Posted on 03/29/2020 5:45:18 PM PDT by Mr Rogers
"But what might authorities learn if people were tested randomly instead? Some early clues may be found in the tiny country of Iceland. So far, the country has tested 11,727 people—about 3.2% of its population of 364,000....
By screening healthy as well as sick people, say scientists, Iceland and deCODE have assembled a far more accurate picture of COVID-19. And the results are sobering. “The virus had a much, much wider spread in the community than we would have assumed, based on the screening of high-risk people,” deCODE’s founder and CEO Kári Stefánsson told Fortune by phone from his office in Reykjavík on Wednesday. As of Thursday, 737 have tested positive, or roughly 6.3% of all people tested in the country. Of those, 15 are in hospitals, two of them in intensive care....
DeCODE’s model stands in sharp contrast to that of the U.S. and most countries in Europe, where only those who show clear signs of infection have been tested for the coronavirus.
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
https://www.covid.is/data
6.6% tested positive. 2.5% of positive cases have needed hospitalization. 0.2% have died.
"Early results from deCode Genetics indicate that a low proportion of the general population has contracted the virus and that about half of those who tested positive are non-symptomatic,” said Guðnason. “The other half displays very moderate cold-like symptoms."...
In the small northern Italian town of Vo, one of the communities where the outbreak first emerged, the entire population of 3,300 people was tested — 3% of residents tested positive, and of these, the majority had no symptoms, researchers said.
The population was tested again after a two-week lockdown and isolation. Researchers found that transmission was reduced by 90% and all those still positive were without symptoms and could remain quarantined...."
https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-testing-iceland
I'm not a doctor, nurse or statistician. Just thought this was interesting.
We’ve tested more than their entire population x 3. Besides how many people travel to and from Iceland? Of course they are going to have few cases.
This data will help model the disease. From this data, multiplying hospitalized cases by 40 gives a rough estimate of the true number of infections. Half of those having no idea, just walking around shedding viral load.
The point is the percentages. What they are seeing is a vastly larger denominator WHEN YOU TEST PEOPLE WITHOUT SYMPTOMS! They have tested roughly 5% of their entire population. Over 6% of those tested already have it - and yet only 2.5% of those cases are sick enough to need hospitalization. That suggests the virus is not nearly as deadly as we think.
If I’m missing something, I’ll love to hear why this is not good news. If half of the people have no symptoms at all, then our denominator for calculating death rates would cut our death rate in half - because we only test the half showing symptoms.
People were selected for testing after filling out a form requesting the test. Is this really random testing? Also, where is the data regarding how many tested positive without symptoms?
It’s the asymptomatic carriers who spread it the most.
Greenland isn’t exactly a major tourist destination, but even they managed to find 10 cases.
Perhaps Bjork is protecting Iceland with her voice (See also “Puberty Love” in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes)
Help me out here. I keep getting Fortune and Forbes magazine mixed up. Which is the worst? The reason I ask is that on my Google news feed recently I have been seeing really outrageously biased stories that are from Forbes Magazine.
We already know a lot of people have it and have not and will not, or choose not to be tested. All I wrote was Iceland is too small and isolated country to give us anything definitive...We should randomly test 10,000 here and see where we are at...I don’t care about Iceland.
So don't discount stats coming out of Iceland on that account. I don't vouch for these numbers but don't see anything wrong with them either.
random testing is a good idea -- it is just hard to organize and justify in the midst of a rush of real cases.
Iceland’s total population is about the same as Atlanta city. Easy to test if you don’t have all that many people. Just give the virus some hakarl - that will get rid of anything
The per capita is only higher because we have tested very few people. The whole point of this story is that far more people are infected in the USA than what official figures show. And also that the mortality and hospitalization rates are far lower...
It is good but it is not news.
All along we have known that:
MOST people have been exposed.
SOME people who have been exposed have symptoms.
MANY people who have symptoms have mild cases.
A FEW people who have symptoms—mostly with underlying conditions—get really sick.
And of them, some die.
This is NOT the Bubonic plague.
We have crashed the world economy for seasonal sniffle.
“It’s the asymptomatic carriers who spread it the most.”
Not according to the CDC & WHO. FWIW.
“Is this really random testing?”
No, but it is the only place I’ve heard of where someone showing no symptoms can ask for a test and get one.
The same WHO that incorrectly incorrectly tells us it’s not airborne and incorrectly tells us 6 feet is enough social distance? Those folks?
“But a new analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US has found that viral droplets expelled in coughs and sneezes can travel in a moist, warm atmosphere at speeds of 10-30 metres (33ft-100ft) per second, creating a cloud that can span approximately 7-8 metres (23ft-27ft).
The researchers also warn that droplets can stay suspended in the air for hours, moving along airflow patterns imposed by ventilation or climate-control systems. Virus particles have already been found in the ventilation systems of hospital rooms of patients with coronavirus, which the team believes could have been carried on “turbulent clouds” of air.”
https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/two-metres-not-enough-when-social-distancing-39083182.html
MIT study reference in above article:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763852
The same CDC who lied to us and said masks don’t work for us normal folks but only work for medical professionals? That CDC?
Why wear a mask? It works. If you do get some particles you will probably get a lower viral dose. Czech folks proved it. March 13th
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-czech-masks/from-former-first-lady-to-boy-scouts-czechs-ramp-up-home-mask-production-idUSKBN2152PM
Two weeks later at almost 100% mask wearing:
Two weeks later. Government takes credit but it was the people of the country behind it. “In South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan there is no lock-down. Yet COVID-19 is being controlled in these countries. How has this happened? One of the key reasons is that mask-wearing in public is ubiquitous and socially expected,” Howard said.”
https://www.praguemorning.cz/usage-of-masks-flattened-growth-of-coronavirus-cases-in-czech-republic/
>>We should randomly test 10,000 here and see where we are at...I don’t care about Iceland.<<
That still won’t give us the data we really need because the test only picks up current infections. It misses counting people who didn’t get tested when they were sick and had already recovered. That number could be small (if the virus sends most people to the hospital) or very large (if the virus is just shrugged off by the majority of people it infects.)
We just don’t know, and we won’t know until we start doing antibody testing of large numbers of people. Then, and only then, will we know what percentage have had it, what percentage of those get hospitalized, and what percentage die without an effective treatment. (Hopefully, we are well on the way to determining an effective treatment, but that’s a separate issue.)
>>All along we have known that:
MOST people have been exposed.<<
First I’ve heard anyone say that. Got any evidence for your assertion?
In Italy, maybe, but here in the U.S.? Evidence?
Just how are people without symptoms - no sneezing, no coughing - supposed to propel the virus through the air 6, 12, 24 feet?
I’m not buying everyone’s worst case scenarios. Even a virus needs some means of getting from A to B.
“Just how are people without symptoms - no sneezing, no coughing - supposed to propel the virus through the air 6, 12, 24 feet?”
Watch someone smoking a cigarette. Then get back to me.
L
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