I couldn’t figure out from the article what exactly they were doing; they said asymptomatic “cases” as if they were people who tested positive, but didn’t have symptoms; but I figured every person on board would be quarantined.
It appears, although we do not know, that the infection started with a number of crew members, one or more who apparently picked it up from a previous cruise.
Only 2 passengers so far have tested positive, but we’ll know more in 3 days as they are going to test every person.
This will be a great test case for how easy the virus spreads. We know that cruise ships are one of the worser-case scenarios (poorly run and sanitized senior centers seem to be worst-case).
The numbers from the Diamond Princess are “encouraging”. They tested virtually everybody (4061 tests). Of that number, 705 tested positive, or about 17%. IN a bad-case scenario, where nobody knew what was happening at the start, they had 17% spread, even when there were hundreds of people to spread it.
More interestingly, of that number, it appears 400+ were asymptomatic, which means they would not have been tested if not for being on the ship. Seven have died so far.
so, without full testing, you would have thought that about 300 people had it, and 7 of those died, for 2.3% death rate.
But with 700 tested positive, the death rate is 0.99%.
On this new cruise ship, with better insight and better quarantine methods, we had 21 cases so far out of 4000 people. Once we have full testing, we’ll know how much it spread, and that can give us better clues as to how “viral” this virus actually is, amongst a tightly packed crowd of people, some of whom are being careful about germs.
asymptomatic would be no fever, no cough, no positive test
the American citizens will be distributed to the various bases. Any that develop symptoms will likely go to Omaha for the Gilead trial or into local hospitals for treatment same as they did with the DP peeps
as for the other 53 countries, Canada will likely airlift the Canadians and any brits. Who knows about the rest? (why 53 countries’ citizens would be launching from SFO is a question for another day)
I looked at the numbers in Farmer’s post #1134
Just anecdotally, the ‘carrier’ rate and Asymptomatic rate in:
children up to age 10 was 1 in 16 (6%), 1 AS
in 10-19 teens, 5 in 23 (22%), 3 AS
in 20somethings 28 in 347 (8%), 3 AS
and in 30somethings 34 in 428 (8%), 7 AS
in 40somethings 27 in 334 (8%), 8 AS
in 50somethings 59 in 398 (15%), 31 AS
in 60somethings 177 in 923 (19%), 101 AS
in 70somethings 234 in 1015 (23%), 139 AS
in 80somethings 52 in 216 (25%), 25 AS
and in over 90, 2 in 11 (18%) 0 AS
with only a very small section of children below 10, is it feasible at all to say that the elderly are the most likely to be asymptomatic carriers until they crash, and the 10-19 age group are the most likely to be symptomatic carriers who don’t crash? But, how did the conditions on the boat, no red zone set up for instance, no crew testing, affect the percentages? Is the data garbage or useable?