What's Missing from Covid19 Reporting?
What questions do you have about covid19 that seem important but aren't being asked/answered in public forums?
(I'll post my own below)
I've heard that high blood pressure is a risk factor for the severity of a covid19 infection. But does that mean...
(a) People who have actual, uncontrolled high BP?
(b) People who would have high BP, but don't because it's controlled by medication?
(c) People who are taking specific BP-controlling meds?
(d) Some combo of (a), (b), (c)?
Reliable data on asymptomatic cases.
The models we have at the moment are trying to fit parameters based on the known data, but of the known data, the only reliable one is the death rate. So there are a lot of degrees of freedom here with regards to the spread of the virus. (Because carriers are only identified on a limited basis, mostly in hospitals, it presents a skewed picture, so this data is not hugely useful)
Once antibodies tests are available, you can get a sense of how many people in a sample population have had the disease with mild-to-no symptoms, and that can say a lot about how it's spread.
1. How do frequency and density of exposure correspond to infection rate?
I'm assuming there are some basic principles that apply to any virus, but I don't know what they are and have found it difficult to get find meaningful information.
2. If lowering frequency and density of exposure reduces infection rate - as the papers that Google surfaces when querying this kind of thing suggest - does this mean that social distancing could be more than a knee-jerk means of reducing the stress of the healthcare system? Could it form the basis of a long-term containment strategy?
3. Would it be possible to randomly test high-traffic areas (grocery stores and gas stations in the US) to get a better sense for how this disease is spreading? Why are we not doing this?
The origin of the virus. The mainstream media assumes the virus was created in a natural process of mutation and jumping species, while there's this little paper [1] in Nature Medicine from 2015 where authors (virologists) confirm that they created a novel, human-transmisible coronavirus, based on a new virus they discovered among bats. Some of the authors of the paper are from Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology...
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
We hear stories about production ramps for personal protective equipment, for healthcare providers and regular citizens. But what are the actual projections for the need-curve vs. the availability-curve of those commodities in various places?
What is the true mortality rate? All the numbers are based on positive test counts, but testing isn't being done for most people with nominal (casual) symptoms.
This has led to a situation where we think (for example) 2% of positive cases die, when in reality, there may be millions of positive untested cases resolving without issue.
Which medical centers are overwhelmed and which ones are operating normally.
Numbers related to the outbreak that are meaningful without denominators (since we don't have any and won't until long after things get back to some semblance of normalcy). Seems like this would be hospitalizations (due to covid) and deaths (due to covid). Those are numbers where the volume (as opposed to the rate) are the signal.
In China:
Total Confirmed = 81,782
Total Recovered = 74,181
Total Dead = 3,291
--------------------------
Remaining = 4,370
* I am assuming the number 4,370 will fall either into Recovered or Dead.
Can someone confirm this theory?
Is this going to the same for US?
Total Confirmed Cases = 69,684
Total Recovered = 619
Total Dead = 1,049
--------------------------------
Remaining = 68,016
Does this mean the fate of 68,016 not known yet in US?
A similar concerning number exists for Italy too.
Fully anonymized medical history/demographics data across countries and open to the public.
This would allow crowd sourcing and statistics to be applied by the best minds in the world.
I know regulations can make this difficult but many difficult boundaries are being pressed now.
Some anecdotes of covid19 infection talk about people being in severe pain. What's the relationship between that symptom and final disease outcome?
more granular or qualified statistics.
e.g. yesterday, Gov. Newsom went on the radio and said something along the lines of "half of people hospitalized were 18-60" (paraphrasing, don't remember the numbers exactly, etc). But something like 2/3rds of our population is that age!
Another thing would be statistics on triage as the outbreak overwhelmed Italy. I'd like to know who was going to the hospitals, who was admitted, who needed to be in the ICU, etc, and how the profile of patients changed as beds got filled.
Nutrition. I've already noticed food purchasing has changed at my local stores. I would like to know if we're exasperating our public health crisis by ruining our diets and if we should be concerned about that moving forward.
And finally, alcohol and drug consumption - particularly by millenials. Anecdotally, many of my peers are drinking a lot more regularly than they normally would during the day and week. There are plenty of memes about it, but I'd like to know if we're looking for hope at the bottom of a bottle for the next few months.
A detailed break down by age.
Then bonus points would be a column showing the mortality rate of a person in that country.
For instance an 80 yo in the US has a 6% mortality.
Why does almost everyone I talk to report having a flu like illness in January that tested negative for flu?
1. What happens in the middle, between a lock-down bringing down the infected numbers and vaccine.
I've read a few things from epidemiologists, but there seems to be little discussion in the wider media.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
2. What's going on with the PCR reagent shortage? Where are they produced? Why is it hard to make it quickly? etc.
What does successful containment look like 3 months, 6 months, and a year from now?
What should governments be doing for maximum practical containment?
To what extent will lies, half-truths, spin, and disinformation increase preventable fatalities?
What can be done within existing legal frameworks to stop this disinformation?
What are the current projections of test-kit availability vs. need for different regions? E.g., when do we expect that doctors can test everyone that suspect of having covid19?
A discussion of how regulatory structures contributed to problems in the US (lack of tests, number and variety of providers and services, and so forth).
I’d like to see the rumor that people can’t develop an immunity to this put to bed. Surely we have enough data at this point.
Why don’t we get any information on if the shutdowns are working? Why is nyc still so bad?
Why did/does China lie so early and so often about the progression of the epidemic?
What is the sensitivity and specificity of the Coronavirus tests?
In early public reporting on covid19 in the U.S., when the patient died it was common to hear that he/she had "underlying health issues".
Why be so vague? It seems like more detail would help people identify their personal risk level.
(Edited for tone.)
Why do medical personnel seem to get hit harder with this?
I think we should be following all of these vaccines and clinical trials really closely.
We all watch what the stock market does every day. Let’s start watching what these trials are doing every day. Really put the spotlight on these folks.
I feel like as a population we’re acting too much like victims. Let’s take charge of this.