COVID-19: prison testing results
Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.
Of the 1,403 inmates tested at Lakeland Correctional Facility in Branch County, 785 of them tested positive for the virus. There are about 30 inmates still awaiting results as of Monday morning…
Lakeland is the first of Michigan’s prisons to have all of its inmates tested, prior to this only those who complained of symptoms were tested. The facility is one that Michigan Department of Corrections said it was most worried about considering half of those housed at Lakeland are either elderly or medically frail…
Gautz said the department estimates roughly 80% of those who tested positive for the virus last week were asymptomatic.
“The vast majority of prisoners who tested positive last week were confused as to how they were positive because they hadn’t had any symptoms,” Gautz said.”
Just to be clear – the 1403 were basically the entire prison population. This prison was already known to have had a serious outbreak; 12 prisoners there have died, most or all of them geriatric. Of the entire prison population tested, a little over half were positive. That’s not positive for antibodies, that’s for the virus itself. And 80% of those were asymptomatic.
We’re not talking about a previously hale and hearty bunch of people here, either, compared to the general population.
It’s not just Michigan. There’s North Carolina:
…[O]fficials [at Neuse state prison took] the extraordinary step of testing all 700 prisoners at the medium-security facility near Raleigh.
Within a week, infections had surged to 444. Perhaps even more revealing: More than 90% of the newly diagnosed inmates displayed no symptoms, meaning that the deadly virus could have remained hidden had the state followed federal guidelines that largely reserve testing for people displaying common symptoms, such as fever and respiratory distress.
I read both articles rather quickly, but as far as I can tell neither article discussed whether these asymptomatic yet positive patients have been showing symptoms yet. Perhaps not enough time has passed to know. But still, why isn’t the issue even addressed? It seems of the utmost importance, because if these cases remain asymptomatic or only develop mild symptoms, it would seem that herd immunity will be reached in very short order. That would be excellent news.
The bad news would be if this represents the potential in the next week or two for a huge number of deaths, because the testing happened to have been done before the disease reached full flower in the asymptomatic patients, and many eventually go on to develop extremely serious disease.
Similar results to Lakeland’s have occurred in Ohio prisons, according to the USA Today article. And I’ve read of similar findings within the homeless population in a shelter in Boston:
The results? Out of 397 people tested, 146 (36%) came up positive. But even more surprising, they weren’t showing any signs of sickness.
In all these articles, the public health officials and the administrators are very disturbed by the results, and understandably so. The idea that half or nearly half of their populations might have the virus without anyone knowing it – and could be spreading it at a rapid pace – is potentially disturbing. But it’s just as possible that it’s extremely encouraging, as I mentioned before. If the virus spreads that quickly, and if most of the victims – even in a vulnerable population such as prisons and homeless shelters – remain asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic, that would mean we would reach herd immunity quite quickly. Even without achieving full herd immunity, the more people who become immune the less easily the virus can spread.
That’s assuming, of course, that infection with the virus confers immunity. I keep reading that they don’t know for sure. But that merely means they haven’t yet tested for that. If this virus doesn’t confer immunity, it would be highly unusual.
And no, there’s no analogy to flu, because having a certain strain of flu does confer immunity – to that strain. It’s just that flu mutates quickly and in the process changes so much that it effectively becomes a new variety. Although COVID-19 also mutates (as do all RNA viruses), its rate and type of mutation has been slow in pace, and the variations on the COVID-19 theme are minor. In other words, there’s no particular reason to expect that a COVID-19 infection wouldn’t confer immunity for quite some time, probably long enough for a vaccine to be developed. Perhaps longer.
…[M]ost experts do think an initial infection from the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, will grant people immunity to the virus for some amount of time. That is generally the case with acute infections from other viruses, including other coronaviruses.
With data limited, “sometimes you have to act on a historical basis,” Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a webcast with JAMA this month. “It’s a reasonable assumption that this virus is not changing very much. If we get infected now and it comes back next February or March we think this person is going to be protected.”
And speaking of a vaccine, this seems encouraging:
Researchers at the National Institute of Health Rocky Mountain Laboratory injected the six rhesus macaque monkeys with the Oxford concoction, then exposed them to “heavy quantities” of COVID-19 — exposure that had consistently sickened other monkeys in the lab, the New York Times reported Monday.
But 28 days later, all the chimps were still healthy.
Let’s hear it for the chimps.
The health officials have so convinced themselves that this is a mini Black Death they are struggling to cope with the reality.
Like the colds CV is related to, it goes fast and with small effect to most people. It is excellent news that so many asymptomatic people are being found. But hardly surprising — unless you were determined it was a new plague.
Do facts even matter anymore?
Griffin:
Facts matter – if people have access to them and understand them.
That’s two huge “ifs.”
Propaganda can beat facts, and the MSM is now nearly completely devoted to propaganda. And education has been so dumbed down that a great many people can’t process facts very well, especially if those facts concern math or science.
How can they simultaneously hedge on the issue of whether infection leads to immunity, yet at the same time advocate for immunization? If natural infection doesn’t lead to immunity, immunization won’t either.
neo,
Yeah, I wasn’t being totally serious but with the constantly shifting goalposts it does seem like facts don’t really matter because they just wave them off because they are on to the next target.
Griffin & Neo
It depends which ‘facts’. While this prison study is notable and should be covered by the MSM it’s only part of the story. According to the CDC New York state had between 4,000 and 5,000 deaths from the flu in each year from 2014 to 2018. Yet, they have had over 22,000 deaths from CV-19 in two months this year. Those kind of facts are pretty significant. And since CV-19 is still unknown it makes sense to be cautious even when studies show positive signs.
We are in a state in which the headline writers, and the sound bite impresarios control the information flow; because that is as deep as most people go.
We are all familiar with instances in which the headline bears little resemblance to the facts in a story; and we know that frequently comprehensive statements are creatively edited to convey a message that is foreign to the original intent.
I don’t really know how to overcome this. Trump’s tweets are one weapon; and would probably be more effective if he were more disciplined.
As for the revelations from the prison populations, I would bet there is a 100% chance that they will be spun both clockwise and counterclockwise, depending on the spinner.
Montage,
Not many even the most skeptical argue that the NYC metro hasn’t been hard hit but that shouldn’t mean everybody else should be treated like them. That is my biggest issue with this and I think has been the driving factor in the ruin being unleashed on the country when it’s been pretty obvious for awhile now that NYC is a pretty special situation for many reasons mentioned here and elsewhere.
It doesn’t say when the samples were drawn. It just says ‘last week’. The median lapse of time from exposure to onset of symptoms is five days and 97% have symptoms within eleven days if they’re affected by this. I would think if you were going to have a sudden wave of convicts falling ill, you would be seeing hundreds of cases already.
Art Deco:
I agree.
Another curious study comes out of Australia, which says that adults don’t catch covid from kids. It goes against everything I have ever heard about kids being vectors for the flu:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/26/children-unlikely-to-transmit-coronavirus-says-study-cited-in-pms-push-to-reopen-schools
Taxonomically, Rhesus macaques are “Old World monkeys”
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Cercopithecidae
Genus: Macaca
Species: M. mulatta
Chimpanzees are tail-less and thus assuredly not monkeys, and are —unstrictly speaking— more closely related to Homo sapiens than to M. mulatta.
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Pan
Species: P. troglodytes
H. Sapiens
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Haplorhini
Infraorder: Simiiformes
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Homo
Type species
Homo sapiens
Linnaeus, 1758
Montage on April 28, 2020 at 4:33 pm said:
Griffin & Neo
It depends which ‘facts’. While this prison study is notable and should be covered by the MSM it’s only part of the story. According to the CDC New York state had between 4,000 and 5,000 deaths from the flu in each year from 2014 to 2018. Yet, they have had over 22,000 deaths from CV-19 in two months this year. Those kind of facts are pretty significant.
* * *
These kinds of fact are significant as well: maybe it’s not a good idea to deliberately send infected people into the most vulnerable populations, if you want to keep your death stats low.
https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/04/27/mark-levin-calls-out-huge-scandal-ny-sending-virus-patients-to-nursing-homes-ny-allegedly-refused-to-send-to-usns-or-javits/
BTW, that was linked in Neo’s post yesterday — but maybe you had the day off.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/04/27/on-cuomo-i-wonder-whether/
‘Maybe you had the day off’
I doubt that. The work never ends for a troll so no time for days off just off trolling somewhere else I’m sure.
Haven’t seen ‘manju’ here lately though. Has that handle been retired from the troll roster?
AesopFan & Griffin,
Yes, I take a day off to work, actually. My place of work is shut-down but my specific job is important so I still log some hours why we wait to get back up and running.
I did see the NY nursing homes article this morning. It’s bad but according to AARP [who oppose the action] those being moved were only those patients recovering from Cv-19 and because there was a lack of hospital beds and the states [esp NY] were trying to find solutions to that issue.
A spokeswoman for a trade group for California hospitals urged hospitals and nursing homes to work together. “This is not a situation of good and bad, good guys and bad guys,” said Jan Emerson-Shea, vice president for external affairs for the California Hospital Association. “Hospitals absolutely do need the ability to discharge patients who no longer need that level of care.”
https://www.aarp.org/caregiving/health/info-2020/coronavirus-transfers-to-nursing-homes.html
That vaccination study on the chimps does sound very promising. I heard the CFO of Johnson & Johnson, on Fox Business, saying they confidently expect to have 800,000 doses of a vaccine by early 2021, and a billion by the end of next year.
Alan Lotion,
If that’s from memory that’s impressive!
The prison testing results in Michigan have been hailed, by Governor Whitmer, as proof that her plan is working. House arrest will end on May 15th. The hospitals are empty. Next step: move everybody who’s now in lock-down, into the hospitals, for an indefinite term of imprisonment. If the inmates get sick, the doctors and nurses will be right there. CNN on every TV, in every room. It’s a socialist utopia.
The so-called co-morbidities of the elderly are evidence they were already on a glide path to death; it’s just a question of rate of descent.
A case example is my son-in-law’s mother, who recently expired in Boston after ten days on a ventilator in the ICU…at age ninety! She had been on dialysis for kidney failure for seven years. The family insisted she be intensively treated, so she was. Occupied an ICU bed that could have been used for a younger, more salvageable person, in Boston, a COVID hotbed. What were they trying to save her for? More dialysis? She died of COVID, of course, not because she was very old, very frail, devoid of working kidneys; we have no codes for being biologically out of gas.
What has happened to the old maxim that “pneumonia is the aged pensioner’s friend”?
Cornflour:
Is Governor Whitmer just Nurse Ratched incognito? Relocated from Oregon to Michigan, a long flight from the nest?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_Ratched
“those being moved were only those patients recovering from Cv-19 and because there was a lack of hospital beds and the states [esp NY] were trying to find solutions to that issue.” — Montage
Thanks for the link – the AARP is absolutely right to oppose those orders!
The sentence you excerpted is the ONLY one in the whole post that even tepidly supports this abysmal policy diktat.
You are scraping the barrel here to defend Cuomo and other governors who are putting still-sick people “recovering” from COVID (a disease so terrible we have to stay cowering in our homes until April 30, no May 15, no July, nonono at least 2021!) into nursing homes already full of the elderly and otherwise ill.
“Hospitals absolutely do need the ability to discharge patients who no longer need that level of care.”
But why displace existing residents?
AARP again:
That list of alternatives supports the major point that was made by Levin, which is what makes this situation a scandal rather than just poor judgement: there were ample facilities for the recovering COVID patients other than the facilities full of the most endangered faction of the public.
“those being moved were only those patients recovering from Cv-19” – which has kept the world in a panic for months, in case some child swinging in the park infects the city and kills everyone;
“and because there was a lack of hospital beds” – because they didn’t choose to use the ones they had;
“and the states [esp NY] were trying to find solutions to that issue.”
Some solutions are worse than others.
Montage:
Considering that AARP was and is all in on Obamacare to me their credibility on anything is about the same as an epidemiologist’s model of the Wuhan virus. So the state of NY botched it and panicked sending infected Wuhan virus patients back to facilities that had as yet uninfected but vulnerable patients, this happened after the situation in western Washington was old news. AARP covers for progressives policies, shocked?
“Alan Lotion” should be “Alan Potkin.” Yikes!
Cicero:
It depends on how you define “elderly,” how many co-morbidities they have, and what those co-morbidities are.
For example, would you say an otherwise-healthy 65-year-old with high blood pressure as the only co-morbidity is “on a glide path to death; it’s just a question of rate of descent”? Only insofar as we ALL are on such a glide path. But ordinarily, the person I just described would be expected to have an excellent chance of many good years ahead, although of course not quite as good a chance as someone the same age with absolutely no health problems at all.
For the example you gave of your son-in-law’s mother – yes, your description is almost certainly accurate. It is probably also accurate for the vast majority of people in nursing homes, whose median life expectancy is only 2.2 years. But for quite a few of the people over 60 with co-morbidities who are dying of COVID, your description does not fit. Life expectancy for someone with type II diabetes (another common co-morbidity) is not as good as without it, but it’s still quite good. For example:
The variations have to do with lifestyle issues such as exercise, and how well-controlled the diabetes is. But we’re not talking about people at death’s door here.
I realize that you know all of this already, since you’re an MD. That’s why the thrust of your comment surprised me.
Cicero,
I’ve searched for it several times in the past week or so, and can’t find it, but I distinctly remember reading at least two articles in the early stages of this where the Oxford epidemiologist responsible for the COVID projections used by the WHO and many nations (Neil Ferguson?) also listed the percentage of projected COVID-19 expirees who would likely die within the year, regardless. I remember it being a fairly sizable percentage. I just found this at reason.com Maybe this is the quote I heard? https://reason.com/2020/03/27/no-british-epidemiologist-neil-ferguson-has-not-drastically-downgraded-his-worst-case-projection-of-covid-19-deaths/
AesopFan,
I agree with AARP as well – that this action is dangerous or worse. I only included that one quote because I wanted to point out that Cuomo is not purposely doing this because he is evil. You might disagree. I think he and others around him were looking at the number of cases and the potential problems with a lack of hospital bed and this was a solution. Sometimes the best solution is the least worst solution. I’m not sure this one is the least worst but I know that the medical community and hospitals in NY have been overwhelmed and doing the best they can. Trump too is doing the best he can and the media doesn’t give him a break.
Perhaps that is really the crux of this. If Trump made this decision the MSM would be all over him. Cuomo does it and few in the media mention it at all. So in that sense I agree with you.
Governor Whitmer was pegged as Nurse Ratched on March 28, 2020 btw:
“So, MI Governor Gretchen (Nurse Ratched) Whitmer has just been exposed as a lying POS on cable TV”
https://www.discussionist.com/10152154940
I kind of liked “Alan Lotion”. 🙂
Branch County… mention of this, neo, caused me to attend. I drive through it once in a while. It’s not an especially obvious location for a prison, to my mind, but upon checking the state DOC map, it seems to be the furthest-southwest correctional facility in the state. Interesting.
Rufus:
Thank you for seconding my motion with Neil Ferguson!
Quillette’s Jonathon Kay tries to home in on the transmission of coronavirus in his layman’s analysis of COVID-19 Superspreader Events. Interesting (and hopefully useful) information…
“I only included that one quote because I wanted to point out that Cuomo is not purposely doing this because he is evil. ” – Montage
There is some indication that either Cuomo didn’t even know he was doing this, or he’s throwing his health advisors under the bus.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/28/cuomo-claims-he-didnt-know-about-new-york-rule-forcing-nursing-homes-to-accept-elderly-with-covid-19/
Either way, you are certainly correct that the press gives the Democrat governor a pass they would never extend to President Trump.
“Trump too is doing the best he can and the media doesn’t give him a break.
Perhaps that is really the crux of this. If Trump made this decision the MSM would be all over him. Cuomo does it and few in the media mention it at all. So in that sense I agree with you.”
Regardless of Cuomo’s intent and actions, it was a criminally stupid decision for anyone to make: there were other ways that the discharged patients could have been accommodated, but they just didn’t take the time and care to find them.
BTW, on the double standards of the press, here is another example where a Republican gets vilified while a Democrat doing almost exactly the same thing gets ignored.
https://spectator.org/reopening-georgia-and-colorado-a-study-in-double-standards/
Of course, the Bee has the last word on double standards:
https://babylonbee.com/news/judge-dismisses-sexual-assault-allegations-against-biden-on-grounds-that-he-is-not-a-republican
More from the Bee, just because we need the laughs.
https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-said-good-morning-heres-how-12-different-news-outlets-covered-it
https://babylonbee.com/news/inspiring-celebrities-spell-out-were-all-in-this-together-with-their-yachts
You can google plenty of news articles about defective, inaccurate test kits being found, usually provided by some Chinese manufacturer. Sometimes as bad as only 5% accurate.
I’d be wondering if the test being given to the prisoners are even giving valid results, if so many show positive with no symptoms.
What if relatively isolated nursing homes and prisons are the last places to get infected rather than the first places to get infected?
We sure need more antibody testing.
Damned hard to do the isolation, contact tracing, social distancing in a semi-controlled environment like a prison. /sarc It might even be argued that the prisoners are safer from infection when locked up, assuming that the inmates are not actually running the institution, since in theory, in a prison the authorities control ingress/egress, and all the other social interactions. What could go wrong? Ask Jeffrey Ep … aargh, the first COVID-19 fatality in NYC? ;(
JFM,
That is a very clever observation. I hadn’t thought of that, but it makes empirical sense. The staff at nursing homes certainly wash their hands more often, and follow better hygiene protocols than the kid handing you change at the local gas station mini-mart, and who knows who touched the pump handle before you gas’sed up your vehicle. And nursing homes are disinfected and scrubbed more often than your local Taco Bell.
A recent CDC survey yielded that among more than 9,000 U.S. health-care workers who contracted Covid-19, the median age was 42 years old, with 27 deaths.
Do the math!
The death rate, 27/9000=0.003.
That is 0.3%
Hardly a figure sufficient to set your hair on fire.
Doctors, nurses and others in health care have been chronically negligent in following the advice of Dr. Semmelweis in Hungary, mid-19th century, to wash their hands between every patient.
In contrast to the preceding data, with its median age of 42, “the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas… analyzed national data of licensed physicians and found that roughly one-quarter of physicians are over 64 years old and one-third are over 59. California and New York had the highest number of older physicians.”
So a large number of MDs are in the COVID high-risk category by age.
Fox News is reporting that, globally, starvation will kill more than COVID, way more, according to the FAO, a UN arm. 3rd world is as shut down as developed world, so farmers are not farming planetwide.
In the US, meat processors have been told by Trump to keep producing, or, under his emergency powers, he will take them over and get the chickens, pork, and beef out to us (? virus-contaminated?).
Me? I’m going to put chicken and meat in my freezer. Today. It will keep!
Tyson precipitated the move, IIRC, so as to forestall litigation over their working during the lockdowns if a state wanted more stringent closures.
BTW – on the 50 (57?) experimental cohorts in America — SD likes their choice so far.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/south-dakota-governor-refused-to-implement-stay-sat-home-orders-her-citizens-throw-her-a-parade?utm_content=non_insiders&utm_campaign=dw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=housefile&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8wkUlBMZOCN3e49uJQCC_G6wyamEH7dPFquPOM2GzxwASE2lLq460ZYMQ5gSFKU5uoZnLJQ4uO6OzT7lCRYAoHS7cKuQ&_hsmi=87132875
South Korean study today indicates that you can’t get re-infected after you recover. Apparently there was a flaw in the tests that gave a false positive to some recovered patients.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-patients-cant-relapse-south-korean-scientists-believe-rkm8zm7d9
Cicero:
Not like you eat raw chicken or raw ground beef as a default menu item? Oh, but that was salmonella and e. coli, those are old news. They never kill anyone, aargh! I wonder does cooking your poultry and beef to the safe temperature ~ 165 deg (have to look it up) protect you from the Bat pox? Let me take a leap of faith; yes for $10,000. 🙂
Amadeus:
Good to hear, and not at all surprising. I have written (somewhere!) that it would be highly highly surprising and unusual if the virus worked that way (re-infection) except in highly immuno-compromised people.