Yesterday’s Briefing and Some Quick Research Summaries

The most notable thing about yesterday’s briefing was that a reporter asked a question about the now obvious over-prediction of cases and deaths by the Minnesota model.  The Commissioner of Health’s response was a masterpiece of evasion and obviously reflects the talking points decided on not that it is apparent how flawed that model is.  She said it was just one data point and only directional and wasn’t determinative in the Governor’s decision-making.  That is just a flat out lie.  I would invite all of you to go to YouTube and view the video of the press conference when the Governor announced his first extreme shutdown order.  It was all about the model.  That was the sole basis given.  Clearly there is going to be an attempt here to revise history.  And once again, we got the nonsense about community outbreaks and meatpacking plant outbreaks with no mention of the outcome of these cases–the fact that as is now obvious in general, almost all cases are mild or asymptomatic.

A study from the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at the prevalence of coronavirus infection in pregnant women in Connecticut.   (JAMA Article)   Of 770 patients tested, 30 were positive and 22 were asymptomatic and remained asymptomatic.

A number of people have experienced either false positive or false negative infection and antibody testing results.  A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine doesn’t relieve concerns about the accuracy of testing.  (Annals Study)  The study noted high false negative PCR test rates for infection testing beginning before symptoms, during the disease and as recovery is occurring.  Even in the middle of the disease, the false negative rate was 20%.

Finally, London and the UK had a rough epidemic.  The country has been conducting routine sero-prevalence testing.  According to the results released yesterday, about 17.5% of people tested in London were positive for antibodies.  Smaller rates were found in other parts of the country but still significant.  In the early weeks of the survey, more positives were found among young adults, but now there is an increasing number of older people with positive results.  The number of cases inferred by these results is far higher than those reported by infection testing.  (UK Results)