from Hacker News

Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

by stillsut on 4/15/20, 5:15 PM with 196 comments

• by jcp2fa on 4/15/20, 6:00 PM

  > Cough (7.5%), shortness of breath (1.4%), and fever (0.7%) were all uncommon among COVID-positive individuals

  It seems the more important point here is that the majority of the COVID-positive individuals were asymptomatic, putting another datapoint towards the conclusion that there are orders of magnitude more people that have this disease than have tested positive.

  We need more studies to gather data on these asymptomatic cases if we want to reopen the economy soon. Imagine if 10+% of the population already had COVID and where immune, we'd be much closer to heard immunity than we currently think.

• by zadkey on 4/15/20, 5:49 PM

  (Regarding the Headline) Surely you mean 35% of homeless who were tested. We can't say for certain that the sample is an exact representation of the general population of the homeless in Boston.

  "Upon observing a cluster of COVID-19 cases from a single large homeless shelter in Boston, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program conducted symptom assessments and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing for SARS-CoV-2 among all guests residing at the shelter over a 2-day period. Of 408 participants, 147 (36.0%) were PCR-positive for SARS-CoV-2"

  The key thing here is they tested people from one single homeless shelter. Is this one homeless shelter in Boston representative of all homeless shelters in Boston? There is not enough info in this article to make that assumption. Nor is it enough information to make generalizations about the populations of the homeless who do not live in shelters.

• by rb808 on 4/15/20, 5:55 PM

  Also 15% of pregnant Moms in NYC had the virus. This could already be much more widely spread that people think.

  https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-hospital-finds-hig...

• by kens on 4/15/20, 6:30 PM

  Regarding the title "Covid+", it seems that most people (even on the news) don't care about the difference between SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) and COVID-19 (the disease). Is this distinction being abandoned? (I'm not trying to be pedantic here; I'm just curious about the common usage.)

• by analog31 on 4/15/20, 8:51 PM

  I certainly don't have a better read on the numbers than anybody else. But I think that the rising number of reported cases and deaths is going to make it harder and harder to think that there is a huge hidden pool of asymptomatic or immune people in the population.

  For instance as of today, the number of unreported to reported cases in the US can't be more than about 500.

  The time period when the disease could have been prevalent in the US can't have been very long, because at its present level it kills about 15000 per week -- a number that could not have gone unnoticed even a month ago.

  Eventually, the curves of hopes, reported data, and reality will all have to intersect, I just don't know where or when.

• by downerending on 4/15/20, 6:34 PM

  As always, "compared to what?". If non-homeless, demographically matched, are also around 35%, this might not mean much.

• by hairytrog on 4/15/20, 7:21 PM

  A good dose of skepticism: https://swprs.org/contact/

• by JulianMorrison on 4/16/20, 12:02 AM

  I really wish they'd tested inability to smell/taste as a symptom. I'd be interested to see if it leads other symptoms.

• by turbostyler on 4/15/20, 6:39 PM

  I'm surprised it's that low.