Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more

New mass screening finds just over 27% of New Yorkers test positive for Covid antibodies.

New York Times article

General pattern is for people from poorer areas to be more likely to have been infected.

In one small district, over 50% of those tested were positive. The district is called . . . Corona.

ETA: an NYC study some weeks previously found a 19-20% rate iirc but was conducted with people visiting grocery stores, not really a random sampling.

I cant read the NYT article. Was this one from random sampling either?

A lot of the data is here if you scroll down a bit past the non-antibody tests.


Some of the detail might matter. Seeing the numbers over time certainly helps, as well as by age.

Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 19.25.20.png
Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 19.25.31.png
Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 19.25.54.png

Its hard to make comparisons with places like London because there hasnt been mass testing there. We are reliant on small scale random sampling, including from people donating blood, to come up with regional estimates for antibody prevalence.

We also dont know about test accuracy in New York compared to the forms of testing used here. And there are big questions about some other forms of immunity that are way more difficult to test for and so havent been the focus of any population antibody studies at scale so far.

The following is from the most recent report at National COVID-19 surveillance reports

Screenshot 2020-08-20 at 19.29.42.png
 
If they're seen quickly measures can be taken quickly we hope. We could also learn now from countries already opening up schools. This does overall put us in a better position than we were in February onwards. But will we?

PHE were (unsurprisingly) not mandating students wearing face masks, this could change maybe to put our schools more in line with others. Hopefully schools and parents will work together to take what precautions they can. The guidance from above isn't reassuring anyone.

I can envisage outbreaks in schools, it's inevitable. There doesn't seem to be any consistent guidance about what happens after cases are found though. A lot of people are going to be worrying for a long time.
What I mean is that for results to be seen, people have to catch it. For people to notice, many people will have to be very ill or die. That does not sound like a particularly acceptable experiment to me before the rates go right down.
 
What I mean is that for results to be seen, people have to catch it. For people to notice, many people will have to be very ill or die. That does not sound like a particularly acceptable experiment to me before the rates go right down.
No it could mean we'll see increases in positive cases, if thousands of people suddenly join the melee when schools open that is inevitable (if testing is increased).
Hopefully weve gone past the stage of not noticing until people become 'very ill or die'.
 
No it could mean we'll see increases in positive cases, if thousands of people suddenly join the melee when schools open that is inevitable (if testing is increased).
Hopefully weve gone past the stage of not noticing until people become 'very ill or die'.
We haven't. Some people show no symptoms, some people are affected badly and quicky. So hard to tell, especially in children. How about the example I gave? My daughter comes home with it, no symptoms, I catch it, I probably can't recover because I have neutropenia and can't fight it. I'm not the only one, and there are thousands of schools. People will get badly ill, people will die before you find out it's spreading too fast. That's how they will tell.
 
We haven't. Some people show no symptoms, some people are affected badly and quicky. So hard to tell, especially in children. How about the example I gave? My daughter comes home with it, no symptoms, I catch it, I probably can't recover because I have neutropenia and can't fight it. I'm not the only one, and there are thousands of schools. People will get badly ill, people will die before you find out it's spreading too fast. That's how they will tell.
The more we can increase the testing the more we can find cases where people are asymptomatic ,this means they can isolate. They will spread it to less people, had they not been tested .

In an ideal world we would have a top-notch testing and Track and Trace system in place before schools open, but at the moment we haven't. Would you prefer schools stay shut or open with half size classes? Is your daughter wearing a mask to school? Has her school informed you what they will be doing? What do you want to happen regarding her schooling?

Lots of people are doing their own risk assessment. Not stepping outside the front door seems safest, but seldom practical.
 
The more we can increase the testing the more we can find cases where people are asymptomatic ,this means they can isolate. They will spread it to less people, had they not been tested .
Well dur, that would be great of course, but they have shown no real sign of doing this at all let alone effectively, and not in school.

In an ideal world we would have a top-notch testing and Track and Trace system in place before schools open, but at the moment we haven't.
They have neither in any way close to working effectively, right now they are going on reported cases, hospital cases and death.
Would you prefer schools stay shut or open with half size classes?
I would prefer peoples lives were not put at risk. I would prefer them to take this seriously and not just cross their fingers and see how it goes. "Hummm, deaths have only gone up a few hundred, that's not so bad". People dying is bad!

Is your daughter wearing a mask to school?
Yes, though I have heard from a teacher friend that they have been given guidelines as to how to get children to remove them. . . which seems odd. He thinks my daughters school will be sensible though (he works there). . he's not so sure about his daughters school.

Has her school informed you what they will be doing?
They still are not sure what they are doing, and are quite muddled, they have not had any clear guidelines at all. They seem quite confused.

What do you want to happen regarding her schooling?
I'm not sure I want the kids to go back to school until there are very clear guidelines with scientific backing that don't put my life at risk. Nobody has even properly thought about, who is actually at risk. As I said before, I'm not officially 'at risk' according to the government, but that's only because there isn't a full and proper 'at risk' list. My doctor however tells me I very much and high risk. I am quite obviously not the only one, but I am lucky at least that I was diagnosed (while they were looking for something else), many people won't even know.

I get the impression you do think that as we don't have any proper system set up for the schools, or scientific backing or track and trace . . it is worth a few more people dying to find out if it's ok. "We'll find out soon enough if it is going tits up" . . . that is not the way to do it.
 
Well dur, that would be great of course, but they have shown no real sign of doing this at all let alone effectively, and not in school.


They have neither in any way close to working effectively, right now they are going on reported cases, hospital cases and death.

I would prefer peoples lives were not put at risk. I would prefer them to take this seriously and not just cross their fingers and see how it goes. "Hummm, deaths have only gone up a few hundred, that's not so bad". People dying is bad!


Yes, though I have heard from a teacher friend that they have been given guidelines as to how to get children to remove them. . . which seems odd. He thinks my daughters school will be sensible though (he works there). . he's not so sure about his daughters school.


They still are not sure what they are doing, and are quite muddled, they have not had any clear guidelines at all. They seem quite confused.


I'm not sure I want the kids to go back to school until there are very clear guidelines with scientific backing that don't put my life at risk. Nobody has even properly thought about, who is actually at risk. As I said before, I'm not officially 'at risk' according to the government, but that's only because there isn't a full and proper 'at risk' list. My doctor however tells me I very much and high risk. I am quite obviously not the only one, but I am lucky at least that I was diagnosed (while they were looking for something else), many people won't even know.

I get the impression you do think that as we don't have any proper system set up for the schools, or scientific backing or track and trace . . it is worth a few more people dying to find out if it's ok. "We'll find out soon enough if it is going tits up" . . . that is not the way to do it.
Then you have got the wrong impression. I think it will be a total shit show.
 
I wonder if there will be an increase in parents wanting to homeschool , as a result of this...maybe even take them out for a year.
 
I cant read the NYT article. Was this one from random sampling either?

No - the 1.5 million test results were from New Yorkers who voluntarily got tested. One possible confound is that those tested were more likely to be from wealthier neighbourhoods, but this did not stop a poor working-class district (with many residents working in construction and in restaurants) from reporting the highest antibody rate.

The earlier study (from which a total fatality rate of 0.8-1.0 was calculated) consisted of c. 28,000 people tested. Would think the second later study more significant, quantity having a quality all of its own.
 
I cant read the NYT article. Was this one from random sampling either?
1.5 Million Antibody Tests Show What Parts of N.Y.C. Were Hit Hardest Outline - Read & annotate without distractions
NYT. August 19, 2020
New York City on Tuesday released more than 1.46 million coronavirus antibody test results, the largest number to date, providing more evidence of how the virus penetrated deeply into some lower-income communities while passing more lightly across affluent parts of the city.

In one ZIP code in Queens, more than 50 percent of people who had gotten tested were found to have antibodies, a strikingly high rate. But no ZIP code south of 96th Street in Manhattan had a positive rate of more than 20 percent.

Across the city, more than 27 percent of those tested had positive antibody results. The borough with the highest rate was the Bronx, at 33 percent. Manhattan had the lowest rate, at 19 percent.

The data is likely to renew discussion about whether some neighborhoods or communities in New York City may be nearing herd immunity — the point at which enough people have immunity that the virus is no longer able to spread widely within a community.
 
This is an interesting read on the situation in Spain, this in particular caught my eye.

Most of the transmission is now between young people, and around three-quarters of positives are in patients who show no symptoms.

Spain's government admits the numbers are "not what we want to see", but points to key differences compared to the spring. Only around 3% of current cases require hospital treatment, less than 0.5% need intensive care and the current death rate is as low as 0.3%.

"Mortality is very low, as is the hospitalisation rate. Something has changed big time, although the rise is still worrying," says Ildefonso Hernández, a professor in public health from Miguel Hernández University in Alicante.

A fair few positives there, 75% having no symptoms, resulting in only 3% ending-up in hospital, and a lower death rate.

Someone posted a link the other day to a report saying the virus had mutated into a more mild state, and this does seem to back that up.

 
Think we probably need an 'opening schools thread' TBH. Anyway, until then news from Berlin doesn't look great re: schools.

Summary... Berlin has 825 schools. Less than 2 weeks after them opening at least 41 of them have reported teachers or students being infected.


?
 

?

So many threads, missed it. :facepalm: Oh, and not in the Coronavirus forum area. That won't help.
 
Another depressing Victoria, Australia update: remember that new measure somebody posted about in this thread, captioned 'they don't mess about Down Under' - $20,000 fines for those failing to self-isolate? The statistics that were used to justify that new measure being introduced were skewed: the Victorian premier claimed that over a third of people who were meant to be self-isolating were not doing so, however two weeks later it's been clarified that the vast majority of these cases were either (a) the result of an error with an address, or (b) seeking medical care or exercising, as they were allowed to do at that time under the Chief Health Officer's directive (subsequently changed). Once actually investigated, the percentage of those actually breaking the law was closer 0.8%.

Now here's why it matters:


And retribution

I'm in Qld, and watching with sadness and more than a bit of trepidation what you guys are going through. X
 
Yes, though I have heard from a teacher friend that they have been given guidelines as to how to get children to remove them. . . which seems odd. He thinks my daughters school will be sensible though (he works there). . he's not so sure about his daughters school.

Hopefully this is about teaching kids to remove the masks safely for those times when they need to remove them, like lunchtime. There are safe and less safe ways to do that - handling the strings rather than the mask, and trying not to touch your face too much as you do it - and for reusable masks they probably need reminding not to put the mask on someone else's desk, that sort of thing.
 
This is an interesting read on the situation in Spain, this in particular caught my eye.



A fair few positives there, 75% having no symptoms, resulting in only 3% ending-up in hospital, and a lower death rate.

Someone posted a link the other day to a report saying the virus had mutated into a more mild state, and this does seem to back that up.


I recommend augmenting it with this:


Partly because it puts their current hospitalisation rate in context, and gives more info about the ages of people testing positive:

Simón also had some positive messages on Thursday, reporting that the “cases are different” from those seen in March, when the crisis took hold. “They are very young, with an average age among women of 39 and in men of 37. At the peak of the epidemic it was 62 or 63, and two months ago it was 53.”

He added that many asymptomatic and mild cases were being detected, meaning that the “hospitalization rates are low.” These are, he explained, “currently around 4%, well below the 55% or more that was seen during the peak of the pandemic.”

The fact they had a 55% hospitalisation rate during their peek is evidence of how woeful the detection of cases overall was back then. As I have explained in other posts today, this is the sort of thing I would reach for as the explanation of first resort at this stage in the pandemic stuff, not stuff about it mutating to a milder form. Because it is still far more likely to be our behaviours and the social mixing patterns of different age groups in different settings, along with our view of outbreaks, and our perceptions of the virus and its burden on humanity that have been changing most in this period, not the virus itself or what it is capable of doing to people. And as I've said before, aside from very compelling evidence arriving in a form I cannot ignore, it will not be possible for me to strongly consider changes to the virus itself until I have seen various countries cope with a big chunk of the coming winter.

This next quote sounds like something I've said in recent weeks, usually in response to people who dont understand the current concerns or why governments feel the need to act so far in advance of levels of infection reaching anything even remotely close to those that would be expected to lead to the high death rates, to the level of death that people take seriously.

With a tone that contrasted with his usual calm approach, Simón made clear that “there continues to be transmission [of the virus] and every day there is more.” He warned that “if we continue to allow this to rise, even if the cases are mild, we will end up with many people in the hospital, many admitted in intensive care and many dead.”

I dont think the BBC article did the current situation in Spain justice because they arent attempting to describe the hospital situation beyond the obvious comparison to how bad it was at the peak. But at this stage that comparison is of little interest to me, its just like UK hospital data, I am looking for rises and their speed, I'm not going to ignore these numbers just because they are so much lower than the first peak. And so we have this from the El Pais article:

The number of people hospitalized in the last seven days now stands at 1,407, nearly double the figure for a week ago, while the number of new intensive care unit admissions has grown at the same speed, with 90 new patients.

I will attempt to monitor their hospital situation closely from now on, if I can find the right data sources. I am happy to talk about Spain on any thread where it comes up in conversation, but if I end up wanting to post data updates that are not in the context of a bit of conversation, I think I will resurrect the threat about Spain that I think exists in the earlier history of this subforum.
 
Plus the Spanish version of that article from their site which I translated with my browser offers additional numbers, and gives me clues about what sort of hospital data is available again in Spain for me to monitor:


Health offers since Thursday a new block of data on the number of hospitalizations , discharges and admissions to the ICU, although the novelty of the figures does not allow for now to capture their evolution. The data does say that there are now 4,703 people hospitalized, of which 541 are in the ICU and 765 were admitted on Thursday. The health system has 4.4% of beds occupied by coronavirus patients, one tenth more than the previous day.
 
OK that hospital data is in the usual report.

So this is the latest, from page 3 of https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesiona...ina/documentos/Actualizacion_190_COVID-19.pdf

Screenshot 2020-08-21 at 23.10.05.png

So I will attempt to track this over time.

Anyone else who wants to look at this over time can find the latest document via the link on this site that is labelled like 'Actualización nº190: enfermedad por SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) 21.08.2020'

 
OK that hospital data is in the usual report.

So this is the latest, from page 3 of https://www.mscbs.gob.es/profesiona...ina/documentos/Actualizacion_190_COVID-19.pdf

View attachment 227462

So I will attempt to track this over time.

Anyone else who wants to look at this over time can find the latest document via the link on this site that is labelled like 'Actualización nº190: enfermedad por SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) 21.08.2020'


Does that table say 13% of beds in aragon occupied with covid patients? Unless I have misunderstood it?
 
Does that table say 13% of beds in aragon occupied with covid patients? Unless I have misunderstood it?

As far as I know. I dont speak Spanish, I am reliant on computer translation.

Anyway I found graphs of some data over time in their weekly report rather than the daily one, so I can finish my look at this aspect for now.


Screenshot 2020-08-21 at 23.30.37.png

Ignore the droop at the end, I think it is always there every week due to reporting delays etc. For example if I look at the report from 2 weeks earlier (report no. 38) those graphs look like this:

Screenshot 2020-08-21 at 23.33.38.png
 
Back
Top Bottom