Re: Covid19 and triathlon [hubcaps] [ In reply to ]

Mar 7, 20 23:16

Post #126 of 147 (3767 views)

I'm personally not too concerned, but I am concerned about my kids and my asthmatic wife. I'm also concerned about my aged parents. Why wouldn't I be?

82,000 at Twickenham with zero precautions in sight? No temperature checks, no face masks, no sanitizer? I'm guessing, but there were more likely than not to have been a handful of sick people in the crowd, who maybe masked their symptoms with panadol and the like? Sick with this virus? Who knows? But they don't know either and given the lack of face masks, if they had it, others will have it too no doubt.

My race site: https://racesandplaces.wixsite.com/racesandplaces

Last edited by: Jigsy: Mar 7, 20 23:34

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Jigsy] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 9:27

Post #127 of 147 (3561 views)

Face masks are pointless for those who are healthy and potentially harmful. When I see a patient that requires droplet or airborne, I wash my hands, see the patient, wash my hands and remove the mask. It's single use. If you touch a contaminated surface and touch the mask, guess what? The mask is harboring the virus and even closer to your face now.

Temperature screening is meaningless too. Dr. Jay Butler, CDC deputy director of infectious disease, said this past week that >50K people have been screened at airports and guess how many have been identified? 1. He called this method draconian. Also from early epidemiological studies from China, fevers are possibly a later sign. A significant amount of people are having fevers 1 week after contracting COVID.

No need to worry about your kids unless they have underlying health issues. There is zero data to suggest this is worse for them than other cold or flu viruses. For your wife, it depends on the severity of her asthma (this is just speculation on my part but I suspect RSV, a common cold virus, would be worse for her. it wreaks havoc on those with lung disease).

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [blueapplepaste] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 16:58

Post #128 of 147 (3405 views)

blueapplepaste wrote:

el gato wrote:

The mortality rate of the Covid-19 virus is significantly higher than the flu. In absolute numbers, more people die of the flu each year, but when looking at deaths across the infected population there's a big difference. Other differences include the fact that there are both vaccine and treatment options available for he flu (of which there are currently neither for Covid-19) and there appears to be data suggesting that Covid-19 is transmittable long before symptoms appear.

I’m not sure we can say significantly higher. It appears to have death rate of ~2%. But it’s also becoming clear numerous people are being infected and remain asymptomatic.

So cases are likely highly underreported and the death rate is likely to fall as we get better information.

That being said - it’ll likely be higher than the typical flu.

But it’s also not going to wipe out half the world like too many seem to think.

Exactly. Right now things are so over hyped it's ridiculous. To calculate the death rate you need 2 numbers, total infected and total dead. They don't even remotely know how many people were infected and never sought medical treatment, let alone were tested. The current estimate of 2% is way too hight.

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Jigsy] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 17:32

Post #129 of 147 (3365 views)

Jigsy wrote:

I'm personally not too concerned, but I am concerned about my kids and my asthmatic wife. I'm also concerned about my aged parents. Why wouldn't I be?

Ditto! My parents are 83 and 85 and I'm highly concerned that the virus would kill them if they caught it. We live in Florida and I'm hoping hot humid weather will show up soon and stop the spread.

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [HuffNPuff] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 17:43

Post #130 of 147 (3347 views)

HuffNPuff wrote:

Jigsy wrote:

I'm personally not too concerned, but I am concerned about my kids and my asthmatic wife. I'm also concerned about my aged parents. Why wouldn't I be?

Ditto! My parents are 83 and 85 and I'm highly concerned that the virus would kill them if they caught it. We live in Florida and I'm hoping hot humid weather will show up soon and stop the spread.

Exactly. This is where the comparison with Flu breaks down, my parents have had a Flu shot this year. Compound that with the idea that it could be me that passes it to them. So, yep, I'm going to be careful.

With respect to some other opinions here. Why don't we stop second guessing expert medical opinion? The world is in a weird state at the moment where orthodox medical opinion isn't as valued as it should be.

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [mcmetal] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 17:47

Post #131 of 147 (3341 views)

To calculate the death rate you need 2 numbers, total infected and total dead. //

I'm not sure that's how they do it. We can never really know how many are infected, especially since so many have mild to no symptoms with this one. The number we can get, is the number that go to a hospital and seek treatment, or to see a doctor, and eventually get an actual test. Since there has been no testing up til now, gonna be pretty hard to know that number infected. Going forward with lots of tests, we will get a picture of what probably happened in these first months, then an extrapolation of hospitalizations. I know I have had the flu many times in my life, never once went to a doctor for it, so was never counted in stats. I suppose they could model folks like me, figure out how many per hospitalization, and then use a multiplier for an actual infection rate.

But like I said, it looks like this one is either really bad, or a nothing burger, with some in-between. But for sure the death rate is much, much lower than advertised right now, and we will see that % going down with every 100k tests that come on line..

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [monty] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:11

Post #132 of 147 (3297 views)

I don't think the death rate is lower than advertised; looking at Italy the number of diagnosed with covid-19 (7375) vs death from covid-19 (366) puts the death toll at exactly 5%. That is much higher than earlier numbers suggested. The US has 544 confirmed cases and 21 deaths which makes it 4% so not that different.

There could be more undiagnosed cases that not result in deaths just like there can be covid-19 deaths that may be attributed to something else too. In any case, the available numbers suggest a much more dangerous virus than influenza once you've got it.

https://www.usatoday.com/...-oakland/4953496002/

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Benv] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:16

Post #133 of 147 (3281 views)

And in South Korea the death rate is .6%. You know why, because they are testing a lot more people than anywhere else. They are the closest we have as a real number, certainly the ones you mentioned and the US are not anywhere near the efficiency of South Korea in this regard. Unless you have some other explanation that shows they just tolerate it better as a people, I will go with the easily identifiable testing protocol they are using..

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [monty] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:22

Post #134 of 147 (3255 views)

Someone mentioned earlier, the Diamond Princess. Maybe it's a good model to work with?

3,500 aboard, all tested.
696 positive and 7 deaths.

That's 20% infection rate (from possible exposure) and 1% death rate from those infected. But 0.2% deaths from total exposure.

My race site: https://racesandplaces.wixsite.com/racesandplaces

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Benv] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:25

Post #135 of 147 (3242 views)

I really don't think most (I say most because some brilliant people are always on ST) of us are actually qualified to make any sensible statement about this kind of figure. What you are comparing is confirmed cases vs number of people died so far. As others have said there will be unreported infections. But the other point is that the number of infections goes up pretty fast and, I hate putting a human tragedy in a mathematical way, deaths will lag detection. Have no more infections and deaths will still go up.

And there will be other subtleties to the figures that I haven't thought of. The point is the people who are coming up with the estimate have thought of those subtleties. They are using expert knowledge, using the closest comparable and well understood infections as a basis for a model and adjusting based on info as they learn more about this virus. Any virus will generally mutate over time and generally become less lethal and more infectious. So any rate now will likely be different to the rate after some time.

I'm not saying it's higher, lower or accurate. What I'm saying is what do you really think you (by this I mean any of us) know that the people who came up with the figure hasn't thought of?

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [monty] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:28

Post #136 of 147 (3230 views)

monty wrote:

And in South Korea the death rate is .6%. You know why, because they are testing a lot more people than anywhere else. They are the closest we have as a real number, certainly the ones you mentioned and the US are not anywhere near the efficiency of South Korea in this regard. Unless you have some other explanation that shows they just tolerate it better as a people, I will go with the easily identifiable testing protocol they are using..

This is another moment where us, non-experts, are picking and choosing the data that fits our theories and ignoring what doesn't fit, because we read an article or a meme or wikipedia and are now experts who know it better than the scientific community in this field. There is way too much speculation out there right now, it doesn't help anyone if non-experts are going to guess too. Some numbers are known and some are guessed, huge difference in terms of validity imho.

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Jigsy] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:29

Post #137 of 147 (3229 views)

Jigsy wrote:

Someone mentioned earlier, the Diamond Princess. Maybe it's a good model to work with?

3,500 aboard, all tested.
696 positive and 7 deaths.

That's 20% infection rate (from possible exposure) and 1% death rate from those infected. But 0.2% deaths from total exposure.

YA that would be a great place to start, then adjust for the obvious aged population of a cruise ship as compared to the general population, and you would have a pretty good number..

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [OddSlug] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:33

Post #138 of 147 (3220 views)

OddSlug wrote:

I really don't think most (I say most because some brilliant people are always on ST) of us are actually qualified to make any sensible statement about this kind of figure. What you are comparing is confirmed cases vs number of people died so far. As others have said there will be unreported infections. But the other point is that the number of infections goes up pretty fast and, I hate putting a human tragedy in a mathematical way, deaths will lag detection. Have no more infections and deaths will still go up.

And there will be other subtleties to the figures that I haven't thought of. The point is the people who are coming up with the estimate have thought of those subtleties. They are using expert knowledge, using the closest comparable and well understood infections as a basis for a model and adjusting based on info as they learn more about this virus. Any virus will generally mutate over time and generally become less lethal and more infectious. So any rate now will likely be different to the rate after some time.

I'm not saying it's higher, lower or accurate. What I'm saying is what do you really think you (by this I mean any of us) know that the people who came up with the figure hasn't thought of?

For the most part I agree - we are not the experts at all. But in my scientific field experts don't agree on many things either, there are always leading theories that other equally qualified experts don't agree with. Meaning while the data is limited there can be various estimates from experts, who can easily be very different from each other. (And in my field, anyone that doesn't bring data is always wrong by default).

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [monty] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:34

Post #139 of 147 (3217 views)

Hey Monty, how worried are you, if at all, about becoming seriously ill if you catch the coronavirus? I'm turning 61 in a couple of weeks, but I know that you and Slowman are a couple of years older than me and wonder how concerned you are about catching the virus?

How about the other 60+ folks on ST? I know most of us, because of our active lifestyles, have more robust immune systems than our peers, but this is an unknown virus to our bodies. I'm also most worried about my 82-year-old mother and mother-in-law, but both currently reside hundreds of miles from me and I have no plans to visit them soon so I'm not worried at this point about potentially transmitting the virus to them.

Last edited by: Mark Lemmon: Mar 8, 20 18:35

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Benv] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:35

Post #140 of 147 (3209 views)

This is another moment where us, non-experts, are picking and choosing the data that fits our theories and ignoring what doesn't fit,//

Except that I'm not picking and choosing any data, I accept it all. I accept what you posted about Italy and the US, but I also accept what is going in South Korea too. Then I look at it all, try and adjust for the differences in how those numbers came about, and make "my" best guess, like everyone else. I like the cruise ship data, that is as close as we might ever get in a closed system to actual numbers. It's ok, we are just playing here, you think 4/5%, I think 1% or less. One of us will eventually be proved right or wrong, or it will come in the middle somewhere and someone will have guessed correctly...

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Jigsy] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:36

Post #141 of 147 (3206 views)

Jigsy wrote:

Someone mentioned earlier, the Diamond Princess. Maybe it's a good model to work with?

3,500 aboard, all tested.
696 positive and 7 deaths.

That's 20% infection rate (from possible exposure) and 1% death rate from those infected. But 0.2% deaths from total exposure.

There is a thread of commonsense in this captive set of numbers that you present. 0.2 percent dying out of 3500 exposed is really what I personally care about. That's roughly 60 deaths out of every million exposed if we were to extrapolate, but in normal life we are not continuously exposed day after day to infected people in a confined area. Even in a long haul aircraft you are only exposed to the same people for say 5 to 15 hrs and then you go your own way. The cruise ships are in ways more confined because the same people are there for days on end.

I am not in an exposed area but it may be an opportunity to test how efficient we are as a company working from home. Our customers are remote so the office is mainly to get team members together or customers/partners over

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Benv] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:36

Post #142 of 147 (3206 views)

Benv wrote:

I don't think the death rate is lower than advertised; looking at Italy the number of diagnosed with covid-19 (7375) vs death from covid-19 (366) puts the death toll at exactly 5%. That is much higher than earlier numbers suggested. The US has 544 confirmed cases and 21 deaths which makes it 4% so not that different.

There could be more undiagnosed cases that not result in deaths just like there can be covid-19 deaths that may be attributed to something else too. In any case, the available numbers suggest a much more dangerous virus than influenza once you've got it.

https://www.usatoday.com/...-oakland/4953496002/

It is important to remember that most of the US deaths are from the Life Care Center in Kirkland... Which is partially a hospice type center where in a normal month they see somewhere between 7 to 11 deaths... The individuals at this center in Kirkland would have likely been impacted the same from a flu H1N1 or H3N2 outbreak. The Kirkland life center has had a few more deaths this month that were not reported as COVID-19 as they were never tested... But possible they were related. Clearly they had a very catastrophic outbreak with compromised population.

______________________________________________
Team Zoot

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Mark Lemmon] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:42

Post #143 of 147 (3185 views)

Hey Monty, how worried are you, if at all, about becoming seriously ill if you catch the coronavirus? I'm turning 61 in a couple of weeks, but I know that you and Slowman are a couple of years older than me and wonder how concerned you are about catching the virus? //

If I just shut down my training, or did nearly nothing in the way of workouts, not too worried about myself at all. And my kids are young and healthy, same with my wife, so that is not my big stressor on this whole thing. We have elderly grandparents who are not healthy, and if I train like I normally do, I'm often have a compromised immune system. We all do in this sport, so just being healthy most the time, is no silver bullet against any bug that comes our way. So will stay out of the tank on most workouts for awhile, and will be changing plans on visiting old folks. With 3 kids in school, it seems inevitable that we will eventually get this thing, but will be doing our best to hide as best as possible. Hoping that the summer here will degrade it to the point of the usual flu fade away. And then hoping for a vaccine next year before it comes back with a vengeance, at least that is the plan for now...

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Benv] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:43

Post #144 of 147 (3184 views)

Benv wrote:

OddSlug wrote:

I really don't think most (I say most because some brilliant people are always on ST) of us are actually qualified to make any sensible statement about this kind of figure. What you are comparing is confirmed cases vs number of people died so far. As others have said there will be unreported infections. But the other point is that the number of infections goes up pretty fast and, I hate putting a human tragedy in a mathematical way, deaths will lag detection. Have no more infections and deaths will still go up.

And there will be other subtleties to the figures that I haven't thought of. The point is the people who are coming up with the estimate have thought of those subtleties. They are using expert knowledge, using the closest comparable and well understood infections as a basis for a model and adjusting based on info as they learn more about this virus. Any virus will generally mutate over time and generally become less lethal and more infectious. So any rate now will likely be different to the rate after some time.

I'm not saying it's higher, lower or accurate. What I'm saying is what do you really think you (by this I mean any of us) know that the people who came up with the figure hasn't thought of?

For the most part I agree - we are not the experts at all. But in my scientific field experts don't agree on many things either, there are always leading theories that other equally qualified experts don't agree with. Meaning while the data is limited there can be various estimates from experts, who can easily be very different from each other. (And in my field, anyone that doesn't bring data is always wrong by default).

I totally get that, which is partly why I included 'accurate' as one of the things I wasn't saying. But, generally, a good expert will qualify any estimate. The trouble is a media report of that estimate can miss the qualification.

The other thing to bear in mind is that if we are talking about a rate effecting, potentially, millions of infected people it isn't really relatable in any real sense. You can't really correct for personal health, the treatment or the speed it was detected. Age is an easy stat to correlate but I'd rather have the chances of a 60+ year old here who kicks my butt in long course to the 20 year old at work who is morbidly obese.

Last edited by: OddSlug: Mar 8, 20 18:46

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Benv] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 18:51

Post #145 of 147 (3161 views)

Hello Benv and All,

16,000,000 quarantined in northern Italy ... a friend visiting here in SoCal from Vancouver has a niece that lives near Milan ... and she just got out to fly to the states before the big shutdown.

She is not sure when she can return home.

Italy may have the more virulent 'L' mutation of C19 so data may be different in different countries as mutations occur.

My granddaughter ran LA marathon today ... (best time so far for her) so some events are not canceled .... yet .... but in WA it looks like many schools are closed .... some for 6 weeks.

We are in 80's so we are laying low for a couple of weeks (or longer) to see what the trajectory of infection is.

As an aside ...

Thymic involution. One of the major characteristics of vertebrate immunology is thymic involution, the shrinking of the thymus with age, resulting in changes in the architecture of the thymus and a decrease in tissue mass. ... T-cells are named for the thymus where T-lymphocytes migrate from the bone marrow to mature.

This might be a factor for older people who demonstrate weaker immune systems ... running on empty for training T-cells to fight infections.

"There are known knowns" is a phrase from a response United States Secretary of Defense ... But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. ... Rumsfeld's remarks .....

Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

Last edited by: nealhe: Mar 8, 20 19:04

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [monty] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 19:12

Post #146 of 147 (3117 views)

monty wrote:

To calculate the death rate you need 2 numbers, total infected and total dead. //

I'm not sure that's how they do it. We can never really know how many are infected, especially since so many have mild to no symptoms with this one. The number we can get, is the number that go to a hospital and seek treatment, or to see a doctor, and eventually get an actual test. Since there has been no testing up til now, gonna be pretty hard to know that number infected. Going forward with lots of tests, we will get a picture of what probably happened in these first months, then an extrapolation of hospitalizations. I know I have had the flu many times in my life, never once went to a doctor for it, so was never counted in stats. I suppose they could model folks like me, figure out how many per hospitalization, and then use a multiplier for an actual infection rate.

But like I said, it looks like this one is either really bad, or a nothing burger, with some in-between. But for sure the death rate is much, much lower than advertised right now, and we will see that % going down with every 100k tests that come on line..

Here's some info from the Westchester family where the lawyer ended up in the hospital. Rest of the family just had a "cough".

She and two of the couple’s children, a 14-year-old girl and 20-year-old son, have also tested positive for the virus, though only Lawrence remains in critical condition. She said the family is focused on his health since she and her children have not experienced symptoms more severe than a “slight cough.”

Re: Covid19 and triathlon [Jigsy] [ In reply to ]

Mar 8, 20 19:35

Post #147 of 147 (3083 views)

I'm super rusty with my statistical analysis but that's a very small sample size and doesn't mean much. In stats, the bigger the sample size the more robust the data, which is called power. Some studies have great power (heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol), but some don't for various reasons. Sometimes it's small because the disease is rare and you have to accept the data with a grain of salt. There are other reasons but I won't get into it.

There are many confining factors like what Monty mentioned, age with the cruise ship. There are so many confining factors from the location (e.g. weather, population density, socioeconomic status, etc.).

There are so many people cherry picking data. The best are those who understand that it's too early to make any hard conclusions. I recommend watching, listening and/or reading Dr. Fauci's responses to COVID (and check out his resume). Everyone wants him to make conclusions and make predictions. There are reasons why he doesn't make hard conclusions. He doesn't down play the situation nor hype it up because so much is still unknown. My recommendations to patients, family and friends have been evolving every week.

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