We do not have good test and data based results for infection rates based on the antibody test surveys. Various statistical modeling and testing problems are discussed at the link to a Columbia University Statistician.
None of the COVID-19 antibody test are accurate enough for mass screening. In early April, the FDA gave an emergency authorization to its first antibody blood test for COVID-19. It was developed by Cellex. According to the company, the test agreed with positive results from PCR tests 93% of the time and negative results 96% of the time. This would mean that 4-7% percent false positives and false negatives.
If you have 1 percent of your population infected and you have a test that’s only 99 percent specific, that means that 50 percent of the time you will have a real positive and 50 percent of the time it won’t be. The Santa Clara California study with 5% infection rate is the product of statistical error.
We need tests with specificity very close to 100% accurately measure infection rates in the 0-3% range. 99% specificity and we are figuring out infection rates with about plus or minus 2-3%.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Yes, yes it probably would.
Well, if you don’t have a nefarious agenda, then either someone has misled you or you have misled yourself.
I will point out just one example on which your “facts” are wrong. If the Swedish ambassador said Sweden has 30% immunity, he or she is misleading you. If he or she said Sweden has 30% who have had the virus, or something like that, and you interpreted that to mean that 30% of the Swedes now are immune to the virus, you have misled yourself.
Nobody knows whether recovering from the Covid-19 disease gives the person immunity to the virus. A lot of people seem to be assuming that is true, but that has not been tested. There are some viruses that humans do not get immunity from. The Covid-19 virus might be one of them. We simply do not know whether those who recover from Covid-19 are immune to it.
Look very carefully at all the “facts” you are talking about. You’ve been misled about a lot of them (or what they imply), or you have misled yourself.
And we need to do human challenge vaccine studies to accelerate vaccine tests and approval. With this aggressive approach, we can probably have a vaccine ready in 6 months.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/united-states-should-allow-volunteers-be-infected-coronavirus-test-vaccines-lawmakers#
Testing our way out: https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/nobel-prize-winner-we-should-be-testing-30-million-for-covid-19-daily-81912389636
That is not the plan. The plan is to avoid stressing the health care system, and to provide some time to come up with treatments that, even if not preventing the diseases, at least allow many more to survive that end up in the hospital. And, of course, they have optimism that a change in the weather will shut the disease down and then reopen.
I do think there is a reduction in the disease in late spring, summer, early fall, perhaps to 1/3 the level of contagiousness. But that would probably be offset by ending shelter in place.
To be honest, I think we could end shelter in place, but only if masks/face shields were used consistently and by nearly everyone. What I am seeing is less and less mask wearing. Ending shelter in place where 90% stop wearing masks could be a large disaster. And likely.
I think we need face shields. They are less unpleasant to wear and you can see facial expression and recognize people better.
If it were up to me, my strategy would be to test everyone every 2 weeks. Virtually everyone stays home, one day and they test everyone. Anyone positive is removed and put up in hotels and motels…very sick go to the hospital.
The second time you compare the numbers of positive to the first time to decide when to do the third time.
If you have isolated everyone or very nearly everyone who has it, then everyone else can go back to work. You get a card that says you were tested. You have to show that going into work or going into a store.
Yes! Your first sentence describes it all, and the success we achieved from those very actions.
A virus won’t cease and desist activities so people can make a buck.
Drinking bleach will kill the virus.
That’s an interesting theory. The malarial drugs… hmmm….
That’s strange.
And annoying, because the low numbers in South Asia ARE very interesting.
Very much out of keeping with the story as currently told.
Want to start? Rather than just screaming second grade insults and refusing to provide data?
We get it, you are bored at home and you’ve found that your mum won’t let you watch porn on the family TV, so you get angry and frustrated.
But we don’t care.
No no. If you disagree then it is your obligation to scour the internet for hours until you agree with him. That’s only fair.
Either that or he doesn’t actually have anything and is hoping you’ll come up with something.
Assumes I watch Fox or CNN.
I assume you make up everything else too.
Do you get equally hysterical when someone urges westerners to go on a diet, because they might otherwise buy food from a poor country?
are you seriously this thick, or are you just trolling me? Do you really think there were no other cases at all? Just those 3 individual students? And they got locked up tight cos the Indian government is just so damn efficient, right? They hopped off the plane and were immediately quarantined along with the pilot, air crew and 300 other passengers on that plane. None of those guys slipped out.
Of course India doesn’t have any incoming Chinese. Italian or American businessmen. Indian tourists don’t visit China, Italy or the US. In particular they stay well clear of New York.
SMH.
I’m getting angry about how stupid we all are to allow unconstitutional lockdowns.
If there’s some point I’ve made that is incorrect state which and why.
As you were kind enough to explain how things work, please let me try the same with you. Viruses are always under selective pressure to become more infective, be able to better elude the immune system and be able to make the host more contagious. Viruses in the same body mutate and are in competition: the subgroup that is more capable to exploit the host prevails.
So in every infected individual mother nature is playing the evolution lottery with millions of tickets at the same time. The more infected people there are the higher is the probability that the virus becomes nastier and more difficult to eradicate. (Please note that viruses do not become less lethal with time, is the host population that becomes resistant as all that could die did die). And in the end wiping out humanity is bad for the economy too…
Something you missed – even if all NYC new infections fell to zero tomorrow, they may well have a 50% increase in deaths yet to come.
So 0.6% to 1.2% is probably a better estimate for purposes of comparison with completed IFR stats such as for the flu.
I merely pointed out that a “fact” you provided is false. You should have taken the time to dig out the original source, it might have saved you the embarassment.
More like Herd mentality!
I’d like to believe the readers of NBF are more intelligent then your average CNN/Fox News watching citizen. However some of the comments here leave me absolutely flabbergasted.
From cherry picking stats to not seeing the forest from the trees. Kinda explains how scientists didn’t believe Ray Kurzweil when he said the human genome would be sequenced in 14 years at the halfway mark they were only through 1%. So mainstream critics said, “I told you this wasn’t gonna work. You’re at seven years, 1 percent; it’s going to take 700 years just like we said.” Of course they went on to achieve the goal in the next 7% because the critics were thinking linearly.
This linear thinking is exactly what is happening here on NBF.
1) You do not appreciate the compounding effect of a contagious virus (if it was as contagious as we are told it is). There would be absolutely no way in holding back its spread and it would be rampant in developing countries with millions dead. There would be absolutely no way of hiding this. Not with everyone armed with a mobile phone and a twitter account
2) The compounding effect of the lockdown cannot be emphasized enough. People simply fail to see how this chain reaction will devastate developing nations. Sure we have welfare, healthcare, food banks etc, but those people don’t. You think you can just turn off the world for a month and have no consequences? You’re crazy.
nefarious agenda. I look at facts. I base my reasoning on facts.
The fatality rate, even in the worst hit places, is below 1%. I simply cannot see any justification for shutting down the world for that type of fatality rate. I also strongly dispute the categorizing of COVID19 deaths
Common sense needs to prevail. Look at the way Sweden has conducted itself. The Swedish Ambassador said the country has now got 30% immunity and will have herd immunity by May.
Repercussions of the shutdown will far exceed anything this virus has done.
Please I implore you to look at the facts. If this virus was really as contagious and deadly as they say it is, governments simply would not be able to hide the sick and the dying. Developing countries with densely populated areas and poor sanitation would be absolutely ravaged by now. There would be millions dead. Hasn’t happened.
but the most hardest hit areas are showing upwards of 20% infection rates. NYC is case and point. Even your bosom buddy Mindless accepts this.
Is your evidence. GOOGLE IT! Stop being a lazy sheep and GOOGLE IT! FFS!
that you are a complete 1d1ot. It’s not about the developed countries where we have some sort of welfare system people can fall back on. This is about the developing countries where people live day to day on what they can sell.
To make light of the suffering of others to come is beyond evil.
them eat cake, right? You got your 24k fridge lined with $12 per pint of ice cream. Let’s not worry about those in the developing countries.
said it was because they could not go outside dumb4ss.
Let me explain to you how economics works. We have 20 million new unemployed people. They will not cut down or eliminate certain items from their grocery lists. This means the retailer will buy fewer items from his supplier. Where is this supplier, invariably in some developing country. What does the supplier do? Reduce purchasing from the poor farmers. What does the farmer do when he can’t sell his products? He starves. Why? Cos he does not have a safety blanket like we do in developed countries.
BUT don’t worry, you won’t hear about the famines that will ravage the developing world. There will be no daily ticker of the dying on your CNN, Fox News or whatever corporate media station you tune into to.
how are you going to get herd immunity by staying indoors? Answer me that?!
There was a fall, but the stock market has been going up. Buy low and hold people! It could fall again, but probably only if the let up on the lockdowns backfires badly and quickly.
Oooh… somebody is getting angry about not enough sick Indians.
Vr Darshana: between .4% and .8%
WOW!: You are wrong!…0.86% fatality rate
So Vr disagrees by 0.06% while admitting there are error bars. Gets a lower number than you. And he is “Wrong!” in bold with an explanation mark?
Stop at the 5th cup of coffee before commenting. You have exactly the same numbers within the precision available.
The 3 early student cases were well contained. It was not until March that things started to slip a bit, and even then they did a pretty good job of finding the people that were in contact with the people in early March.
So it only really ran wild for perhaps 3.5 weeks. That is about 8 doublings. Say they had 4 uncontained cases. 8 doublings would put it at about 1024 cases before lockdown.
They would know if they missed early cases, as there would be unexplained hot zones later.
I don’t know whether you have some nefarious agenda or just have been misled,, but what you are peddling does not make any sense. Stop looking at your statistics and look at the big picture.
How many times have you seen a situation in which a single disease has overwhelmed the hospitals in Italy, Spain, and New York at the same time? That is all you have to think about to realize that the Covid-19 situation is an emergency that requires quick, drastic action.
We can disagree about which actions are the best ones to take, but for a country that is unprepared to respond to an epidemic, the simplest and most effective initial reaction to a communicable disease is quarantine, which is what most countries are doing, to a greater or lesser degree.
A few places, Taiwan and South Korea come to mind, were well-prepared and were able immediately to start to identify infected people, track down contacts, and isolate just the people affected. Most other places were not able to do that, so some form of quarantine was the only sensible option.
Most places do not want to maintain the quarantine longer than absolutely necessary, and are taking steps to prepare for other, better responses as soon as they can manage to get ready. Different places are choosing approaches that differ in numerous ways. Some of them will be more effective than others. Nobody knows ahead of applying those approaches which of them will work the best.
To those who are supporting this unconstitutional lockdown let me explain something how the world works when you wreck the world’s economy.
Over 20 million Americans have become unemployed. That means they will have less income for themselves and those they support. They will need to cut back on those items we take for granted. Let’s take for example coffee. Coffee is grown mostly in developing countries. When demand for coffee drops in the US, US retailers purchase less coffee from their suppliers in Brazil, Columbia etc. If the South American supplier cannot sell coffee he stops buying from the village farmer who is growing cocoa beans. The farmer in Columbia doesn’t have a safety net. He don’t have no food stamps or food banks where he can get himself some hot soup for his folks. What does he do? Turn to crime? Join a gang? Turn his crop to poppies? All options on the table there.
You see, it’s a chain reaction with dire consequences. BUT you will not be hearing about the suffering of the poor farmers in South America will you. You won’t have a daily ticker on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News etc, showing how many people are dying because they’ve lost their livelihood.
You are pretending the shelter in place did nothing. That takes ignoring to a new level.
Look up herd immunity. 6%? Not a chance. 14% not a chance. It will likely take in excess of 70%: https://www.sciencealert.com/why-herd-immunity-will-not-save-us-from-the-covid-19-pandemic
New York was on an accelerated pace because of positive Uber drivers, public transit, and a totally botched local government response.
http://longisland.news12.com/story/41866283/nyc-mayor-man-hospitalized-with-coronavirus-is-uber-driver-on-long-island
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/seattles-leaders-let-scientists-take-the-lead-new-yorks-did-not
Talk about liberal use of stats buddy!
You are wrong!
It’s plain and simple and you cannot twist the stats! 17300 deaths divided by 8.4 million x 0.25 = 0.86% fatality rate. Granted this high but it is the highest for all large population areas. So it is the exception and not the rule.
I’ve also questioned the official COVID19 death stats as they are classing all deaths as due to COVID19 despite the vast majority of patients had at least one comorbidity.
because you’re ignoring the big picture and you don’t know how stats work. The calculations are not linear.
New York is an outlier and does not follow the trends of the rest of the country. Other cities are much lower. With more healthy people being infected herd immunity will come into effect.
Absolute GARBAGE!!!
India had it’s first official COVID19 test in January. Numerous Indian students study in China and in particular in Wuhan. If the first official case was in January this means with certainty there were infections much earlier.
I bet you’ve never been to India. If you have you’d know it would be impossible to successfully implement a lockdown. People live in densely populated areas with poor hygiene and sanitation.
Note that India started a lockdown on 25th March. If the virus is as contagious and deadly as we are being told it would have absolutely ravaged India (and similar countries) by that date. There is absolutely no way of disputing this.
know
Equatorial countries that have been battling malaria for decades by using derivatives of chloroquine seem to have fared much much better than the US despite having much lower standard of health care.
It would appear there is obviously some thing different about their diet, location, climate, genetic make up, etc that is keeping them less susceptible to Covid than US citizens.
the problem with this is again, sensitivity and specificity. If the true rate was 0%, you’d still get anywhere from 0 to 7% because the antibody tests all share the same flaw.
The only places where you can get some estimate of the IFR (infection fatality rate) vs the CFR (case fatality rate) are places where you’ve got more infections than the error bar rate of the underlying tests.
Places like New York City, for example. There, they have clocked 24.7% antibody tests, and at 18000 deaths / (8 million * .25) this puts it at .6% IFR. Throw in some error bars there and that is between .4% and .8% IFR, compared to a very well studied IFR mortality rate of common flu at .01%. It is therefore between 40 and 80 times as fatal as the flu IN PLACES WHERE THERE IS AN ADVANCED MEDICAL SYSTEM PRESENT.
Or in other terms, we are going through the equivalent of 40 to 80 flu seasons all at once with a virus which is about double as infections AS flu.
Second thing – we should assume that the number of deaths from this is far, far higher than the official statistics, just like the number of cases is far, far higher. In places like africa and south america – in the slums and favelas I’m sure that people are dying in large numbers without being counted in the official statistics.
Upshot – this is not the flu, not something to be shrugged off, and I’m afraid that we in the states are going to pay a big price for opening up too soon.
San Marino has a population of 33k. It’s smaller than Huntsville TX, or Bartlesville OK. I’d discount it on the grounds it’s too small a number to turn into a percentile (total deaths: 41)
A base principle of modern societies is that freedom and rights that are normally granted can be modulated/altered/cancelled through laws. You have an inherent right of movement but you cannot enter a nuclear weapons deposit without proper authorization, you have freedom of speech rights, but you will be held accountable if you shout ‘there is a bomb’ in a crowded theater or on a plane. Your rights are generally voided by behaving in a way that could be dangerous for others. This is a fundamental principle of lawmaking. Your general right of movement is now dangerous for everyone and this is why it is limited (temporarily). I must add that your evaluation o the virus lethality is missing a fundamental aspect: every year 5 millions patients get into ICUs. If Covid-19 saturates the healthcare system for 3 months you get 1.25 millions people that will die even if the Covid-19 lethality was exactly zero. So stop being an a**
The world most infected area is NYC
San Marino is the second, New Jersey and Belgium far behind “racing” for the third place.
Of course you can post links. Just strip off the HTTPS:// portion before you paste. Though it’d be polite to get a login if you’re going to post so much, so that other guests don’t get mistaken for you.
Looking forward to citations for your claims.
Want to go around risking exposing yourself to the virus? Go right ahead. Nobody is going to stop you, even in lockdown.
But thats not really what you are after, is it? What you want is other people to be forced to risk their health and their lives for your convenience and financial benefit.
Writing in the UK, but…. Yes the fatality rate seems low, and the it looks like the lockdown might not be needed, but thats because the lockdown kept the number of hospital admissions to a manageable rate and THAT kept the fatality rate low. Without the lockdown and a higher infection rate, the care system would have been overwhelmed and the fatality rate would have been a much higher multiple than the increase in the infection rate.
Big claims.
If you want to be taken seriously, provide citations we can evaluate.
For example, you claim that WHO said the prevalence is “between 2 and 3%” *FALSE*
WHO actually said “Early data from some of these studies suggest that a relatively small percentage of the population may have been infected, even in heavily affected areas – not more than 2 to 3 percent.”
Note what is ACTUALLY being said: not more than 2 to 3 percent – even in the most heavily affected areas.
https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—20-april-2020
“antibody tests have now been carried out in many countries and they all show 20x, 30x, 50x more infections then official stats.”
Evidence please. It’s certain that in man countries infection rates are far higher than the number detected, but that shows up in the fatality rates, if few cases are formally diagnosed the fatality rate of those that are diagnosed is higher, in countries that have solid track and trace the mortality rate (as a percentage of diagnosed cases) is about 1%, in countries with poor testing its more like 10%.
many countries? which?
I was forced to eat a Fruit Punch flavored Kool-Aid Gel instead of Cherry. I probably only ate one instead of a likely two for the cherry flavor. That counts right?
India was very late getting its first case. And they have done a lock down. I suppose the real question is how many Indians have the conditions that make this thing a killer. Not a whole lot of obese Indians. Though it does very State to State: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India
The lockdown is saving them: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/27/845352185/despite-the-pandemic-india-sees-a-drop-in-mortality-under-lockdown
Exercise! At home! Maybe you can eliminate one or more of those “comorbidities”.
Personally, I am finding it hard to keep my eating in check. At least, I am eating good stuff mostly. Made the best curry spice mix I have ever made. It takes me an hour or more to get that right. Made a big batch. Only problem is the food tastes too good. And I am bummed that I did not measure everything out and write it all down. But I have enough to last at least 6 months.
My basement flooded a couple weeks ago and it damaged my water heater. Would not hold a pilot. Could just be the thermocouple. But could be the thermostat. No hot water is really annoying. Still water down there and it is quite cold to work in…and of course all the important stuff is down low. My pump was not working either. Tried to hand pump…but that was pathetically slow.
Did I mention I have a flat tire? The tire shop is open…but I don’t want to be there an hour. I will probably fix it myself when I get around to it.
I am out of peanut M&Ms. Grueling.
Local food banks are giving people food who are running short.
Of course, does not have to end that way. I think we will find drugs that can end, or shorten an infection. Maybe it will be famotidine. That is the latest batter to the plate.
But this stuff takes time to find out…that is why all these measures are important…beyond merely not overwhelming the healthcare system.
“Cherry-picked”? These are the top comorbidities…if you can be bothered to look. And in the order of frequency: of 17,303 deaths in NY, 9,924 had high blood pressure. 6,448 had diabetes, 3,670 had high cholesterol, and 2,145 had coronary artery disease.
If you were to die today, chances are you would be listed as having one on these “comorbidities”. Tell me you don’t have any of these.
These are facts. You are the one cherry-picking taking results at face value even when the people who did the tests mentioned the issues with the tests. The tests at best can set an upper limit of what percentage had the disease…not the other way around.
The point of the story is to show that we know very little about how wide the spread is, and still can’t say what the mortality rate is. But if 5 or 6% have had this then we can multiply the number of deaths by 15 or more conceivably. Especially, as that is with most of the elderly hiding in their homes for months.
If what you are saying is true, then how did NY get so many fatalities? 1 in a thousand people in NY already died of this and they are at 14% max. That means it could get at least 7x worse. That is 121,000 fatalities just for NY. Herd immunity at what 80%? So make that 97,000, for 20 million new Yorkers. The whole country? That is 1,600,000 deaths. That is what you get with no lock-downs, social distancing, no events canceled and no masks. And it could be much worse with a stressed healthcare system.
Why can’t you post links? Other people can.
Also it will be much harder to blame the victims.
Can you point to any stats showing that there are any people who are actually going hungry because they are scared to go outside?
March to October 2020: “…a hypothetical one million G-20 deaths over the Covid-19 epidemic described as mortality at the population level; with results scalable over a broad range of deaths. We calculate the impact on period life expectancy (down 3 years) and remaining life-years (12.3 years per death), which for that many deaths can be valued worldwide at two to 5 trillion US dollars. The scenario of one million Covid-19 deaths is similar in scale to the decades-long HIV/AIDS and opioid-overdose epidemics but considerably smaller than the Spanish Flu of 1918. Unlike HIV/AIDS and opioid epidemics, the Covid-19 deaths will be concentrated in many months rather than spread out over decades…”
Those are very real stats that will lead to very REAL deaths.
More like 0.6% to 0.7%, if you look at the random antibody surveys in New York and Miami.
and other developing countries should be absolutely decimated by now if the coronavirus was as lethal as they said it was.
I’ve said this before and I will continue posting this, this virus is not as lethal as they are saying it is. All the evidence shows this. Pity I can’t post links but you can do a quick google.
You’re doing it again! Cherry picking stats! Look at the big picture. Despite everything the fatality rate is very, very low.
More people will die because they don’t have a job and can’t feed their families.
The top comorbidities are: high blood pressure, diabetes, hyperlipidemia (AKA high cholesterol), coronary artery disease. Don’t suppose many Americans have these issues. You are talking about throwing millions under the bus.
An estimated 100 million Americans have high blood pressure: https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/05/01/more-than-100-million-americans-have-high-blood-pressure-aha-says
“More than 100 million U.S. adults are now living with diabetes or prediabetes, according to a new report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes-report.html
“More than 102 million American Adults (20 years or older) have total cholesterol levels at or above 200 mg/dL, which is above healthy levels. More than 35 million of these people have levels of 240 mg/dL or higher, which puts them at high risk for heart disease.” https://www.cdc.gov/cholesterol/cholesterol_education_month.htm
About 18.2 million adults age 20 and older have CAD (about 6.7%). https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm
https://covid19tracker.health.ny.gov/views/NYS-COVID19-Tracker/NYSDOHCOVID-19Tracker-Fatalities?%3Aembed=yes&%3Atoolbar=no&%3Atabs=n#/views/NYS%2dCOVID19%2dTracker/NYSDOHCOVID%2d19Tracker%2dMap?%253Aembed=yes&%253Atoolbar=no
Meatpacking workers are desperately need, why don’t you go and exercise your freedom and rights.
Stop harping on about the Stanford studies. This was the first of the early lot of antibody tests. Perhaps it was right or perhaps it was wrong. It doesn’t make any difference since antibody tests have now been carried out in many countries and they all show 20x, 30x, 50x more infections then official stats.
WHO itself has come out and said the prevalence of the infection is between 2 and 3% of the world’s population. In a previous post I’ve highlighted how corporate media has twisted these stats to push their agenda i.e. we’re nowhere close to herd immunity. However they totally hid the main finding which is this virus is nowhere near as lethal as they’re saying it is.
Here are the stats again. 2 to 3% is between 150 and 250 million people. Official COVID19 death stats were around 180k when WHO made this announcement. That means the actual fatality rate is as low as 0.07%. I’ve also questioned the official COVID19 death stats as they are classing all deaths as due to COVID19 despite the vast majority of patients had at least one comorbidity.
Combine all of this together and you have a virus, which while deadly to the elderly and ill, is nowhere near as deadly as they are saying it is. There is absolutely no reason to be continuing with this insane lockdown which is depriving us of our freedom and rights.