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Ohio Prison Death Updates [pdf]

60 points| burgreblast | 5 years ago |coronavirus.ohio.gov

56 comments

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burgreblast|5 years ago

17 days ago we heard that 3,330 inmates tested positive, 96% without symptoms.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22980932

There was much speculation, but many people agreed that in 2 weeks we would have super interesting data.

It's been 17 days. We have an update from ohio.gov that tested individuals climbed to 7536, 4439 are positive (59%), total 49 deaths (.01)

Not an epidemiologist. Does this data fit the Diamond Princess model? Or more broadly, which model fits this data best?

Is there other data to show how many became symptomatic? How do we interpret this update, more than 2 weeks after initial reports?

sirsar|5 years ago

> total 49 deaths (.01)

If you're going to report other ratios as percentages, could you please be consistent? I initially erroneously read this as 0.01% deaths, which would be an absolutely enormous update, but 1% isn't surprising at all.

ecpottinger|5 years ago

Diamond Princess had a far higher percentage of older (over 70) people. I also would like to know if the HVAC system is as centralize in a prison as it is on a cruise ship.

cbarrick|5 years ago

The number of "inmates currently Positive for COVID-19" is 1,112, not 4,439.

I think you're counting tests, not people. Those numbers double count inmates who receive multiple tests, and it's likely that those who have tested positive will receive frequent retests.

FYI there's just under 40k total inmates.

vondur|5 years ago

I'd like to know the ages of the deceased, and if they had any other serious health issues. If the majority of the deceased are indeed old or in poor health, perhaps isolating those from the general prison population would be a prudent precautionary measure to implement.

Gibbon1|5 years ago

I keep seeing reports that after an outbreak has played out about 25% of infected never show symptoms and 60% have something between a mild cold and a bad case of influenza. The remaining 15% get really sick and ~1% die.

If you just look at the stats initially you run into the problem that a lot of infected are preasymptomatic are in the early course of infection. So retrospective stats are very important.

brohoolio|5 years ago

I’ve been thinking about the asymptotic cases in situations like this and the Roosevelt. I think if folks are monitored very closely for symptoms we might learn more about how it impacts people and what percentage of cases stay asymptotic.

stx|5 years ago

Keep in mind this is deaths so far. This number will change as some may take more time to die. So maybe the radio could be around 1% to 2%.

csomar|5 years ago

What's the average number of natural/usual death, though. You have to subtract that. It might be small/none or substantial.

npunt|5 years ago

There have been other state prisons that have released prisoners that were severe cases, so as to lower their death numbers. Look for that.

kiba|5 years ago

Don't forget we can't really acquire complete mortality data until the coronavirus run their courses in infected individual.

sdenton4|5 years ago

Just as an extra wrench in the works, an unknown number of prisoners have been released or transferred, probably after being deemed higher risk: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/regulation/court-ba...

So death rates may still be reduced by interventions. Take care, arm chair statisticians.

centimeter|5 years ago

> Take care, arm chair statisticians

FWIW, during this whole process, people reasonably described as “arm chair statisticians” have been putting out higher-quality and more accurate statistical analysis than any public-facing government or media source. The only high-quality analysis I’ve seen has been from “amateurs” (I.e. not employed by institutional sources of narrative information) and expensive subscription-only financial analysis services.

romaaeterna|5 years ago

30 of the deaths are at PCI, which is basically a nursing home for older prisoners.

EDIT: “Marion houses a high number of older individuals, many who have pre-existing health conditions. Pickaway houses our long-term-care center similar to a nursing home, and Franklin is our state prison medical center.”

Marion is 25% of the deaths. Pickaway 59%. And Franklin 10%.

elcritch|5 years ago

Then for the general population below whatever that age is (maybe 65?), you'd get roughly `(51-30)/4449 ≈ 0.47% FR` (non-PCI deaths/total positive). It's a bit unclear as it seems the numbers are changing as test results arrive. For the PCI cohort: 30/1258 ≈ 2.38% (deaths/recovered).

The 0.47% FR would seem much more plausible given the spread of the virus and the number of asymptomatic cases that appear to exist from serological testing.

dr_faustus|5 years ago

Considering they probably tested everyone so there are no unrecorded cases, a 1% death rate is pretty much in line with studies finding the CFR to be in the 0.5-1.5% neighborhood [1,2]. I would guess they are younger on average, but the prison population probably has some risk factors in terms of nutrition, insufficient Vitamin D, lack of exercise, etc.

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327 [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v...

skuhn|5 years ago

They tested 7541 people out of 39,082 inmates in quarantine. These numbers aren't inclusive of staff -- 556 tested positive, but how many were tested? Are staff quarantined to prevent spreading the infection out of the prisons?

The most recent information I could find says that Ohio has 48,765 inmates in total. They have quarantined 80% of prisoners and tested 15%. Their infection numbers are likely artificially low due to asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases.

whycombagator|5 years ago

I'd also be interested in how many have detrimental side effects from the virus, after recovery. Mostly all I see from covid numbers are black & white: died/recovered.

There was an article recently on HN that talked about the possible lasting effects of the virus[0]. I am interested to know how frequently lasting effects occur

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23127167

subsubzero|5 years ago

I think the better report to look into will be Lompac(southern california)[1], they have the higher % of infected prisoners, I think its been roughly 70% of the prison population has tested positive for covid. Analyzing these closed systems for a true death rate seems to be the only way we will get decent data regarding mortality. I don't see govt. officials going door to door in cities asking for people to prick their finger to analyze for covid antibodies. A few things to watch out for is prisoner transfers due to extreme sickness, also getting a age distribution for the prison like others have said here, another thing to note is prison food and env. is bad on health.

[1] - https://beta.trimread.com/articles/14963

rayiner|5 years ago

It’s an interesting question: how do you figure out whether these numbers are good or bad? Ohio has a prison population of about 44,000. So these numbers (actual plus probable) represent a death rate of 120 per 100,000. That’s ten times the death rate in Ohio as a whole. But it’s about half the death rate of NYC (actual plus probable). What’s the correct reference point? NYC seems like a reasonable reference, given that prison is an inherently high density living situation.

rtkwe|5 years ago

It's also a place where you have the power to force people to follow distancing and 'shelter in place' as long as it's not a dorm style prison. [0]

[0] Though even with those you can isolate it to particular rooms if you have the testing capacity.

kregasaurusrex|5 years ago

While this is a small dataset of tested individuals which may be proportionally representative to larger groups, it comes at odds with releasing PII with respect to individual privacy to see potential comorbities (old age, obesity, diabetes, lack of an auto-immune response, etc). We know that people with exposure to recycled airspace and live in close proximity are more likely to transmit covid to one another. Mask wearing and social distancing are actions that will have to be obeyed by everyone as a collective in order to work-- one may never know if they're an asymptomatic super-spreader without widespread testing. Cloth masks aren't for protecting yourself as much as they are everyone around you.

Within the data itself, it shows that quarantine and isolation are effective practices against spreading covid in a hotspot. This may be a good stop-gap measure while researchers are able to study it more, but government's responsibility at all levels of keeping people safe in returning to work has has greatly fallen short of expectations.

malkia|5 years ago

Stab in the dark - AFAIK, Testosterone level in males in Prisons is much higher than usual (I can't back up that claim right now, but have been reading posts related to it).

Then there is this - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7185012/

just the two clicked together somehow, but might not be related after all..

lvs|5 years ago

This is likely just about population age distribution in prisons vs the general population.

16% of the US population is 65+, but only 2.7% in (federal) prisons. So that must account for a decent chunk of it.

https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_age.j...

subsubzero|5 years ago

I agree that the age distribution does not match society in general, but take one thing into account, you have one group of people who have an extremely low death rate not in prison(children and teenagers) so this probably evens things out, extreme old age is not represented in prisons either, 80+ .

m0zg|5 years ago

I've read somewhere (but don't know if it's true) that prison meals are enriched with vitamins, and in particular with vitamin D. Could someone confirm?

Also, there are fewer old prisoners than old people in the general population.

rwmurrayVT|5 years ago

Personal experience tells me that it's most likely not true. I have seen a great deal of the food that we cooked in federal prison. I'd label the beverages like fruit juice being enriched as a "maybe".

We typically had lower quality of the same food stuffs you'd buy at the grocers. Protein/canned vegetables/"fresh" fruit/rice.