COVID-19 (2): Turns out it's going to be pretty bad actually

Why would you assume a mortality rate of 2%? Are you talking IFR or CFR?

The point Iā€™m trying to make is that it seems almost self evident that a lot more people in California have it than the 33k or whatever, especially if you think the mortality rate is less than 2%.

Yeah for sure. But I donā€™t get what the point is about 33k then. Iā€™ve always assumed infected rate is something like 10x confirmed case rate - just as a ballpark. Obviously worse in some places, better in others.

In Missouri for a long time it took an act of God to get a test. Obviously their infected rate was way higher. But watching now they do tend to stay around 10% positive in the people they do test - which is a healthy sign compared to say Michigan which was 40% positive a week ago - or NYC in the early days at 50% positive.

Wouldnā€™t you expect the NY strain to make it to California and vice versa?

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Some, yeah. But if neither got a foothold in the other place before travel got pretty much shut down then one strain could dominate Iā€™m assuming.

I think the different strain theory is way less likely than these differences being the result of different population densities, habits, health, time till lockdown, adherence to lockdown, health infrastructure etc. Also Australiaā€™s second wave in Sydney came from New York so why is our death rate so low.

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Yeah, I mean the virus is mutating, but also the hosts around the world have genetic variation, social responses are different, climate is different, etc. there are so many variables at play here.

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Yeah, I dunno, the strain theory is interesting, but I have a hard time believing they wouldnā€™t have mixed a ton by the time the lockdowns started. I mean, weā€™re talking like a month and a half, right? Given the presumed low overall infection rates, I donā€™t see a compelling reason both strains wouldnā€™t have gained a foothold on both coasts.

The two strains theory doesnā€™t really stack up. Mainly because of the amount of travel. If you have the ā€œbad strainā€ in New York. You have it in California, same all over Europe.

If two people walk into a room. One person throws flour all over them from the same bucket, but it only sticks to the first dudeā€¦ are we going to be thinking thereā€™s two kinds of flour, or two kinds of people?

We know that call, new York, Italy, Germany etc have vastly different testing regimes and treatment approaches. We donā€™t think anything else to explain the data.

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Another poster thinking itā€™s not the strains.

Iā€™m thinking weather, bad luck and higher population density and maybe mass transit. (NYC has almost twice the density of SF and LA isnā€™t even on the top 133 cities listed in the wiki page)

a ton of people in red states who think its a hoax

plane tickets are practically free

I think the use of mass transit is a huge part of it, combined with population density. Having lived in NYC for a few years in Queens and spent a decent amount of time in the LA area, the biggest difference other than the weather is car ownership/usage. Even the people in outerboroughs who own cars donā€™t use them that often. I had a car in Queens and rarely used it within NYC. Itā€™s not practical.

So you have tons of people packed into subways that are overcrowded at rush hour, using taxis and ubers one after another, etc.

It stands to reason that any airborne or droplet based virus would hit NYC harder.

Also, weā€™re seeing it hit the outerboroughs harder - they use mass transit more than Manhattanites. Of course, there is likely way more WFH among Manhattan residents due to being in more white collar jobs.

Uh so I just ran across this abstract from the Journal of Medical Virology, from April 20th. Iā€™m wearing a slightly smug expression.

The full text is here and worth reading. Note that here the author is only SPECULATING that this spike protein discrepancy between predominantly East or West coast clades might cause differences in contagion or pathogenesis, but thatā€™s exactly what was demonstrated in vitro by the (later) Chinese paper. I donā€™t know if the strains in question in that study are representative of the clades discussed in this one, but all the pieces are basically there. If anyone knows how to read the technical stuff better than me and can check this, that would be good.

The Nextstrain data, by the way, shows that California now contains a mix of clades, as youā€™d expect. However, the New York clade A2, which originated in Italy or Austria, would have been a late addition to the mix.

Deplorable Mom latching onto to idea that THE BLACKS are the ones getting and spreading this because they wonā€™t listen to authority figures who are not black telling them to isolate because they racialize and politicize everything.

She had to get off the phone to pick up her dog from daycare.

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Looking at the Chinese paper again, none of their samples contained the D614G mutation discussed in the paper above (which makes sense when I think about it, as the samples were taken too early). So whether the D614G mutation results in changes to virus behaviour is speculation. As far as Iā€™m aware it hasnā€™t been studied.

Did she then have to take it to the vet to have ear surgery?

Thereā€™s a paper here noting that the S-D614G mutation might have implications for immunity and vaccine development.

The paper says in part:

There are three other variants in spike protein B-cell epitopes besides D614G. However, these other variants are not observed in any other samples. Thus, these sub-strains might have lost fitness or it may be too early to evaluate the prevalence. These variants along with future variants in the epitopes need to be vigilantly monitored for potential drifts

Concluding:

The highly prevalent 23403A>G (p.D614G) variant in the European population may cause antigenic drift resulting in vaccine mismatches offering little protection to that group of patients. Innovative vaccine design methods including using highly conserved internal epitopes, recombinant proteins spanning epitopes or pooling multiple vaccines will be required to combat the inherent antigenic drift.

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True, but itā€™s hard to know how to act on it. Head for a remote hideout with 6 months of food? Most here would still need broadband to continue working.

Will not being around anyone for years hurt your immune system if you finally come out of hibernation ?

people saying quarantines will lead to baby boom are gonna get it super duper wrong.