We’ve seen Wuhan virus studies on the west coast suggesting a tremendously greater infection denominator than was assumed and now we see a New York study that has comparable numbers:
John Hinderaker reported:
“Thinking about that study showing that 13.7% of pregnant women presenting for delivery at NYC hospitals in March-early April tested positive for COVID-19 AT THE TIME of admission. Unless one thinks pregnant women are more likely to have been exposed to the virus than other people in the population, surely must mean that ~15% of NYC has been exposed. (Recall also that the NYC study was only of active infections not of antibodies.) If so, then 10,000 deaths out of 15% of NYC (1.2 million) points to an infection fatality rate around .008, very much in the ballpark of seasonal flu,”
Our friend Bob Zimmerman, wrote of it:
“The first reliable numbers from South Korea and the Diamond Princess had shown death rates of about 0.9% and 1.2% respectively. While about ten times higher than the flu’s death rate of about 0.1%, it was also very clear then that these death rates were grossly high because of very large underestimates of the total number of people infected.
“Now we are getting better numbers on the total infection rate — including large numbers of healthy individuals who get the disease and never show symptoms — and the evidence is strongly telling us that the Wuhan flu is not that dangerous, killing mostly older and sick individuals, and doing it at the same rate as the flu.”
Bob is right when he summed up by writing: “For this we allowed the press and our power-hungry political class to nullify the Bill of Rights and bankrupt the nation? A lot of heads should roll. And soon.”
Update: Confirmed: Almost 15% of NY population infected with COVID-19
Have said this from the beginning. This is nothing but another ploy to get rid of Trump by smashing the economy and to see how much they could control people. There have been other instances – since the election of Trump – that I have said, “Glad my mother did not live to see this.”, but not am beginning to think sorry I lived to witness.
It goes much wider than Trump. It is a crisis not to be wasted by the power hungry at every level and on all sides.
The problem is that these percentage numbers are just now becoming known. As we continue to emerge from this particular scenario it will become even more clear that we were truly dealing with the unknown.
That was the problem, it is not any longer because we have better data and enough to see strong trends in data. Rarely is anything settled but we look a the trend lines in the data.