Rank: Member Joined: 12/21/2009 Posts: 602
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masukuma wrote:kaka2za wrote:masukuma wrote:BigChick wrote:
No @Masukuma,Kenyans and Africans are not a different species.
However facts on the ground show a trend that is worth some extra study.
Ok,let's reduce our days to March 13th when the Patient Zero was reported.We are on day 45,with 50% required discipline in keeping it at bay.We are still reporting small numbers of infections.I agree the tests are few so fewer numbers.But then again one does not need to be tested to know they are sick(and here I mean with symptoms).We are not having an influx of people with symptoms in hospitals or at home.Neither are we having mass deaths.(God forbid,we are not asking for them)
Yes the infected could be very many out there and we shall only know when they are tested but again I say if one is infected and has no symptoms or has mild symptoms and is able to fight it of over time,what is our worry??
Cases are increasing because more people are getting tested.If we don't test we shall not record new cases but that does not mean no people have been infected.
Yes COVID is highly infectious so let's keep it at bay by following guidelines but if by bad fortune you get it,it will be mild and you will heal.
Covid 19 Tracker Worldometer,of the active cases 97% are mild 3% are serious/critical
Assume that we have 2 overlapping Groups:
Group 1 - the group that has a KNOWN case within. People who 1 person reported themselves and subsequent contacts were traced from them. this group with at least 1 KNOWN person is yielding numbers that range between 0.6% to 2.75% of the samples tested. This is the one Kagwe and co. have been talking to us since 13th March. the total number of people tested in this SUSPECTED GROUP to date is less than 20k.
Group 2: the UNKNOWN group:
You are stating that there is a MUCH MUCH LARGER group that has been here for the last 100+ days. Infections happening, Healing, Dying (and sickness being attributed to something else) - but since the disease does not require the host to acknowledge so that it adjusts its spread behavior to what we expect (3+ people getting infected by each previous infection based on what we know from the disease) it has been spreading without social distancing for 100+ days. Considering virus shedding after infection can last upto 37 days (but the median is around 20 days) - where people can still pass on the virus to others and also test positively HOWEVER somehow these people in this much larger and EXPONENTIALLY growing group have seldomly overlapped with Group 1 in order to spike the number of positive cases? That whatever group we test - we end up with less than 2% of them being infections? Also, for unexplained circumstances - the sick from this have not flooded out hospitals?
Riwry? how plausible is that?
p.s. I am not disputing that there is a UNKNOW group - the question is
1) HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN AROUND?
2) HOW BIG IS IT?
3) HOW DOES IT INTERSECT WITH GROUP 1?
at what point does the invisible start looking like the non-existent?
Finally, we can agree that either the unknown group does not exist or they are not exhibiting any symptoms.
This means either we are winning the war against the invisible enemy or we have reached a ceasefire with the enemy.
We agree about the UNKNOWN - the 8 that were announced to day were part of the UNKNOWN until today. the figure announced tomorrow is part of the UNKNOWN of today. That's clear.
Where we disagree is on the answers to the following cases
1) HOW LONG HAVE THE UNKNOWNS BEEN AROUND?
I see people saying 100+ days. I disagree because of the behavoir of the disease I illustrated (R0=3) in an environment without social distancing. We would have had massive infections by now and these infections would have strayed into the GROUP 2 testing we are doing. We are only getting 1.97% positive cases in that group.
2) HOW BIG IS THIS UNKNOWN GROUP?
This is related to the 'HOW LONG THE UNKNOWNS HAVE BEEN AROUND'. if the UNKNOWNS are a recent introduction when there were social distancing guidelines in place - it's smaller in number. If it was there since Jan - then its much larger - MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. What makes me believe it's a much smaller number than the figures being thrown around is hospitalizations. lets assume it has infected over the last 12 months - 1,000,000 people. it had a 80% mild condition rate and the 20% then had severe manifestation before people started protecting their old. Why didn't we see a spike of old people in hospitals? or people with immunocompromised systems? or diabetes? Remember the Pilot who died? he was 66 and still working. Most of the people who this disease has killed in Kenya have been over 60 years old. in the larger group - wh didn't we see (and still not seeing those people in hospitals)
your explanation is - somehow Africans are not exhibiting any symptoms and are going about living their normal lives... this is of course UNTIL they get caught by the contract tracing routine and added to GROUP 2 then we find they get symptomatic like everyone else.
The only way we would be winning this war would be if we are biologically different (Those Blacks in the US dying prove we are not). My conclusion is that the war is just beginning. We have put measures in place that are actually limiting the spread but we should not legeza Kamba because we thing 'its not affecting us as projected'.
People are really dismissing social distancing and wearing masks - because they are really simple activities. We want to flamboyant actions like spraying the streets with obscure smoky substances. Sorry - this battle is won through simple changes in behavior at an individual level as is happening in Japan or Taiwan. @masukuma and @Bigchick
I think both of you are more in agreement than you think—Namely that Covid hospitalizations/deaths are the final arbiter of how CV will play out in Kenya/Africa, given the limits of testing.
What we don’t know is why the deaths are lower in Africa than would have been expected (thank God). The public health measures including masks and physical distancing are critical, but do not necessarily explain the lower death rates.
This should not be used to discount the need for public health measures or infer that Africans have a special biology that protects them. The purpose of public health measures are multiple and include slowing down infections, buying time for support systems to be put in place (train, test, prep hcw, hospitals etc).
From the curves Masukuma posted above, you can see that at the end of time X the area under the curve is the same, meaning that the number who die (or are infected when testing is widespread) will be similar with or without public health measures. Its just that the system gets overwhelmed by the sharper curve.
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