obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011 From: PDX (and now) London, UK Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: HansBolter quote:
ORIGINAL: obvert This is interesting. Not peer reviewed. From Stanford. Actual numbers of cases might be 50 to 85 times more than indicated from testing. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/antibody-study-suggests-coronavirus-is-far-more-widespread-than-previously-thought Just for kicks, if that is true in the US it would be 35,344,000 to 60,084,800 as of today's numbers!!! In the UK that would be 5,434,600 to 9,238,820! So that Oxford study stating 5 million might have already been infected a few weeks ago might not be as far off as it seemed then. I don't find this to be in any way as surprising as you seem to. Aren't something like 80% of cases exhibiting almost no symptoms? 40m people with no symptoms are not gonna freak out over having it. As far as anyone who is coming up with figures like the 80% exhibiting almost no symptoms, those are known cases. So using the premise of this study (and others) the total of asymptomatic cases could actually be much, much higher, which would be very surprising, yes. If the actual cases in the US are 35 million, but we've only got 700k+ known cases from testing, and 80% of the known cases are asymptomatic, what percentage of the "other" unknown cases are asymptomatic? Or do they have different symptoms, like a common cold, or just aches, or just a stomach upset, etc. Would it be 90% asymptomatic? Or more? The implication would be both positive and negative. Very good if so many had had it already, and the case mortality rate would plummet. Very bad it's so contagious and we can't keep it away from vulnerable groups easily. So we'll all be wearing face masks and not visiting elderly relatives for a good while. If reliable serology tests can be made in mass quantities, or even if these studies gain some traction from peer review and are shown to be reliabe, it could also mean opening things up more quickly and effectively.
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