Iceland study suggests half of COVID carriers asymptomatic yet infectious

southall said:
Those are the kind of rates that Fauci and Academics reckon are the real death rates for CV: About 10 times that of regular Flu.
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And I'm not saying that this is not a grand mal serious situation. But there are two kinds of sampling bias going on here -- the one where only those with 1+ symptoms are receiving a test for the presence of CoVID-19 [wrong wrong wrong, for Public Health data], and the second, where the only "Academics" being quoted are those who opine without a sound statistical basis. Within the last two weeks, academics in the academic field have tried to straighten things a bit, from MIT, Yale, and Stanford. To NO avail. :(
 
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southall said:
The Diamond princess cruise does not have a missing number, they caught ever single case.

712 total cases, 12 dead.

1.7% death rate on the ship with almost absolute certainty.
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That number is also biased as a cruise ship doesn't represent general population, I expect the average age to be far higher.
 
tommcginnis said:
Gentlemen:
There are TWO tests relevant here -- one for testing whether the virus is in your blood. For this, you may be symptomatic or asymptomatic, but the virus bits will still be detectable in your blood, nasal drips, coughs, skin sloughs, pooh, etc.

THE OTHER TEST though, is WHETHER YOU HAVE ANTIBODIES -- in other words, whether you have already HAD the virus, and have cleared it from your body. Whether you were symptomatic (and knew you were sick) or asymptomatic (and had no idea), those antibodies would remain with you. THIS IS THE MISSING NUMBER THAT INVALIDATES JUST ABOUT EVERY STATISTICAL CLAIM ABOUT CoVID-19 THAT YOU'VE HEARD THUS FAR. And this is what deCode has done/is doing in Iceland. None of you understood this. (All of you should be seeing that "jackass" looking back from the mirror.)

Although anyone with a statistical brain-cell notes this oh-so-quietly, it seems that only MIT, Yale, and now Stanford have anybody willing to bleat out this simple observation...
"Your denominator is fuqued.":
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/nobody-knows-the-number.342769/
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I don't disagree, but the argument over the precise death rate is way over played. If you've just lost a loved one to the virus do you think that it would be comforting to learn that that loved one's chances of dying from the virus were even smaller than you'd been told! What is important right now is to do the kind of testing that will help us to bring down the transmission rate and treat those effected. We aren't doing it, but Germany is! Would that our colleagues from Yale and Stanford be more vociferous in pressing our President to ramp up testing and get masks for everyone.

There is an argument that can be made to suggest that the data coming out of Germany is very likely to give us a denominator not significantly different from the technically correct one which would include all those with antibodies. The points you make are already well understood by the technical folks involved in testing. They know what their tests detect and what they don't.

What exactly we detect will depend on the type of test of course. It seems that initially the U.S. was using reverse transcriptase PCR to detect presence of the Viral RNA from nose swabs with unconscionably long turn around times. Even though that test would detect inactive virus as well, the results can be interpreted with reasonable accuracy as a test for people with an active viral infection. And isn't that what we really want to know? However we screwed up royally. We decided, for whatever reason, to only test those with symptoms. If there was a shortage of tests available -- we had 60 days to get ready -- we should have reserved those scarce tests for those without symptoms but exposed to those with. Testing those with symptoms, while a nice add-on in a land of plenty, would make practically no difference in the treatment of the sick, since there is no treatment other than palliative and those not needing to be hospitalized, if they had symptoms specific to CoVid-19, should have been immediately quarantined, not 7 days later when the test results came back. (I am not making any of this up. This is what was going on at the largest hospital in my hometown in Mississippi.) Of course testing should have been rapidly ramped up, but that would take other than Jackass Leadership. Then too, we should have had everyone wearing masks in public spaces, like grocery stores, from day one.

Now as to the rather pointless arguments about the "real death rate," Germany has already answered that question in a practical way. They've given us a bottom line figure for death rate among those who are currently infected with live virus plus those who have already died.. A test for active infection won't turn up those who had prior exposure and have only antibodies and no active infection. If, in Germany however, you could take the antibody set that's gone undetected (so far), which is likely quite small, since it is likely to be an early subset from the current pandemic before it became a pandemic-- merge it with the current positive test set and add in those who are known to have died from CoVid, the change in the death rate you'd compute is unlikely to be significant enough to change anyone's viewpoint regarding the dangerous nature of CoVid-19.

What is important here is that Germany has shown us that in the U.S. There are more infections than there ought to be. People are getting sick and dying at a higher rate than necessary, our hospitals are overrun and our economy is shut down...

What is the Federal Government for if not to step up in times of dire national need and lead the Nation as one body? Instead the President is in effect shrugging his shoulders are saying "We are fine here. You guys do whatever you want" The lies and the craziness get worse daily.
 
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southall said:
I read that the vast majority of Germany's infected are under the age of 60. And the death rate is still 1.3%. And they are not missing many infected people by the sound of things.
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That death rate could be valid if negative results of the tests were 100% correct. But they might not be according to https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/well/live/coronavirus-symptoms-tests-false-negative.html
"For now, we should assume that anyone could be carrying the virus. If you have had likely exposures and symptoms suggest Covid-19 infection, you probably have it — even if your test is negative."
 
Right my Nan aged 95 died just, so you know expected had a good life people die had my 10seconds of grief and moved on, definitely NOT C19, lets place your bets she tests positive and slotted into C19 deaths to up the figures.

Thanks for dying at the right time for my mini science expose the BS project :)

* piss take, can't go to funeral because of this made up snowflake agenda BS, but hate funerals so no biggy.
 
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