SHeesh - did you just see THAT on CNN? "Of 146 people who tested positive at a Boston Nursing Home,

[jmg257]

ALL were considered asymptomatic." Asymptomatic spread is something we've underestimated..."

Sheesh - people are spreading this shit by the bucket load, and they don't even know it.

STAY THE FUCK HOME!!

[madville]

1. This is good news

We may be developing herd immunity much faster than previously thought. They tested 200 random people for antibodies in a Massachusetts town this week, 64 tested positive and most reported no detectable symptoms.

It also means the death rate could be much lower than 3% if the vast majority of people getting it are not showing symptoms.

We have to remember also, the whole point of distancing and staying home was never to eradicate the virus, it was simply to slow the spread so medical resources were not overwhelmed. Now things are catching up as far as hospital capacity so it looks like most will possibly develop herd immunity before a vaccine is even available.

We need antibody testing now to identify who may have already developed natural immunity.

[jmg257]

2. AH thanks for the good news! Yes that was their point - testing testing... cheers!

[janterry]

4. Yes, I've been following these stories as well and feel very hopeful

n/t

[Buckeyeblue]

25. Is herd immunity a real thing?

Seems like if it was vaccines would eventually become unnecessary. This seems like an anti-vaxxer argument that we should be careful with.

[Igel]

28. Yes but it's misconstrued.

If most people are immune, then chains of transmission can't be very long. If there's a flare up of measles, for instance, it'll spread differently depending on herd immunity.

If nobody's immune and the herd's at risk, then 1 person infects 3, those infect 3 each (9), and it spreads like wildfire and calls of "bring out your dead" are heard in the streets.

If there's herd immunity each person infects (on average) less than one other person and the flare up dies out on its own. It may spread within a network, but it's mostly contained there. Individuals with compromised immune systems might be at risk, but that's too handy a cudgel for just beating people over the head with.

In other words, with herd immunity people might get sick, but it's not a societal issue. Until there's a new generation without herd immunity and suddenly it can spread easily and widely again. Until that happens, society blunders on with no special requirements, except for those dealt a bad hand.

Facts are facts. Suppressing or spinning them because of what others might do--instead of trying to actually have a civil argument--was rampant in the language and culture I studied for years, and it led to serious problems. It implies that for political reasons we have to be careful, only things that abide by the proper politics and the right policies should be discussed and allowed. Hence the Soviet coinage of the phrase "politically correct" (Russian politika is both 'policy' and 'politics').

[Buckeyeblue]

34. Got it.

So essentially initial outbreaks create the infection curves we are seeing now. But as people get it and recover, subsequent outbreaks are naturally flatter due to those with immunity. That makes sense. Vaccines eliminate outbreaks altogether by preemptively creating the herd immunity.

Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me.

I agree with you that facts are facts, no matter how unpleasant they might be. In order to change the facts, you have to be brutally honest about the root causes. Until you do that type of analysis any type of plan to change the facts may have short term gains but probably will not create long term improvements.

[Mossfern]

29. Think about tuberculosis

It was a horrible pandemic, but now one need only to take a TB titer, not a vaccine.

[Buckeyeblue]

33. But we aren't immune to TB. We are just effective in treating it. Right?

[grantcart]

39. No and yes with an asterisk

TB,generally speaking is not that easy to get in populations that are generally healthy. It is not easy to get.

In the refugee camps in SE Asia we screened for TB and found about 3 % were positive. They were given a 2 week heavy dose of a anti bacterial regime and were rendered non contagious. Treatment for the disease would take years to get rid of it.

The proof that it was not that contagious is that there were no records of transmission to other workers or other refugees. Indeed it was rare for more than one family member to have it even though they lived together for years. I would guess that most of our positives were men with long history of smoking.

While very easy to treat 30 years ago many strains are now drug resistant and more difficult to test. It has had a resurgence in populations with high HIV because a compromised immunization system makes it much easier to get.

[DarleenMB]

35. It's a little too soon to have a party

because we still don't know much about this virus. We DO know this:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus-kill-clinicians-trace-ferocious-rampage-through-body-brain-toes?fbclid=IwAR2PkMRbgJMdRi3haLwETZz7JKuPe0fWttG6ACHLu-G1OocqcxvyNltqJkM#

I don't want to risk getting it.

[TexasBushwhacker]

41. And even if it doesn't kill you

It can leave extreme damage to your body. I just read about a 40 year old actor who is having his leg amputated because of circulation damage from COVID-19.

[Yonnie3]

3. Is this it?

https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/14/coronavirus-boston-homeless-testing

Testing Reveals 'Stunning' Asymptomatic Coronavirus Spread Among Boston's Homeless

April 14, 2020

Lisa Mullins

Lynn Jolicoeur

Doctors who work with Boston's homeless population are sounding the alarm about asymptomatic spread of the coronavirus and the need for more testing.

For the first weeks of the outbreak, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program tested only people who showed symptoms. A few dozen tested positive. There weren't enough test kits from the state to check everyone else.

Then the clinicians realized that a cluster of the people who had come up positive were staying at Boston's Pine Street Inn. So the state made testing kits available, and just over a week ago, Health Care for the Homeless tested everyone coming into that shelter.

The results? Out of 397 people tested, 146 (36%) came up positive. But even more surprising, they weren't showing any signs of sickness.
<snip>

[paleotn]

12. And yet...

in other clusters it's been like the grim reaper. Faulty tests or faulty processing? We also don't know when they were infected. Some may simply be in he latency period before symptoms. Who knows? This group is probably a hot spot of researchers now, so we will soon know the real story.

[Yonnie3]

15. It's not a "nursing home," as the OP said,

so the shelter clients may be younger and healthier. It is not a cluster of vulnerable people like the geriatric care homes.

"Latency period before symptoms," Yes! Asymptomatic may be Pre-symptomatic!

A contaminated reagent, as was the problem with the initial CDC tests, can result in false positives.

It is not possible, without further testing and study, to draw conclusions from this information. It is, however, suggestive of several important things that could/should be studied.

[paleotn]

19. I know that. I called it a hot spot...

not a nursing home. But is it real or instrumentation? If it is real, why is it so different from other clusters? It's going to get super attention, so we should soon know.

[Yonnie3]

22. I wasn't referring to you when I mentioned "nursing home"

I updated my post to reflect that the OP said that.

We are in agreement. Sorry if it seemed different.

[paleotn]

24. No worries.

[Igel]

30. This isn't the first time such a sampling's been done.

And while everybody keeps saying it may be simply a lot of pre-symptomatic people, that's the kind of thing easily confirmed. Check back a week later--you'd expect the hot spot to have continued, with most of those pre-symptomatics now sick.

I haven't seen that reported.

Either when S. Korea reported this back in February and had a similar rate, or the few other studies that have done this sort of check. One peer-reviewed article came up with a rate of 10-14% (I think I sometimes say 10-12, I have to double check that number) asymptomatic. And they waited for the symptoms to appear.

I find it in keeping with the Stanford study people are mistakenly freaking out over.

1. It's probably a good thing, once you realize it means COVID isn't the death sentence many people at already low risk of dying from it fervidly believe it to be.

2. It undercuts the entire containment idea. (And I still think China realized this, said, "Oh, shit, now what do we do?" and shut everything down as the *only* way to effectively stop transmission between asymptomatic cases when contact tracing was too onerous.)

[rainin]

36. I'm seeing reports of false negatives not false positives

Who is reporting false positives?

[intheflow]

18. Thank you. This is NOT good news.

I don't understand how anyone could interpret 36% of a population testing as asymptomatic as good news. It's deadly news. But thread responses touting the "good news" here only underscores why people need to link to sources in OPs, not to mention this OP saying it's a nursing home instead of a homeless shelter.

[Igel]

31. Because if 36% of us will get it and not notice,

that means the virus isn't nearly as deadly as billed.

Immediately chop those mortality rates by a third.

Immediately increase by a third those likely to be immune and be able to go out and about.

It trashes what many consider to be the Holy Grail of curve-flattening because it makes containment very hard. And it trashes much of the current thinking, because not only did the US not contain the virus but most of the world didn't either, and it's easy to understand why.

[rainin]

38. We don't know this yet. We only know they aren't showing symptoms right now

We don't know that they won't later. We also don't know how contagious they are. We also don't know if it's affecting other organ systems in a slow burn because we only recently learned that it is affecting the kidneys, the brain, the blood. People may drop from COVID19 years later as damaged systems fail.

Someone more creative than me can likely think of even more possibilities

The point is, we don't know. We only have one body. Those who have suffered with illness personally understand the value of staying healthy, perhaps more than people who haven't.

Waiting might mean a gaining an understanding of this virus so we can get back to normal without risking permanent long-term harm to our health

[captain queeg]

5. I just don't trust these results yet. It might be good news

But I’m suspicious of the results. There’s been lots of cases of faulty tests, and o/a herd immunity would be the RW’s wet dream, and finally lets retest the same bunch in 3 weeks. And best to test everyone they’ve come in contact with. I’m all for some good new but I really don’t think we’ve figured the virus out yet.

[Lindsay]

6. Yeah, I read a suggestion

from a virologist that there may have been a problem with the testing on this one.

[tanyev]

17. It is insane to talk about reopening anything when we don't even have widespread reliable testing.

Unbelievable.

[dawg day]

8. Also, asymptomatic people can still pass it along

So it is scary to think there might be a lot of people who don't know they're sick.

Again, of course, that means testing and retesting is important. And it would be good to find out when a person who has the antibodies and no symptoms stops being contagious.

[rampartc]

10. +1

immunity may be a fleeting thing.

[Bad Thoughts]

11. Latency rather than immunity

I suspect that too many people assume that immunity naturally follows after contracting coronavirus. It's not the only possibility. It could remain dormant in individuals for long periods of time.

[intheflow]

21. Asymptomatic is not the same as herd immunity. This is not good news.

Asymptomatic means they're carrying and spreading the disease without anyone knowing they have it or are being exposed.

[Igel]

32. No, it's not.

But a chain of assumptions gets you from widespread asymptomaticity (to coin a word) to faster herd immunity.

There are assumptions there--infection always triggers antibodies, the antibodies are the type that suppress infection, antibody-based immunity is long-lived.

Two of them are built into the hope that a vaccine will rescue us, however. But while we're discussing possibilities, we're discussing possibilities.

But, yes, it does mean you could catch it. It also means you might already have had it. It redefines risk for high-risk groups. It redefines risk for everybody.

But now I wonder if the positive test numbers skew to the aged. We know that the young catch it at the same rate and are rarely hospitalized and more rarely die. We know that people in their 20s-40s with it are less often hospitalized than the elderly, and while they can wind up in the ICU and on ventilators it happens at a much reduced rate and they're more likely to recover. I wonder if there's an age skew to the tests, so that the elderly who are infected are much more likely to show symptoms.

On edit:
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/health/2020/03/27/indiana-coronavirus-test-results-show-breakdown-ages-sex/2925854001/ gives me pause. Assuming that it spreads equally well in the population, look at how the tested population breaks down by age. (Keep in mind that the different groups aren't all equally represented in the population, so those percentages aren't the same as % of that age group infected and tested positive, and that the intervals aren't all the same: 1-19 is a far bigger portion of the population than 20-29, for instance, and 20-29 is a larger number than 70+).

Looks like if you're older you're more likely to be tested. Hypothesis: Asymptomatics and mild cases form a larger percentage of younger cohorts. Some age cohorts have had a lot more tests run on them than others.

[getagrip_already]

7. wouldn't it be a kicker if.....

Dug addiction, alcoholism, and mental illness held the secret to beating the virus?

There is already some indication that blood thinners can relieve some symptoms, so why not?

The only downside is that a huge swath of trump supporters would be immune.

[captain queeg]

37. That thought has crossed my mind

Or maybe some subset of those, like stimulant addict. Might by why trump seems to skate by.

[Croney]

9. Just to point out... The Pine Street Inn is not a nursing home.

It is a temporary day shelter for the homeless, so a different, mostly younger population than that of a nursing home.

[jmg257]

26. Cheers thanks for the info! Nt

[Chainfire]

13. Those numbers would make me doubt

that validity of the test.

[grantcart]

40. +1

That is the most logical conclusion.

And the most distressing

[lapfog_1]

14. yup..

&t=377s

[yellowdogintexas]

23. It's Doctor John!

We follow him daily. He has very interesting segments on related subjects too, like Vitamin D and immune response.

[lonely bird]

16. Another possible thought

Perhaps the people tested were asymptomatic for respiratory symptoms. Since we have seen reports that other organs can be impacted can those tested actually be getting damaged and we won’t see the results until down the road.

[ALBliberal]

20. There was also a testing at a Boston homeless

Shelter large number 300? Positive asymptomatic.

[CaptainTruth]

27. We also know there are at least 2 strains of the virus, one apparently less severe.

I'm not sure these sorts of routine tests can differentiate between the strains, or if a person is positive asymptomatic with the less severe strain it means they're immune to the more deadly strain?

[LizBeth]

42. That sounds like what I read about a homeless shelter in Boston, not nursing home.

https://www.boston25news.com/news/cdc-reviewing-stunning-universal-testing-results-boston-homeless-shelter/Z253TFBO6RG4HCUAARBO4YWO64/?fbclid=IwAR2ubO4X0j2OdUb7ibmgbLMcl_cT3gO8rZUChcijgvl9bV0w1DEvEeViGpk

BOSTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now “actively looking into” results from universal COVID-19 testing at Pine Street Inn homeless shelter.

The broad-scale testing took place at the shelter in Boston’s South End a week and a half ago because of a small cluster of cases there.

Of the 397 people tested, 146 people tested positive. Not a single one had any symptoms.