Fear and Loathing, a Rat Flu Odyssey

[Casey E]

Talking about schools, The U of Chile is about to publish a study of the first school outbreak of Covid19 in Santiago, at a private school (Saint George's), with 1,009 students and 235 teachers/workers getting tested. This is a 2,700 student facility and the students were chosen at random (not enough tests for all, nor would all give permission). The timeline was:
March 3 First case in Chile, classes start after summer holidays
March 12 SG´s teacher tests positive (arrived from Italy)
March 13 SG's closed, and new related cases start appearing
March 15 Entire Chilean school system closed
April A total of 52 cases result from the SG´s outbreak including 45 amongst the staff and parents, and only 7 students (PCR). Many parents had symptoms 6-7 days after teacher-parent meetings.
May 4 Antibody tests begin for 1,250 other SG´s students/teachers
May 15 The entire city of Santiago (8 million) goes into quarantine

The antibody tests were sent by courier with the results submitted online. The paper is now awaiting peer review and publication. Preliminary results shared via the newspaper indicate that 10% of the students were infected, 21% of the teachers, and 17% of total staff. The student infection rate varied from 6% in the 4 high school years, to 12% in preschool. 40% of students were asymptomatic, while 18% of the teachers/staff were. It is believed that transmission started in teachers meetings.

With the state of the paper publishing biz right now, who knows when the study itself will be published. This is the best I can do for a link (in spanish): http://portal.nexnews.cl/showN?valor=e4yx3

[Core Shot]

i love beating off a dead horse as well as the next man

[Core Shot]

Caution fatigue is not one of the heuristic traps of skiing in avalanche terrain but it should be.

Changing the subject a little--
Shutdowns prevented 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds
https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...s-study-finds/

But shouldn't the headline read "delayed 60 million coronavirus infections . . . "?

Funny a few weeks ago I mentioned heuristics to my bride in regards to covid.
She went huuuhh?

She’s got avy1 and done small tours but never reads anything. Avy learning carries over to many real world scenarios.

I admit my heuristic traps in my own reaction to covid and my desire to resume 80% normal life. And I accept the risk.

[KQ]

Probably already been said but just occurred to me that 2020 is the year of not being able to breath be it from a virus or brutality. I'm afraid to ask if there will be yet another way. Wildfires maybe?

[bennymac]

Probably already been said but just occurred to me that 2020 is the year of not being able to breath be it from a virus or brutality. I'm afraid to ask if there will be yet another way. Wildfires maybe?

Murder hornet anaphylactic reaction

[Core Shot]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asym...-who-says.html

Who says asymptomatic don’t spread virus

Who said that?

Who!

Yeah that’s what I’m asking. Who said that?

[bennymac]

[The AD]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asym...-who-says.html

Who says asymptomatic don’t spread virus

Who said that?

Who!

Yeah that’s what I’m asking. Who said that?

And yet it spreads very effectively, so what gives? It's probably just like any other infectious disease where there are plenty of people who go out in public, to work, etc. despite being sick. Because of them the only effective way of curbing the transmission is to tell everyone they must quarantine.

[Core Shot]

It’s The Who joke.

They floppy flop

[huckbucket]

WTF is it with the WHO?

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status...78612457598976

Bad bad (Leroy Brown)

[jono]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asym...-who-says.html

Who says asymptomatic don’t spread virus

Who said that?

Who!

Yeah that’s what I’m asking. Who said that?

Correction: An earlier headline should have said most asymptomatic coronavirus patients aren’t spreading new infections. The word “most” was inadvertedly omitted.

So WHO let the dogs out, but only let "most" asymptomatic off the hook.

Is it rare for an asymptomatic to shed lots of virus or rare for one of them to find a home? Or is this anecdotal, aka who knows?

[The SnowShow]

That's cool. Always interesting to see how people think. The curious wrinkle in that for me was how many expect to eat in a restaurant before they expect to stop wearing masks regularly. Left me wondering how many of those threw the "if it's outdoors" qualifier on the restaurant question and how many are just willing to risk a restaurant (though they all seem pretty united about no sports or concerts).

I don’t get why 70% would not be ok hiking outdoors this summer.

[Tri-Ungulate]

If we'd actually let medical pros manage the response it never would have gotten past the cruise ships and airports.
We're only here because Trump & Co decided they didn't want to follow beat practices and go their own stupid way.

While I agree that Trump & Co prolly did the worst possible management of the situation, just as a minor devil's advocate position, Sweden’s response was managed by “medical pros”, at least the ones whose opinions held sway at the time. It’s not just a medical issue, but also a policy and cultural issue, and there’s a more than a little bit of luck involved - each country’s experience is instructional, whether it be Sweden, New Zealand, Singapore, Brazil or the US. One observation I personally have found is interesting is that countries with less inequality seem to do better with SARS CoV 2 than those with more, Sweden excepted. It makes sense to me for many reasons, which I won’t go into in this post, but maybe later if I drink enough and get all Leeeeroy Jeeeeeenkins.

The WHO and the CDC were off the starting line as well. The epidemiologists have part of the blame. And both NYC and State and CA were slow. CA failed to track returnees from Wuhan and the cruise ship passengers. Trump let people return from China and Europe but there was no effective identification or tracking once people reached the US. It was left up to the states to deal with the returnees and the states didn't have the resources in the form of testing or trackers.

The system in this country leaves too much responsibility with the states for dealing with pandemics. Our public health systems were set up to deal with the public health issues of the last century--TB, STD's, localized food borne illnesses from unclean restaurants and stores. Not that in the current system a federally coordinated response would have helped--but in a normal administration maybe.

Agree completely, and this points to the necessity of a coordinated well-designed response based on the science available, which was prolly part of the “game plan” the Obama administration handed over to Drumpf, which he promptly tossed in the trash.

Setting aside that it’s just ageist and ableist, who do you think cares for older adults? It’s not other old folks. What’s your grand proposal to isolate older adults and everyone they contact and magically split the healthcare system into a covid/noncovid system as it ‘runs its course?’


For the millionth time it’s not ‘like the flu’. Maybe that helps you to sleep at night, but when cases spike, you inevitably see younger sick patients. That’s exactly what would happen if it ‘ran its course’.


Youngest person I saw this weekend was in their 20s. If you’re seeing me you aren’t doing well.

This. CantDog, in my job, we really aren’t able to express our appreciation enough for those who do what you do, and your warning and personal anecdotal experience is invaluable.

Caution fatigue is not one of the heuristic traps of skiing in avalanche terrain but it should be.

Actually closely related to the “familiarity” heuristic in McCammon’s original avalanche analysis IMO.

[old goat]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/08/asym...-who-says.html

Who says asymptomatic don’t spread virus

Who said that?

Who!

Yeah that’s what I’m asking. Who said that?

I don't know how much credibility the WHO has these days. In any case, given the nature of the symptoms and the degree of public awareness I find it hard to believe that there are many people going out to work or store with symptoms, so the only people they would expose are people they live with. Which would obviously mean that people are transmitting the disease when they are currently asymptomatic--presymptomatic or ultimately asymptomatic makes no difference in this context. Either way the only way to find them is by screening and contact tracing.

I wonder if a lot of the flattening the curve and the fall off in cases in many places is due not to everyone staying home but to sick people staying home. Pre pandemic there was a lot of pressure on people to work when sick. The pandemic has made it a lot easier for those folks to stay home. No one wants a superspreader wandering around their workplace. That would leave only asymptomatic/presymptomatic people to spread the disease. One reason the meatpacking plants have been so bad may be that the owners are pushing people to work when sick; they're all just throwaway people with no sick leave, aren't they?

[Core Shot]

Good point about symptomatic staying at home.

Meat plants? I think it’s more pressure for workers to get paid than evil pressure from the plant to make sick workers work.
Not that the plant owners care. Just that the low level workers have bills to pay.

I guess that’s why the pre work fever thermometer is en vogue

[MultiVerse]

The WHO is saying it's rare for asymptomatic people to spread the virus (a point of contention with no clear consensus) not that it's rare for presymptomatic people to spread the virus. At this point most of the evidence points to peak infectiousness happening 2-3 days before symptoms develop.

There's a big graphic in Huckbuckets's link above:

It identified just 300 positive cases, all of whom had no symptoms. The city found no infections among 1,174 close contacts of the people who tested positive, suggesting they were not spreading it easily to others.

Any of the resident experts want to comment on the likelihood that these were not active infections that were detected? Also, is their testing that good at avoiding false positives?

If this data can be believed it would make a really good strategy for the US (if we were fast and responsive and stuff).

If asymptomatic transmission is rare then that could answer Jono's question because asymptomatic cases are being identified through testing or contact tracing not because they are part of a larger outbreak cluster. If it is true, emphasis on if, then isolating symptomatic cases along with tracing their contacts would end up as one of the more effective strategies for slowing transmission.

[skifishbum]

Quarantine fatigue: Why some of us have stopped being vigilant and how to overcome it

thanks in a strange turn of unforseeen events we now have my 78 yo dad living with us
as the states cases rise towards a peak and we move to yellow.
The pictures of wuhan hospitals in oct vrs. previous oct and google searches sure seem to add to the
youre kidding yourself if you think china had the rest of the worlds interests in being timely truthful about this global health pandemic

[The AD]

It’s The Who joke.

They floppy flop

Speaking of flip flopping:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/w...s-updates.html
"The W.H.O. walked back an earlier assertion that asymptomatic transmission is ‘very rare.’"

[XXX-er]

Trump quit funding the WHO cuz he is/was behind hundreds of millions on funding so its just like any of the business deals that he stiffed

[bodywhomper]

Orange County, CA health officer resigned due to increased death threats and protests at her home regarding her mandate for mask wearing


https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020...y-coronavirus/

[splat]

[The SnowShow]

Who was it that said by early June, the US would have 3,000 deaths per day?

[XXX-er]

Orange County, CA health officer resigned due to increased death threats and protests at her home regarding her mandate for mask wearing


https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020...y-coronavirus/

wow

up here the chief provincial medical officer is highly revered, the Gitixsan even gave her a first nations name, a shoe company gave her a signature shoe there have been songs and poems written

[The AD]

Who was it that said by early June, the US would have 3,000 deaths per day?

It was a projection by John Hopkins for the White House:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...a-day-scenario

Luckily it's been a lot less than that, but it certainly wouldn't shock me if those numbers start going back up soon.

[DBdude]

at one point NY was having eight hundred deaths a day. three thousand a day for the entire country does not sound crazy