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Forums - General Discussion - Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

Mnementh on 10 April 2020
haxxiy said:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-antibody-test-in-german-town-shows-15-per-cent-infection-rate-0-4pc-death-rate

Another antibody + antigen test from the town of Gangelt, in Germany. 1,000 people from 400 households. 2% currently infected, 14% tested positive for the antibodies. That's three times whad had originally been expected. Estimated TFR from finished cases was 0.37%, but no information about ages was given.

On the other hand, a study from China claims 6% of positive antibody tests had results that were difficult to confirm. This means either that a small percentage of the population might not have built a decent degree of immunity even after infection, or perhaps the test itself wasn't as sophisticated as it would've been necessary. Another possibility is that, at least for some people, the antibodies take more time to build up (a common feature of immunosenescence and some diseases).

This Gangelt study is getting real critic from other medical scientist. A main problem seems to be, that it can't really differentiate between antibodies against different Coronaviruses. As other more harmless Coronaviruses are causing common cold (not the flu, that is not a Coronavirus at all), it might have been these people had a common cold and antibodies against that, but still not against COVID-19. The study didn't take that into account.

EDIT: source in german https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/heinsberg-studie-herdenimmunitaet-kritik-1.4873480

Last edited by Mnementh - on 10 April 2020

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JRPGfan on 10 April 2020

UK had +8,681 cases today (this is because they added some "key workers" tested) otherwise it would have only been +5,195 (so far).

Thats still up from ~4400 or so yesterday.
(granted it swings from like 3900-5900 depending on how many they test, daily).

Is it just me, or does it feel like the UK isnt yet peaked? it still seems to be growing there.


France, Turkey, Belgium, Russia, ireland, portugal.... still seeing slight growth.
Hopefully europe soon beats this thing.

Last edited by JRPGfan - on 10 April 2020

JRPGfan on 10 April 2020
John2290 said:
100k deaths now, in 4 weeks or so it'll likely be approaching one million if not more, however we won't have accurate numbers unless the WHO are planing testing in poorer countries and if India can't get their testing up, we'll likely get estimates weeks after the fact when the annual deaths are super imposed onto years prior, we won't get that on World meters or the large number of people who are living hand to mouth who are going to die from the half assed and forceful measures or the riots, the suicides etc in the same way we don't get the numbers here of the poor sods who gambled at home and turned suddenly into acute illness That's another thing, I'm so surprised immigrated doctors havn't started returning to their home countries en mass, luckily in Ireland we havn't had them up and leave so far.

You think it goes that high in just 4 weeks? (x10 of current number?)

US might hit 500k confirmed cases too.



Barozi on 10 April 2020
JRPGfan said:

UK had +8,681 cases today (this is because they added some "key workers" tested) otherwise it would have only been +5,195 (so far).

Thats still up from ~4400 or so yesterday.
(granted it swings from like 3900-5900 depending on how many they test, daily).

Is it just me, or does it feel like the UK isnt yet peaked? it still seems to be growing there.


France, Turkey, Belgium, Russia, ireland, portugal.... still seeing slight growth.
Hopefully europe soon beats this thing.

UK did more tests today (~19% more) so higher amount of cases shouldn't be unexpected.

However, testing capacity is still pretty low and the ratio for positive outcomes is quite high (~27%).



haxxiy on 10 April 2020
Mnementh said:
haxxiy said:

This Gangelt study is getting real critic from other medical scientist. A main problem seems to be, that it can't really differentiate between antibodies against different Coronaviruses. As other more harmless Coronaviruses are causing common cold (not the flu, that is not a Coronavirus at all), it might have been these people had a common cold and antibodies against that, but still not against COVID-19. The study didn't take that into account.

EDIT: source in german https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/heinsberg-studie-herdenimmunitaet-kritik-1.4873480

Antibodies target a single antigen, and these tests are done with Covid-19 antigens to see if there's an immune response. While it's technically right to assume closely related viruses could elicit the same immune response due to cross-reactive immunity, it does also mean that whatever is in these people's blood has specifically reacted to Covid-19 antigens and would (very likely) neutralize the virus.

Not to mention that an alternative explanation would be needed for the antigen tests, as to why this specific sample in time is 20 times more infected than the average for German population since the beginning of the epidemic, three weeks into a soft lockdown. Also an alternative explanation concerning why a disease that the average adult has ikely faced dozens of times in their lifetime - as it would be a  common cold caused by one of the endemic coronavirus variants - hasn't preliminarly left antibodies in more than 15% of the population, a month after winter.

Of course, in any case more data is still needed before any extrapolation, but there's nothing indicating that the (as highly capacitated or more as the man criticizing it) people behind this study are dabbling in pseudoscience.



 

 

 

 

 

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Lafiel on 10 April 2020
haxxiy said:
Mnementh said:

This Gangelt study is getting real critic from other medical scientist. A main problem seems to be, that it can't really differentiate between antibodies against different Coronaviruses. As other more harmless Coronaviruses are causing common cold (not the flu, that is not a Coronavirus at all), it might have been these people had a common cold and antibodies against that, but still not against COVID-19. The study didn't take that into account.

EDIT: source in german https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/heinsberg-studie-herdenimmunitaet-kritik-1.4873480

Antibodies target a single antigen, and these tests are done with Covid-19 antigens to see if there's an immune response. While it's technically right to assume closely related viruses could elicit the same immune response due to cross-reactive immunity, it does also mean that whatever is in these people's blood has specifically reacted to Covid-19 antigens and would (very likely) neutralize the virus.

From what I read a lot of antibodies unfortunately have little effect on virus activity, if they bind too losely/don't bind to the specific antigen (hull structure) that is related to a viruses reproduction. Scientists think for SARS-CoV-2 the antigen that allows it to use the ACE2 receptor to invade cells is the crucial one, so it's possible only antibodies for this one grant a strong immunity.

Every virus has a multitude of different hull structures, so it's possible the study in question used an antigen which is not uncommon in the other corona viruses.

Last edited by Lafiel - on 10 April 2020

haxxiy on 10 April 2020
Lafiel said:
haxxiy said:

Antibodies target a single antigen, and these tests are done with Covid-19 antigens to see if there's an immune response. While it's technically right to assume closely related viruses could elicit the same immune response due to cross-reactive immunity, it does also mean that whatever is in these people's blood has specifically reacted to Covid-19 antigens and would (very likely) neutralize the virus.

From what I read a lot of antibodies unfortunately have little effect on virus activity, if they bind too losely/don't bind to the specific antigen (hull structure) that is related to a viruses reproduction. Scientists think for SARS-CoV-2 the antigen that allows it to use the ACE2 receptor to invade cells is the crucial one, so it's possible only antibodies for this one grant a strong immunity.

Every virus has a multitude of different hull structures, so it's possible the study in question used an antigen which is not uncommon in the other corona viruses.

You are not wrong, but antigens are also incredibly specific. Small genetic variations drastically change how proteins fold on themselves, and loose bindings won't make through the end of the test, as there are 'sievings' to do away with these. Unless there's strong evidence to systematic errors in the samples, substrate, enzymes etc. that were used, I'm going to assume the standards of good scientific practice were followed.



 

 

 

 

 

SvennoJ on 10 April 2020
JRPGfan said:
John2290 said:
100k deaths now, in 4 weeks or so it'll likely be approaching one million if not more, however we won't have accurate numbers unless the WHO are planing testing in poorer countries and if India can't get their testing up, we'll likely get estimates weeks after the fact when the annual deaths are super imposed onto years prior, we won't get that on World meters or the large number of people who are living hand to mouth who are going to die from the half assed and forceful measures or the riots, the suicides etc in the same way we don't get the numbers here of the poor sods who gambled at home and turned suddenly into acute illness That's another thing, I'm so surprised immigrated doctors havn't started returning to their home countries en mass, luckily in Ireland we havn't had them up and leave so far.

You think it goes that high in just 4 weeks? (x10 of current number?)

US might hit 500k confirmed cases too.

Without social distancing, closing down schools etc, the normal rate for this virus is about x10 every 15 days. x100 in a month.
On average every infected person infects 2.2 other people after 5.2 days. 10.4 days = 4.84 infected. 15.6 days = 10.648 infected, and so on.
4 weeks is x70.25 the current number to be exact.



SvennoJ on 10 April 2020

Hmm, somethings up with the site I've been using to track European numbers, they have started revising numbers downwards....
https://interaktiv.morgenpost.de/corona-virus-karte-infektionen-deutschland-weltweit/

It still matches up until April 3rd then:
April 4th 637.2K changed to 615.8K
April 5th 672.1K changed to 649.7K
April 6th 701.1K changed to 679.2K
April 7th 742.9K changed to 712.1K
April 8th 780.2K changed to 749.4K
April 9th 817.7K changed to 786.2K

April 10th is showing 829.8K yet current tally (running total for tomorrow) is at 742.5K

WorldInfoMeter (which does not include Turkey) shows Europe at 820.1K (Turkey is at 47K)

Yesterday Turkey was at 42.3K, Europe at 778.9K on WorldInfoMeter, together 821.2K which is close to what I had from the German site for yesterday (rolls over 4 hours or so before worldinfometer), and the German site new numbers seem to be the old minus Turkey. I guess Turkey is getting thrown out of the European union...

It also looks like France, UK, Portugal and Ireland have now chosen to add old numbers or change their reporting, together adding an extra 8K cases to Europe today.

1515 new cases and 24 new deaths in Ireland. The government has announced that the figure for new cases today includes test results which had been sent to Germany for testing.

NOTE: UK Government: "Today’s figures for positive tests have been adjusted to include positive case results from swab testing for key workers and their households (pillar 2). These will be included in the daily figures from today, 10 April. If these results were excluded from the figures, as they have been previously, the daily increase in the number of people who tested positive would have been 5,195.

Last edited by SvennoJ - on 10 April 2020

Nighthawk117 on 10 April 2020

Ok, as we await SpokenTruth's daily update...I crunched some numbers for the USA....(rounding them off)

Covid-19:
Total Cases: 500,000
Total Deaths: 20,000
Death rate: 4%

Common Flu (each year):
Likely Cases: 25,000,000
Likely Deaths: 25,000
Death rate: .001%

So, Covid-19 kills vastly more than the common flu. We don't shut down our economy because of the common flu.
Covid-19 is scary shit.