RAE
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Interesting short article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that basically confirms what I have thought since the start of this. New data from northern California shows that a MUCH higher percentage of the population may have already been infected with the virus than anyone knew (like up to 85 times more people infected than reported, based on the little testing that was done). If confirmed, that means that the fatality rate is actually something like 0.1 - 0.2 percent, not the 1.0 - 3.0 percent that some epidemiologists estimated. A fatality rate of 0.1 - 0.2 percent would be similar to regular influenza.
This really should not be all that surprising, when you consider the extremely small percentage of the US (and world) population that has been tested for COVID-19 so far. In most areas, the test was not available (and is still not readily available) unless you were both very ill, and met a bunch of other criteria that most people did not meet. So, if you are only testing a subset of very sick people, you are probably vastly underestimating the true rate of infection, and thus your fatality rate estimate could be off by orders of magnitude.
Of course, COVID-19 is much more contagious than the flu, which has allowed it to spread rapidly around the globe. And when that happens, you can strain hospital capacity in many places, since so many people are sick at one time, some very sick.
At any rate, I thought this was interesting. And if it's true, it's actually good news, because it would mean that something like 99.8% of people that become infected with COVID-19 do not experience life-threatening complications.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-da...5b77f94fcd14afe1a&reflink=article_email_share
This really should not be all that surprising, when you consider the extremely small percentage of the US (and world) population that has been tested for COVID-19 so far. In most areas, the test was not available (and is still not readily available) unless you were both very ill, and met a bunch of other criteria that most people did not meet. So, if you are only testing a subset of very sick people, you are probably vastly underestimating the true rate of infection, and thus your fatality rate estimate could be off by orders of magnitude.
Of course, COVID-19 is much more contagious than the flu, which has allowed it to spread rapidly around the globe. And when that happens, you can strain hospital capacity in many places, since so many people are sick at one time, some very sick.
At any rate, I thought this was interesting. And if it's true, it's actually good news, because it would mean that something like 99.8% of people that become infected with COVID-19 do not experience life-threatening complications.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-da...5b77f94fcd14afe1a&reflink=article_email_share