**************** warning math, nerd alert, skip now if math makes your eyes glaze over ***************
Iceland has been testing non symptomatic and has found that 50% of their positives are asymptomatic and it's likely to be much higher (asymptomatic postives as they aren't doing antibody but rather active virus tests). The number actually exposed could, in theory, be 50x what we have reported. Which like i said means we are close to seasonal flu for a mortality rate. CDC is at least updating their numbers now, up until recently they had this pegged at a R0 of 2.2 which didn't make any math sense.
High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
Now in that article this figure is germane:
Figure 5 - High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 - Volume 26, Number 7—July 2020 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC
In that study I still think they haven't adequately accounted for asymptomatic infected folks, still lets run with their study. If this virus was circulating much earlier then we thought quite a few folks have been exposed. That article out of cali was thinkin that the infection was there for a month or more before social distancing measures were implemented. IF, the R0 value is towards the higher side which CDC has pegged at 9 (i have read journals where it could be as high as 25) and let's assume an incubation period of 5 days before an infected person gets infectious and can spread it. In one month from ONE infected individual a value of 9 and every 5 days each of those causing 9 new people to get infected in one month that 9 to the 6th power or 534K people.
But let's back this down to the middle of the road estimate by the CDC and a R0 value of 5.7, that results in 34K infected. That is obviously much lower But still that is with a seed start of only 1 person, if you think it's reasonable that there were, say, 10 people that were infected and started seeding it in cali a month ahead of time, you get 340K infected.
Of course, these numbers are based on an assumption that the virus was present a month before California locked down, and that the CDC's models that are trending now are accurate. So this could be completely wrong if the base assumptions are incorrect but they don't seem to be unreasonable assumptions. Also the R0 value is supposed to take into account overlaps.
So given all that. if we have 340K exposed/infected in Cali, that is roughly 14x more prevalent then reported. There are 682 deaths attributed to Covid19 that would make the mortality rate be something like 0.2%. Seasonal flu is something like 0.1% were recent rates where more like 0.14% in a bad flu season. a 0.06% difference in mortality rate is not worth closing society down like this. Sorry grandma, it's not. It is worth doing a measured/controlled isolation like in sweden. If the number is 14x ( i think it's higher) we are still talking about a 0.3% mortality rate in NY.
One last time, I can be completely wrong here as the data is very incomplete. But I can't turn my math brain off and this seems to be where the data is trending. Sorry for the stream of mathness to those that don't want....
