Nate Silver has some doubts about it.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1242514829610553347
this makes no sense.. hasn't the UK done like 200k tests and only had ~2k positives? If it's infected 50% of people, you'd be able to randomly pick people off the street and chances are they would test positive... why are >90% of tests in the UK coming back negative??
There is a difference between testing whether someone has the virus verses testing whether someone had the virus.
Maybe because they already had it and have recovered?
I agree that far more have been infected than numbers show but 50% seems a stretch.
The tests they currently do would not show someone who was infected but developed antibodies that defeated the virus. So there could be far more of those walking around than we know. Given that the death count in increasing I think that blows a common sense hole in the logic that 50% of the population was already infected.
Eventually we'll learn the true extent of infections and learn the death rates currently being tossed around were BS. But to say 50% of the population already has or had the virus sends off even higher BS vibes.
Rojo casting doubt about fringe claims instead of putting out a message in support of global public health
I see you, dawg
rojo wrote:
Nate Silver has some doubts about it.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1242514829610553347
I dislike Nate Silver more than any public figure.
He sensationalizes incompletely applied simple logic and acts like no one else can do his weak analyses when more conscientious almost always makes his observations irrelevant.
I certainly think the number of people infected in the UK is substantially higher than the official number, but 50% seems unlikely.
My personal health situation is indicative.
I now live in the East Midlands and I may have been infected. One prof at my university was infected, and showed the “classic” Covid-19 symptoms. He was in contact with another prof who got sick but did not show the standard symptoms, and is now well on the road to recovery. This second prof will never be tested but I had a meeting with her the day before she left with illness. Five days later, I came down with flu like symptoms, but three days on I am almost back to normal. I will never get tested.
It is difficult to say how many people got infected, had mild symptoms and will be just fine.
tgirl wrote:
... I came down with flu like symptoms, but three days on I am almost back to normal. I will never get tested.
It is difficult to say how many people got infected, had mild symptoms and will be just fine.
Supposedly there are 3.5M antibody test kits arriving shortly which would tell you about previous infection, if you qualify for one. I'm in the same boat as I had an infection a couple of weeks ago and not sure exactly what it was. I'd love to have one of those antibody tests but not sure how they will get handed out.
thisdoesntmakesense wrote:
this makes no sense.. hasn't the UK done like 200k tests and only had ~2k positives? If it's infected 50% of people, you'd be able to randomly pick people off the street and chances are they would test positive... why are >90% of tests in the UK coming back negative??
not if they already had it and recovered
We will only know when we can test everybody - or at least a really good sample of the population - and until that many test kits exist, testing will be targeted so will be skewed.
This is how science works: disparate opinions, doubt and debate.
Still, if the basic thesis is true, the future after the next 3 months is a lot less bleak.
If people develop immunity as a result of infection, at 50% already infected we would rapidly approach the point (within days) where "herd immunity" kicks in. That would end the health emergency right there. I think this 50% claim will be proven wrong quickly, unfortunately. Much as I would like it to be true.
The big problem with COVID 19 is that it can take up to a week after exposure before symptoms appear. Then, it can take 4-5 days before symptoms become severe enough to warrant testing. Even if testing is done quickly, there can be a lag of up to two weeks between the time someone gets infected and when they test positive. So, for every positive test we currently have, there could be an exponential number of people who were exposed while someone was contagious but had no idea they were positive. That is the main reason we are seeing hockey stick graphs for so many countries. So, even if 50% of the UK has already been exposed, that doesn't mean that they are out of the woods. It could just be that the worst is yet to come in terms of hospitalizations. All the reason more for China style isolation and testing. You do not want the other 50% to get exposed and have the entire country coming down with it at the same time.
ulsterscot wrote:
If people develop immunity as a result of infection, at 50% already infected we would rapidly approach the point (within days) where "herd immunity" kicks in. That would end the health emergency right there. I think this 50% claim will be proven wrong quickly, unfortunately. Much as I would like it to be true.
This. If 50% were infected, this would be over in 2-3 weeks.
My guess is it's at least 250,000 active cases and a number of recovered cases. If you look at a country like Israel that has done extensive testing (they pool their tests and only isolate individual tests when a pool comes up positive in order to speed up the testing process), the ratio of cases to deaths is about 550:1. Further more, when they identify a positive case, they take their cell phone and identify where that person has been and who they have been in contact with using tech that they use to bust terrorist cells. But using that ratio, you can estimate the number of active cases by looking that the number of COVID deaths in a country and multiply by the inverse ratio. So Italy with its 6,820 deaths, probably has on the order of 3.75 million cases (or more, obviously the Israelis are not identifying every single case), the US likely has at least 370,000 cases. It is hard to say without an antibody test, which is what it sounds like Gupta is hoping to get funding for.
Nate Silver also predicted Hillary would win the election..
- UK had 351 death in the last week and only 71 death before last week -> it's clear that there are much more infected people now than in the weeks before
- I think the PCR test is positive for 2-3 weeks (please correct me if you know the numbers better). Viral load sinks from the first day of symptoms and you are not infectious anymore after one week or so, but the sensitive PCR test can still detect viral RNA for some time.
- 90% of the tests are negative - and they are not testing random people but people who they suspect could bei positive
The Scot wrote:
tgirl wrote:
... I came down with flu like symptoms, but three days on I am almost back to normal. I will never get tested.
It is difficult to say how many people got infected, had mild symptoms and will be just fine.
Supposedly there are 3.5M antibody test kits arriving shortly which would tell you about previous infection, if you qualify for one. I'm in the same boat as I had an infection a couple of weeks ago and not sure exactly what it was. I'd love to have one of those antibody tests but not sure how they will get handed out.
Every other middle aged British man I meet is convinced he’s had it. One convinced he had it at Christmas, without any Chinese travel.
I have a wide social circle and do not know anyone who has tested positive.
I agree with time tells. Seems hard to make the numbers work back of the envelop unless (somehow) there is a much, much lower severe-illness % than everyone else has suggested...
Seems unlikely...