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Comment by notlukesky | Hacker News Reader

Not condoning Google but the mortality rate increases with every age bracket and is much lower under 50 years of age. I would assume that the Google office is quite young.

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It's a good thing none of those young google employees have parents, siblings, or friends over the age of 50!

/s (in case it isn't obvious)

Sure, but they don't contribute to Google. (/s)

Sure, but as its morality rate is bad in some age brackets, we should protect those people in the age brackets, meaning self-isolating is a good idea to avoid spreading it further.

But mortality isn’t the only concern. The virus can non-fatally damage the respiratory system. More importantly, there’s the problem of people passing it on to their older friends and family members

And there's evidence that someone can be reinfected after they recover, so this isn't like a flu where once you catch that strain, you gain immunity, you can get covid-19 multiple times. And subsequent infections may be worse.

So do everything you can to avoid it in the first place -- ideally I'll avoid it until a vaccine is developed. (fingers crossed that a vaccine really will be developed)

Apparently some viruses go into remission then come back. I'm not sure if they know if they caught it a second time, or if they "recovered" but really didn't. Either angle has some terrible implications. Hopefully it's rare.

Yeah, that's another theory, that it's "bi-phasic" and comes out of remission, but there's less evidence for that than for "you can get infected twice".

There is no evidence for reinfection, people assumed it was that, but according to specialists it's more likely it works the same as with other viruses

"THREAD/1: We saw now several reports of reinfection and I wanted to talk a little about that. While immunity induced by SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and human CoVs is not very long lived, an immune response is typically induced and antibodies persist for 1-3 years."

"2) Now, there is evidence that people with COVID19 mount an immune response (e.g. https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.20.20025841v1). That makes re-infection, especially short-term extremely unlikely. What is more likely is, that the patient is still shedding virus but some of the tests were negative."

"3) Follow up tests can turn positive after a few negative tests, e.g. because sampling was better. Also, and this is a very important point, just because somebody still tests positive in a nucleic acid based test, does not mean they are still shedding infectious virus."

"4) E.g. Measles RNA can be detected for months in patients, long after infectious virus shedding has stopped. This is also the case for other viruses. And I think this is the most likely scenario here."

https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/12333387467890360...

On the other hand, Japan said they found a clear case of reinfection:

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...

You can debate whether or not it's really a reinfection or not, but no one is going to really know for sure until quite some time and further studies can be done.

So for now, I wouldn't count on immunity after catching the disease.

Japan may not be the best source for anything right now, their response is a bit in panic.

I'd personally watch any publication from Singapore in this regard - one of their primary learnings from SARS was to become a biotech hub which enabled them to rapidly scale testing in this case and you can assume they have very good surveillance of existing cases.

The Singapore ministry of health site on the topic is really the model of what governments should do in these situations.

https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19

They share details on all cases, along with the result of the investigation around whom they have been in contact with and where they have been.

They also created a dashboard with all information: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/7e30edc490a5441a874...

The rate of employees with young children and grandparents is pretty high.

What makes you think Google employees only care about themselves? You don't think they (and we) should care about the more vulnerable members of society that they will infect?

Young children are not at risk, unlike the flu.

Young children are quite touchy among peers and great at spreading disease to their families. Which means toward peers grand parents.

less at risk is not the same as not at risk. At any rate there are children that have immunity problems that as the virus spreads I worry it will effect them - for example MBL deficiency and it's susceptibility to respiratory ailments https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/mannose-binding-lectin-def... https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/191/10/1697/789682

I think you are taking common idiomatic English and interpreting it as though it is meant to be precise.

"Not at risk" does not mean 0 risk, it means negligible risk.

For example, if I was standing on a cruise ship, am I at risk for drowning? Not really, it's extremely unlikely that I would drown. Could I drown? For sure, I could fall in the ocean, or in the pool, or pass out into a bowl of soup. Despite the nonzero possibility of drowning, if someone saw me on the cruise ship waiting in line for the buffet and yelled "be careful, you are at risk of drowning" at me, I would think they had lost their mind.

But as long as you just keep standing on the deck, you're not going to drown.

But even though the risk of infection is low, I wouldn't say that a child is "not at risk" of contracting the disease if their dad catches it at work and brings it home.

I'd say that he's "at low risk", not "no risk".

Again, not at risk means not at risk. "At risk" means more than average risk. Not at risk means the opposite in common usage, it means much below average. Nobody said anything about "no risk". "low risk" and "not at risk" mean exactly the same thing.

https://www.macmillanthesaurus.com/at-risk

It seems like children are 10 times less likely to get it, though that's very rubbery numbers (based on children being 2% of cases in China despite being about 20% of the population, not that I really trust the numbers are accurate). A 0.1% chance of death (or even 0.01%) is still concerning.

The problem with MBL deficiency which can be a problem among younger children is that it makes you more susceptible to catching respiratory ailments and suffering worse from them. So as this is still in early stages we might not know how it effects children with MBL deficiency, it might be very bad for them.

So a paper has quoted 0 deaths for under 10 year olds, and you interpret that to mean that children are immune?

Planes crash, the Airbus A380 has suffered 0 crashes, so would you interpret this to mean the A380 cannot crash?

I think a problem with this analogy is you are comparing children not dying from a disease they do have to an airplane which doesn't have the problem you mention.

Lets square up the analogy. So there are 0 deaths for children that get coronavirus, and about 1/5 of the cases have been among children.

Planes crash, and out of all the planes that have crashed about 1/5 of the passengers were children, if 0 of the children died would you interpret this to mean children can't die in plane crashes?

And yes, basically I would interpret it that way if it were true.

Ok, maybe I can make it closer to your analogy:

There were 0 deaths for children that get caronavirus, maybe you think children are much less likely than adults to die if infected? Planes crash, if the A380 has never crashed despite millions and millions of miles in service, would you interpret that to mean that an A380 is much less likely to crash than other plane models that have flown a similar number of miles and had a bunch of crashes?

Again, yes, that is just how statistics work.

Those children's grandparents are at risk, are you saying it is ok to cause 2nd and 3rd order infections?

They have zero fatalities so far. But don't for one second believe that having double pneumonia is a walk in the park and the lung tissue scars will be with you for life. I had pneumonia when I was 24 and to this day I have my reminders of that event. You end up with reduced lung capacity, scarring and you'll be more vulnerable to re-infection.

The tech industry's age discrimination is really paying off well it seems.

Unless you have cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disease or hypertension... Then the mortality rates can be up to 10% (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...)

I think if you have a low immune system also doesn't help. And all it takes is that you get a cold, which is unfortunately the worst period now, your body is already weak, and this virus as well, and it might get dangerous.

This story of the "only old people" is just to keep the majority of the population calm, which is good. However, it can happen to any of us to be in a bad period and this sh happens.

See my comment elsewhere about the otherwise healthy, young guy on a respirator.

And those young people dont have parents?

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