Continuing coronavirus happenings (Part 1)

general topics
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(Especially @anon29537550, have a look at this.)

@all:
That’s a meta-analysis. They included 66 studies in their analysis in regard to asymptomatic cases, 20 studies in the analysis for the Secondary Attack Rate, 18 in the analysis of the Serial Interval. Results look robust to me on a first assessment.

Bottom line takeaway: This basically confirms most of the stuff we already know.

One important detail takeaway: this meta-analysis estimates, across studies from very different settings across the globe, an overall percentage of 8.4% of asymptomatic cases. That, sadly, fits the results we so far got from larger antibody studies (to the best of my knowledge).

To translate into understandable numbers (and I know this is much more complicated, so please don’t anyone start arguing about my take, ok?): if we know that about 90 people in our town have been sick with Covid-19 during the last months, we could very roughly estimate that about 100 actually had it. Not much more. Very rough hot take: even if all of them survived, there is a long, long way to herd immunity.

Another finding: from the moment someone gets symptoms, we have about 2.8 days to put all of their contacts into quarantine. Full quarantine, that is. Otherwise, we will have secondary infections, and the chain of infections goes on. (Just FTR, that also old news.) Takeaway: If we want to get rid of local clusters, we will have to do massive contact tracing efforts.

Data on children isn’t good, they do report findings but I would be very cautious with that, hence I don’t repeat those here.

Looking at the methods, I don’t find any strong flaws. Disclaimer: while I took part in meta-analysis research, this is not my specialty, and I just browsed this paper. I have some grievances, some of which can be overcome while others are inherent (i.e., I can’t really claim I see no publication bias, so I expect publication bias - but then, this part is generally difficult, and we are talking about so vastly different circumstances in the statistical and human populations here that I feel you can’t do perfect here). I expect this study to be published research, maybe even fast-tracked. As usual, I have the feeling some editing for getting rid of any potential ambiguity of language would be great.

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I agree with your take, esp that there is no earth-shattering revelation here. The (relatively) low rate of asymptomatic infection, supported by antibody studies in several countries, speaks to a very large still-vulnerable population. Lots of dry tinder just waiting for the re-opening. Really wish we had better data on kids. I am tired of telling parents that we still don’t know.

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It isn’t clear from the story whether they knew they had C19 before they traveled to Estonia. However, I’m curious about this. The infection rate of the disease in Finland is at around 0.8 at this point, that means that the odds of any one traveler having it is very low. But here we have 10 business travelers who were infected! This should be a ridiculously low-probability event, unless businesspeople in Finland are infectious at a much higher rate than the population at large.

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It still doesn’t say whether they were already infected before entering Estonia, though this article does make it sound that they were Estonians returning from Finland and not Finns. Either way, unless the amount of travel between Finland and Estonia is higher than I imagine it, it seems high for people traveling from one low-infection country to another.
Also: three from Sweden? Does Estonia still have quarantine-free travel from Sweden? That sounds…reckless.

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“ “Various extremist groups have played their part in making this anti-Semitism socially acceptable,” Knobloch said in a statement. “Above all, the so-called Alternative for Germany.”

She said the coronavirus pandemic has created a new platform for anti-Semitism, and called on authorities to crack down on conspiracy theories being spread over the internet.”

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There’s about 100 000 Estonians working in Finland. Normally tens of thousands of them regularly travel between Estonia and Finland.

According to Eckerö Line and Tallink Silja their ferries have had at most about 400-500 passengers. I think ferries are running daily.

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Wow. That’s more than I’d imagined. I suppose closing the border would have been a real hardship for the Estonian economy.

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Border was closed on March 22 and opened on May 14.

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Just short PSA in regard to that: meta-analysis isn’t for revelations, but to find out how confident we can be in the results so far, so: weighing evidence. You could call it a “quantitative review” or “statistical review”. If there are bogus results, or even a bogus scientific consensus not backed by actual data, a meta-analysis would show. As in this case, it is a confirmatory overall analysis of results of independent studies in independent populations.

This study basically says: yeah, well, the recommendations so far seem to be exactly right.

If I may paraphrase from my POV:
Testing: do not only test symptomatic cases! Test early, test as many as possible.
Contact tracing: tracing everything, and very fast, is very important in early stages of outbreaks, i.e. in populations which still have distinct clusters of outbreaks with low background infections taking place. Later, concentrate on hotspots and especially on vulnerable sub-populations.

Quarantines and shutdowns: quarantine all outbreaks fast and promptly, and in case of local infectious events, shut down workplaces, hotels, residential complexes, and other settings were people gather, especially indoors. Very importantly, there are differences in the secondary attack rate which help to tell officials what is really important to shut down, and OTH where people are a little less likely to be infected.

Germany is basically testing that, by the way.

And very much including children in that, in a way: schools are opening, with rotating groups of children in reduced class sizes, for a limited amount of time sind the summer holidays are basically at our doorstep.

It may well be that in two months time, we will have some more data on how the measures taken work for children. In a worst case scenario, we will have more knowledge how important children are in transmitting the virus. In a even worser than worst case scenario (please forgive the grammar), we will have more data on if children are more affected than we thought.

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Schools have been open for a couple of weeks in Norway as well, but in ways that would probably not work in the US. For example, a student who willingly violates isolation protocols can be expelled, and whole classes are being quarantined when students turn up with symptoms.

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Same here. Regulations vary depending on where you are, however. Locally implemented, on Gesundheitsamt level (city/community). School shutdowns after a case happen. Teachers are the important bit here, as we already know an infected adult is definitely spreading the infection. There are scientists presenting evidence that children will spread the infection, and others presenting contradictory studies. The media, again, gives that debate a form in which ongoing science should not be debated. This sucks no end, since it is endangering lives. Media should really stop pitching this shit in the way they do. The Springer press is especially poisonous.

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Article about TinFoil TikTok

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I figured that this would be on the front of the BBS today.

Disneyphile are the BoingBoing. :slight_smile:

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The most infectious place on Earth!

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Legoland Florida will reopen Monday.

Brickheads.

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First the lie.
Then the censorship.
Fuck.

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