re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

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Go back and read as to what I said was proven, then come back and apologize because you can’t read.

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I've read it several times, and each time it has shown that you said "proven", as if to imply that the remaining "unproven" excess deaths should be attributed to policy rather than covid. You go on to say "thus far" and that "underdiagnosis is likely", which further confuses me on why you chose to use the word "proven" given that it doesn't appear once in the linked article. It just comes across as deceptive language.

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Why not? It’s a tool available to us. These policies were put into place using shitty models that made lots of assumptions, using worse data than this, which have been quite wrong throughout. This incomplete data is better than the incomplete data that got us into this mess.

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I can agree with all of that, but my concern is that pushing this idea that covid mortality rates are lower than reality will lead to another round of bad policy in the winter when deaths start happening more often than the new models based on an underestimated IFR predict. In other words, if we want to avoid another round of panic-induced policy, we need to see deaths in line with or less than what the models predict. Because if deaths start piling up faster than we expect, we will surely overreact again.

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BR general did a antibody test and found 4.5% positive

LINK

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According to the release, BRG is reporting the following results:

- While African Americans made up only 5% of test-takers, 17% of positive results came from African American patients.

- Only one positive test was from a person under 20 years old.

- Half of BRG’s positive tests have come from people between the ages of 40-59.

- Women are more likely to get tested than men, but they test positive at the same rate.

While there are several different types of antibody tests available, BRG is using the COR2G serology test developed by Mayo Clinic. BRG says this test has a 98.6% accuracy, correctly identifying those with antibodies.

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These BRG tests are not random, so there is self-selection bias in the sample, which we would expect to increase the positive rate. But for the sake of these rough calculations, let's assume that the sample of 1500 is random.

4.5% of EBR would be about 20,000 cases, and given the 219 covid deaths in EBR that puts the mortality rate at 1.1%.

But we should probably adjust for demographics. 4.5% of 1500+ tests works out to about 70 positive tests. It is stated that 17% of the positive tests were AA, yet they made up only 5% of the sample. This means 70*.17 = 12 AA positives out of ~75 samples, for a rate of 16%. Conversely, assuming most of the remaining tested were white, that gives a rate of 58/1425 = 4% among whites. Given the roughly equal demographics in EBR, that means there might be around 35,000 AA and 9000 white cases, totaling 44,000. This adjusted prevalence gives a mortality rate of 219 / 44k = 0.5%.

This data set, although not random, seems to be in line with most IFR estimates.

Another John Ioannidis/Stanford study pre-print looking at IFR from multiple locations around the world based on antibody testing.

Ranges from 0.02 - 0.4, once corrected for demographic factors.


(Someone first linked it on the PT Board.)

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The more age stratification data I see, the less I care about a universal IFR. There is such a huge difference between under 60s and over 60s. The IFR for under 60's is comically low. This Danish study > LINK < put the under 70 IFR at .08%.

State governments arresting young surfers, then turning around and sending confirmed CV19 patients into nursing homes, is the most government thing in the history of government things.

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Agreed. Bad policy on the general quarantine and nursing home front. They should have realized this since that nursing home in WA was the canary in the coal mine that started all this shite in the USA.

This is from the article you linked

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If silent and mild infections lead to weaker antibody responses,we will underestimate the population immunity. Also, screening only for antibodies may underestimate the prevalence of infections, if cellular cytotoxicity is able to eradicate virally infected cells,as for SARS-CoV,before eliciting a humoral response8.

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This is the idea I’ve been referring to regarding T cell immunity. There may be many people with mild infections clearing the infection before any significantly detected antibody response is created.

What they really need to do is go back to these prisons and military ships where there were tons of asymptomatic cases and test them for antibodies 1 month later. Let’s see how many of these asymptomatic cases or mild cases are actually making antibodies.

Routine cancer screenings have plummeted during the pandemic, medical records data show

This is (actual) bad news.

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Appointments for screenings for cancers of the cervix, colon, and breast were down between 86% and 94% in March

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However, you can’t just send someone to the hospital for having COVID-19 and expect them to serve as a holding facility

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Sure I can. Any nursing home resident who tests positive should be admitted to the hospital for observation. Any one whose health is poor enough for them to be in a nursing home probably can't be taken care of at a relative's home, and they absolutely cannot be discharged back into a nursing home.

That's what Asian countries (that are defeating the virus) are doing. In fact, in Hong Kong, all positive cases in the population (not just nursing home residents) stay in the hospital until they are negative.

I mean, it's not like our hospitals are full right now, and the hospital is the best place to monitor a positive nursing home resident (oximeter, EKG, etc.).

It's amazing how consistently article writers tend to understate or completely ignore the extent to which this was mandated policy. From the article:

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U.S., federal health officials and cancer societies urged Americans to delay their routine mammograms and colonoscopies. The public has heeded those recommendations — and that’s helped lead to an apocalyptic drop in cancer screenings

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For the most part, the public didn't have a choice whether or not to heed recommendations. Most couldn't schedule the screening procedure because the clinics and hospitals were shut down to elective procedures. The drastic extent of these dropoffs wasn't due to any urging, it was decreed by governments and public health authorities.

LINK

So all the stuff about Sweden having 20% antibodies, etc. was completely wrong. In the capital, where the epidemic has been the worst, the antibody level was tested at 7.3%.

Of course, it would be higher now, since that was the state of things in April, but it would not appear that Sweden is anywhere near herd immunity.