https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22880335

Some possibilities: the number of asymptomatic carriers is higher than expected, these people were mostly infected at the same time and just haven't shown symptoms yet, these people were infected by a less severe variant of SARS-CoV2, the tests are simply incorrect, or the inhabitants of that homeless shelter are in some way non-representative of the population in general (e.g. they're all in their mid-20's).

They imply that those asymptomatic cases didn't all stay asymptomatic and that one was hospitalized, so I'm guessing the most likely explanation is just that most of them were infected around the same time, and the test just caught them before they started to show symptoms.

The CNN article has a picture of what a Boston homeless shelter looks like:

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/200417103746-01-pine-...

So yeah, it's a bunch of tightly packed beds. One or two asymptomatic carriers can probably infect hundreds in just a night.

Those appear to be just PCR tests that tell you if the person has an active infection or not. Those that are negative should get a serology test to see if they were previously infected. The combination of both of those tests would be a true indication of how far this has spread.

Of course, given how infectious this virus is, it's no wonder that half have been infected in the last 1-2 weeks at the shelter. There's probably little to no safety measures in place to help isolate homeless people at that shelter, so it would spread like wildfire.

Transmission via asymptotic carriers isn't a new thing. It's been known for months (e.g. the analysis of the first cluster in Germany) and is one of the main reasons this virus is so problematic.

I am actually surprised people aren't more concerned about the long term effects of COVID-19.

We have seen patients who got through it but were left with persistent neurological effects i.e. loss of smell, heart damage, weakened immune systems etc.

If people are asymptotic but have reduced life expectancy then that is a really big problem. Especially if we are talking about just letting COVID-19 basically run wild through healthy people.

> “It tells you, you don’t know who’s at risk. You don’t know what you need to do to contain the virus if you don’t actually have the details or facts,” said Marty Martinez, Boston’s chief of Health and Human Services.

Plans to reopen states are conditioned on testing, but how long --and will we ever-- have enough testing data (among the general population, not just those showing symptoms) to make the informed decision?

If we can't get the cotton swabs, the reagents, with the ability to test nationwide at scale, health policy experts will not be positioned to green light re-opening.

I wonder what the age breakdown was of those tested. It seems like there have been a couple of (very preliminary) indications that prevalence may be higher (and thus case severity lower) than we thought. It's probably too early to be optimistic, but I'm looking forward to getting more and more cases with better population samples than "people who think they have it", to get a better sense of what the rate of symptoms is.

These articles really need to state what kind of testing was done: RNA or serological.

Very different conclusions if 50% test positive for one vs. the other.

Probably better off on the street in the open air, than a 'shelter' full of asymptomatic COVID cases...

The most stunning testing result is the recent Stanford blood study in Santa Clara showing that potentially 50 times as many people have been infected with Covid as previously thought.

We might already have 50 million Americans that have had Covid before another couple weeks is up.

Of course the media won't cover this story widely, as it won't sell properly, there isn't enough sensationalism. It lowers panic (it would mean the Covid mortality rate is radically lower than previously feared, even versus common low estimates), rather than raising panic.

It's crazy that the US isn't putting a lot of manufacturing and money behind doing widespread blood testing to see how common Covid actually is. This should have been done a month plus ago. Based on deaths, 10-15% of NYC probably has already had it at this point and if so, we need to know that asap. I've been talking about this for months now, it's not a premise requiring any kind of specialized knowledge to grasp (obvious question: how widespread is the virus), and I've yet to see any media interest in it despite how blatantly obvious it is.

It's almost like there is some interest in ensuring we don't find out how far Covid has already spread. The first thing they should have figured out, is the last thing they're apparently going to figure out.