garden supplies in Michigan). Maybe so many people are simply unprepared, and need 'big brother' to lead them by the nose. Maybe people are so reliant on government they will blindly follow leaders who continue to make decisions based on 'data' that has been proven to be inaccurate. Or, maybe masses of people are getting tired of being misled by media and politicians. Maybe people are more intelligent than politicians and scientists think.

(DISCLAIMER: Nothing in this post is intended to downplay the severity of this disease or the impact it has had on some communities. And, it also not intended to suggest we should not be taking reasonable measure to contain and suppress this virus. The engineer/scientist in me questions many things that seem incorrect, unclear, contradictory, or 'just don't pass the sniff test.' The 5 why's are an excellent technique in critical thinking for root cause analysis. And at this point I have a lot more than '5 why' questions regarding this epidemic and subsequent reactions, and take nothing from the media or the 'experts' at face value.)