All the antibody studies in the US so far are showing that antibodies are present in at least an order of magnitude greater number of people than the official number of people with Covid-19.
This has huge implications for our response. Given this new data, LA is suggesting [1] that ~5% of the population of LA has already developed antibodies, which would mean the fatality rate may be as low as 0.10-0.20%. (For comparison, the seasonal flu is 0.05%-0.10%.)
Knowing if this is really the case for the entire nation would have huge implications for our response.
1. https://www.facebook.com/countyofla/videos/537241533852930/
Also, a raw fatality rate is useless in a vacuum. NYC has had a lot of deaths and if wasn't for the shelter in place, hospitals may have been completely overwhelmed. Fatality rate be damned.
Finally, comparing COVID-19 to the seasonal flu is simply incorrect in nearly all instances. For example, the seasonal flu fatality rate is likely much lower than listed because of how many cases never get counted. In order to even think about comparing the two, we would also need proper antibody studies done for the season flu in prior years and not just either presented cases or estimates.
Edit - added links to some information
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-covid-19-is-not-just-a-b...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/antibody-surveys-sug...
But the consequences are far from over and the number of deaths will keep climbing, so your "fatality rate may be as low as 0.10-0.20%" is completely off the mark.
edit: I am sorry if my tone was interpreted as confrontational. I otherwise agree with the parent's post that we need much more antibody testing.
These results may not be accurate either, though. At least some antibody tests give false positives for antibodies to other Coronavirus strains.
General lack of testing though is going to severely hamper our response to this. Overall unfortunately the federal government has failed to rise to the occasion.
https://theweek.com/speedreads/910226/excess-mortality-data-...
Frankly, it's just wishful thinking to cherry pick the highest estimate for the number of people who have been infected, and the lowest estimate for the number of deaths.
For epidemiological purposes, you only need a statistically valid sample, which is much smaller than "everyone".
For medical purposes, you only need to test people who are sick, which is hopefully also much smaller than "everyone".
I've seen it argued that instead of testing the sick (as we currently do), we should be testing individuals who are "high touch" and likely to infect others (even lacking symptoms). Medical staff, first responders. Pharmacy and grocery employees. Bus drivers. Etc. I don't know enough to argue this is a better approach.
That seems to be the main way this is spreading.
The other goal, as others have said, is to isolate, and contact trace the infected. And I add, early detection might also help with treatment, since the scant evidence so far suggests that pharmacological interventions that target the virus might be more effective early on during the infection.
If the goal is to just have everyone get it, but over a longer period of time, it doesn't matter a lot. But that's a shitty goal.
Testing for active infections will help identify people who should self isolate to slow the spread, which is good, but we also should be determining who has antibodies and is able to end self isolation. We need to release some of the social pressure building up and allow people who are ok to go out again to do so.
- Identifying people who are carriers so they can be isolated
- Contact tracing (pointless at the moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the US who are infected)
- Ruling out other diseases or conditions that are treatable
Testing basically doesn't help anyone who has covid, it helps the people they would have spread it to if you can prevent that spread. There is no treatment for covid whatsoever, knowing you have it doesn't help you live longer or become healthy sooner. Knowing you don't have it, if you are already sick, might help if that lets them invest in further testing or treatments for other, non-covid, conditions.
Testing is easy to point at, but at the moment more testing would have limited impact. Even if we were to test everyone in the US, it would have to be done in a relatively short window of time to allow for a significant impact, and it's unlikely that there will be enough testing capacity to use this strategy before we reach saturation levels of infection. If they test me today and I'm negative, then they test you in 6 weeks, what does that get you and me? I was very likely infected in the meantime. This could be used socially like an negative AIDS test, except instead of a few months or years the validity of a test as a social currency is about a week, making it more or less useless as a way to avoid being infected.
If we could end social isolation for people who have antibodies, which is probably a very large number of people, that’d be a big win.
I don't know where you are getting that from. There is no treatment that guarantees a cure, but there are certainly treatments that have helped some number of people. And testing of people who have symptoms is an integral part of how the health care system decides where to put its resources.
This is simply an unsupported false assertion.
Name one treatment that is used for a person with a positive covid test that would be in any respect different from someone with the same symptoms and no test.
Info sourced from here: https://youtu.be/kgzFAdYwYLM
The tests that look for the virus are probably more accurate than the antibody tests, at least right now.
Multiple S. Korean companies submitted test kits for coronavirus for approval, and not all were approved because of insufficient accuracy.
Mainly antibody tests.
In the us.
Nice.
This is very funny.
* I would lead with the % of the population tested (not the total) and make it in the last 7 days, since I really care how likely they are to detect a current outbreak.
* I think to be really useful, it needs to be localized by county, since what I really care about is how likely I am to get infected, and that means I are about testing in my area.
* I would go with the positive rate in the last 7 days. It's important to explain that a high positive rate indicates they are probably only testing people with symptoms, and so they are probably missing lots of infectious asymptomatic cases.
* Then, I think I would drop the recent growth rate in testing, because I suspect that the growth rate is not going to grow consistently, and also that testing growth will be unevenly distributed. I am skeptical that it is meaningful to try to predict when testing will achieve specific milestones.
