Nice summary of a murky problem.

Not to mention that NYC had a surprising number of people showing the presence of the COVID-19 antibodies. Ditto for Germany. The bottom line is that the initial models exaggerated the mortality rate and underestimated the spread. Time to update decisions based on these models.

In response to Dan Waylonis you said:

“Not to mention that NYC had a surprising number of people showing the presence of the COVID-19 antibodies. Ditto for Germany.”

Please understand that many of the testing being done are AD HOC and they aren’t actually scientifically approved, especially the “antibody” tests. The REALITY is that we DON’T KNOW the extent of how bad this is getting. Even the deaths aren’t being counted accurately because a large number of the bodies aren’t tested for COVD 19. You said:

“The bottom line is that the initial models exaggerated the mortality rate and underestimated the spread. Time to update decisions based on these models.”

Any SCIENTIST will have to ADMIT that MODELS are not a good method of determining the BEST practice of COVID 19. I am sick of hearing about models, we need ACTUAL data. BUT wait, we have nowhere near the testing done at least on the proper RANDOM testing to determine where we are. WE CANNOT RELY ON MODELS BECAUSE THEY ARE BASED ON A PERSONS OR GROUPS ASSUMPTIONS.

Isn’t that the TRUTH?

As was pointed out in another article, the Stanford study failed terribly in it's sampling.

"Volunteers" self-selected for testing, ensuring a bias to volunteers who likely thought there was a decent chance they'd had symptoms or been exposed...and they wanted to find out if they had antibodies.

For a person who had no reason to believe they'd had Covid-19, there was little incentive to wear a mask, take some bit of risk, and drive to be tested.

Introductory stats failure. Pretty sad.

*Not arguing that Covid-19 may be more prevalent than we think, but not to the order of magnitude suggested by this faulty study.

Amazing the criticism of these statistical studies when all of the initial projections were made without any data. At least these estimates are based upon data and there fore other researchers should follow up. A sample scheme could be based upon census data. Sample could be stratified by age. Instead of just criticism let someone else repeat the study with a better sample.

seems to be consistent with revelation of much earlier instances of community transmission and deaths. When will we see the UW model redone with new dates and rates of infection?

This suggests that we need lots of anitbody testing and lots of masks.

“"Volunteers" self-selected for testing, ensuring a bias to volunteers who likely thought there was a decent chance they'd had symptoms or been exposed...and they wanted to find out if they had antibodies.”

This is a pretty big assumption with no real basis. You can’t assume that the only group or most likely group to seek testing suspected they’d been exposed. We know that a large percentage of CoVid positive people are asymptomatic so simple curiosity is an incentive for testing. We’re being lambasted constantly with the message that this virus is incredibly contagious and can be picked up on surfaces, apparently from people that are 6 feet away (the mask requirement in addition to social distancing assumes this), etc. And that anybody and everybody may be carrying it do no need to suspect specific exposure to wonder if you have antibodies. We hardly need to throw this study out.

Without interviewing the testees you can’t say that it was a biased sample.

WE HAVE TO GET IN REVERSE GEAR NOW REGARDING REMOVAL OF STAY AT HOME!

Friday the WHO proved that being positive for ANTIBODIES of COVID 19 is NOT PROTECTION against REINFECTION.

And look at all the money now WASTED on the development of the ANTIBODY tests. Now that they do not provide protection against REINFECTION.

What this prove unfortunately is that COVID 19 has a short MUTATION perion, meaning it changes rather rapidly. The REAL problem with that is one infection and one VERSION (version 1.0) of ANTIBODIES do not necessarily work on VERSION (version 2.0).

Now if it mutates the GOOD way, it is lesser deadly, but it also can become a worse dangerous version.


THIS MAY FORCE STATES LIKE GEORGIA TO REVERSE COURSE.

BOY ARE WE ALL IN A SERIOUS SITUATION.

To quote an article about a large group of non-self-selected persons being tested for COVID-19:

"In four state prison systems -- Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia -- 96% of the over 3,200 inmates who tested positive for the coronavirus were asymptomatic. That’s according to interviews with officials and records reviewed by Reuters."

Everything we thought we "knew" and thus reacted to, was based on little to no data from highly unreliable sources that had very good reason to lie and/or are known to be incompetent....

Everything we "knew" had no scientific validity in estimating any of the critical numbers we need to make rational decisions.
We don't have any valid science about:
The actual mortality rate
The percentage of spread in the general public
The percentage of infected with no symptoms, but able to spread the virus

However, as time has gone by, all new data has leaned more and more towards showing that the original assumptions about:
The mortality rate was way too high, on the order of 100x too high
The spread in the general public was way too low
The percentage of asymptomatic spreaders was way too low

If these news data sets continue along the same path, then it is clear the virus already ran wild across the globe before anyone had a clue and that the true mortality rate may well be more typical of other viruses than the super-killer we have chosen to take precautions against.

Having said that, since this virus is clearly new to humans and it is clear that it has some effects we have never seen before and that our standard treatment protocols may be doing as much harm as good...

Basically, up until now I think we did the best we could with terrible information, but now we seriously need to ignore the old unreliable data and open our minds about the possibility that we over-reacted out of an abundance of caution.

We now need to apply some real science for a change so we can make more scientific decisions. These prison studies are a huge step forwards, we have some geographical based studies planned or underway, which is another good step.

I have no faith in the original information we got in the first few months, nor should we allow that data to color our thinking about newer data.

What are you talking about, "Mortality Rate"? NYC shows that Covid-19 has an infection fatality rate of at least 0.11%, which assumes that every single person in NYC has been infected. Seasonal flu only has an IFR of 0.04%. Over 50000 people have died in the United States just in the last month due to the disease.

@IFR and others,

Remember, we only just found out that the actual "first USA death" was not at the end of February in Washington State, but was in fact, right here in Santa Clara County on Feb 6th. And I would bet money that we will eventually find much earlier USA deaths.

The problem has been, and continues to be, that the huge bulk of the testing data is based on targeted people who already have good cause to be concerned about being exposed or they have actual symptoms. Thus the current world-wide testing has missed the huge majority of people who are in fact positive and has missed the even larger majority of people who were "exposed".

As with any other virus, the huge bulk of people exposed wont get the infection and the huge majority of those who do get the infection wont have significant symptoms or will have no symptoms at all. Most of these people wont get tested until testing becomes commonplace and cheap across the whole nation.

According to official numbers:
NYC tested positives 158,000 Deaths 12,068 Mortality rate 0.763%
NYS tested positives 288,045 Deaths 16,966 Mortality rate 0.589%
USA tested positives 986,000 Deaths 55,417 Mortality rate 0.562%
EARTH tested positives 2,970,000 Deaths 207,000 Mortality rate 0.696%

Now also remember, that the original "Mortality Rate Estimates" were in the range of 5-7%, but that official estimated Mortality Rate has been repeatedly adjusted DOWN to 4-5%, then 2-3%, then 1-2%, then 1-1.5%, then 0.5-1%, then, well you get my point.
The more people get tested, the higher the number of infected we discover.

These new studies are not just testing people who have reason to suspect they could have this virus, but rather, they are trying to test larger groups without symptoms. The best studies so far are like the prison-wide studies and the community-wide studies.

These new studies are calculating far lower Mortality Rates because they are finding vastly higher current positive infection rates and vastly higher rates of persons who have the anti-bodies, ie. the "recovered".

I assume that the death figures for most of the nations of the world are reasonably close to correct (excluding China and a few other nations), but the numbers for those who either are currently or were infected are vastly under-counted, thus the official estimated Mortality Rate is going to continue to go down.

It may never get as low as the common flu, but it's not the world-killer, not even like the Spanish Flu was.

At some point (and we may already have passed that point) the lock-down mitigation efforts for the virus will cause more deaths than the virus itself will.

[Post removed due to trolling]

@IFR

"NYC shows that Covid-19 has an infection fatality rate of at least 0.11%, which assumes that every single person in NYC has been infected."

Do your math better:
NYC population 8,399,000
NYC CoViD deaths 12,068
Mortality Rate if 100% of NYC residents were assumed to be infected 0.0143%

Also, remember that we were once told by the "experts" that the USA would see as many as 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in 2020.

I want to be clear, that for my family, we have been following the rules.
Working from home (since Feb 25), wearing gloves & masks, physical distancing, eliminating close contact outside our home, no travel...

In fact, I am the only one that goes out to get supplies once a week (at most) and I take precautions when I get home. My other relatives don't even go out at all, they get stuff delivered.

But, while we are not remotely wealthy, we are in a position to comply and be patient and we will manage to get by even if this lock-down lasts the rest of the year. My wife is still doing fully productive work from home and getting her full pay. We have a home and good internet access and enough money to buy what we really need and we are fully capable of teaching our child at home with the school district "distance-learning" program as a guide.

I am far more concerned for the rest of the people who are not as capable of shouldering the burdens now nor of recovering from the full impact after this is all over.

The longer we keep up these "precautions" to save lives, the more lives we will lose from the side-effects and the greater the damage we will do to those people who can least afford the damage.

Maybe many more persons have been infected - but nationally, there are a million confirmed case with over 50,000 dead. That is 5% dead.