Boston Biotech Conference Led To 245,000 COVID-19 Cases Across US (cnn.com) 43
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A biotech conference in Boston last February that's already been flagged as a Covid-19 superspreading event led to at least 245,000 other cases across the US and Europe, a new genetic fingerprinting study shows. One single case seems to have been responsible for many of the other eventual cases, the team at the Broad Institute in Massachusetts reported. Their study finds two particular genetic fingerprints of viruses associated with the conference and then tracks those lineages across the US. One "was exported from Boston to at least 18 US states as well as to other countries, including Australia, Sweden, and Slovakia," the team, led by Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute, wrote in the journal Science.
One was especially bad. A virus carrying one mutation -- a small genetic change they've flagged as C2416T -- was apparently carried to the conference by a single person, and ended up infecting 245,000 people. A subset of the viral strain with a mutation known as G26233T ended up in 88,000 of these cases. "A single introduction had an outsize effect on subsequent transmission because it was amplified by superspreading in a highly mobile population very early in the outbreak, before many public health precautions were put in place," the team wrote. "While Massachusetts accounted for most early spread related to the conference, Florida accounted for the greatest proportion of cases overall," they added.
One was especially bad. A virus carrying one mutation -- a small genetic change they've flagged as C2416T -- was apparently carried to the conference by a single person, and ended up infecting 245,000 people. A subset of the viral strain with a mutation known as G26233T ended up in 88,000 of these cases. "A single introduction had an outsize effect on subsequent transmission because it was amplified by superspreading in a highly mobile population very early in the outbreak, before many public health precautions were put in place," the team wrote. "While Massachusetts accounted for most early spread related to the conference, Florida accounted for the greatest proportion of cases overall," they added.
Misleading Headline (Score:2)
It should read
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
99 people were infected at the February 26 management conference. To put that in context, the total number of reported cases in the US at the time was 60. Granted, there were no doubt 10x that many infected people in the country, but still 99 new cases was still a significant event. And they weren't all pharma executives; the people who worked at the hotel brought it back to their neighborhoods.
When news of the first cases linked to this conference came out in early March, I was flabbergasted. At the time of the conference the following three facts were clear (1) This was a strain of SARS; (2) unlike the original SARS it had the capacity for explosive community spread; and (3) cases had been found in over 30 countries. It'd be one thing if some church pastor failed to read that particularly writing on the wall, but Biogen is biotech company. Granted their field is neurological disease, but they must have known the rest of the industry had gone to Defcon-1.
Under the circumstances didn't Biogen cancel this conference? Biogen has never addressed this.
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Wired had a "Future of the Future" print version that had a story of a global bird flu pandemic. It was written from 20 years later and highlighted the many things that happened to make the pandemic worse.
One was a biotech virus conference early on where every researcher that attended took it back to their own labs... resulting in most of the virologists being killed and the knowledge base having to be recreated.
Of course it was fiction, but here was are with it being played out in real life, and us being l
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What is that "Repeat the Lie"?
Goebbel's would be proud of you
The US administration allowed tens of thousands of people to return from China AFTER this so called embargo, and they were never quarantined or tracked.
The ONLY thing that trump did was prevent non-Americans from travelling to US from China, while continuing to allow non-Americans to travel to US from Europe.
As in all things, tryumpovich makes half assed decisions, then claims to have been 100% right
I never suggested arresting anybody (it's your i
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Funny thing, the FIRST was came from Europe.
When will you realize that you are full of shit
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Because insurance. If they canceled proactively, it would have been on their dime because policies only pay out for force majeure, like when they're required by law to cancel.
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They probably thought the risk was low - after all, 60 cases in the US is a small risk versus cancelling. Remember this happened in February and the impact wasn't well known - the hope was it would be contained and be nothing more.
The same happened in Canada where the first superspreader event was a dental conference that also happened in February. Again, it was discovered the prevailing strain was from Europe and
Biogen (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Biogen (Score:5, Informative)
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"Exactly. And we know that the CDC said there were 20 million likely infections in the US in June."
What are you concerned about with that estimate.
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"Because it shows the numbers you guys spew out are bullshit."
I don't work for the CDC. Here's a better link https://www.npr.org/sections/c... [npr.org] than market watch, I'd be curious if you have the CDC link.
"If there were 20 million infections back in June, there would likely be 200 million today."
Why, I'm not at all sure 200 million is an obvious number.
"Yet the news keeps parroting the 16 million number as if it is accurate."
What's wrong with the 16 million number?
Infected? (Score:2, Interesting)
We had until today 302904 dead from 16308192 infected, that's 1,85737 %
So they caused 455 deaths at least.
Nice job.
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In most cases, they _don't_ infect others, or the pandemic would be much broader. As in most infections, a relatively small number of victims do a great deal of the transmission, even if it is accidental, because they interact with many people. A disease where each victim infects more than one other victim is _very_ rare.
Re:Infected? (Score:5, Informative)
Does this include the people who died in car crashes, suicides, and ...
No.
COVID-19 statistics are very highly scrutinized. https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
the opposite is true: COVID-19 deaths are probably somewhat undercounted. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/new... [umn.edu] You can, for example, look at the excess deaths: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov]
Re: Statistics (Score:2)
The person you replied to linked this already, but you don't seem to understand what it means.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov]
That's a chart of TOTAL deaths over many years with an estimate of what normal should have been. It doesn't matter how you want to classify them, that's the totals, then you can take guesses at what made it so high, so suddenly, starting this year.
So the what about cancer and car crashes can stop already. I mean it should have stopped many months ago when excess death data was rep
Somebody lied to you (Score:5, Informative)
I regret to inform you, somebody lied to you.
If someone gets in a car crash and dies, the death cerificate shows what killed them in section 32, on lines A-D, something like this:
A. Cerebral hemorrhage
B. Blunt force trauma to the head
C. Car accident
Line A is the specific etiology, the specific, immediate cause of why they are dead, not sick, injured, or scared.
Line B is what caused line A. In the case of the car accident, the cerebral hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain) was caused by hitting their head.
Line C is what caused line B. In this case, a car accident caused them to hit their head.
There is pretty much always more than line A, because if they only fill in line A they are doing it wrong. You can't put "car accident" in line A because a car accident could leave you just scared, not dead and not even injured.
The car accident causes your head to hit the windshield. Hitting the windshield causes bleeding in the brain. Bleeding in the brain causes death. So you won't see "car accident" on line A.
Similarly, someone killed by COVID will have a death cerificate something like this:
A. Respiratory failure
B. Pneumonia (infection of the lungs)
C. Covid
What that means is that covid infected their lungs, which caused them to stop breathing.
In 6% of cases, somebody fucked up and listed covid on line A.
That's wrong because covid isn't the etiology. Covid caused something which caused the etiology. You don't put "car accident" or "covid" on line A because that doesn't tell clinically exactly how they died. That's the 6% - 94% were reported correctly, with COVID on line B or C; 6% were filled out incorrectly.
About half of the covid deaths have respiratory failure on line A. That's because covid causes you to be unable to breath.
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Thanks.
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This virus has been around for over a year now and for most of 2020 it's been known that you can:
1. Get COVID, be infectious but not have symptoms.
2. Get COVID and be very infectious before you get the symptoms.
So how does that fit with your statement?
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That conference was held prior to the knowledge that the virus had reached the US. It also hadn't been labeled a pandemic by any authority by this point.
A claim without any specifics by an AC. Why do I doubt the reliability? It reads like a post from a Biogen flack.
The Biogen conference was held Feb. 26-27 (the dates are missing from most reporting, and also the Biogen list of conferences held this year [biogen.com]). The first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed in Washington state on January 20. By February 13 a total of fifteen cases had been identified in the U.S. On the morning of Feb. 26, when the conference could still have been cancelled the number was 60.
But what is
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Again, I bet the bean counters said "no, our insurance won't pay if WE cancel, only if the government MAKES us cancel." So they went ahead with the conference rather than (from their perspective) flushing the money down the toilet.
Its totally Ironic isn't it. (Score:1)
I was at PAX EAST down the street (Score:2)
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I was at RSA 2020 to 28 Feb. There was some Covid-19 there. Most of us were just careful, no hand shaking. I do not think that spread it much, certainly I talked to a lot of people and came back safe. That said, we did not then realize how infectious it was.