More and More Evidence of the True Infected Rate

Hot off the presses, yet another study showing that coronavirus infection rates are far higher that positive infection test results tell us.  This one was conducted in Los Angeles County and involved USC and public health officials examining the true prevalence of the virus.  (LA Test) The interim results were released from a study involving randomized antibody testing from a sample of the population of adults in the County.  Based on results of the first round of testing, 2.8% to 5.6% of the County population has been infected.  What this also means is that the case fatality rate is far lower than wacko projections would have us believe.  There have been 600 deaths in the County, and somewhere between 221,000 and 442,000 adults have been infected.  That is a CFR between .27% and .14%.  That is an order of magnitude lower than the CFRs used in the nightmare scenarios painted by early modeling.

I wish I had been wrong, but it was obvious to anyone who thought carefully about it that this epidemic was not going to be nearly as bad as projected and that we were engaging in a gross over-reaction.  This is literal insanity and economic suicide to react the way we have.

And I am going to make another point that will inevitably lower the CFRs even more.  People, including so called experts, have been making a classic statistics mistake of assuming that the samples are being pulled evenly from the population.  They aren’t.  The most susceptible, who are going to have the highest likelihood of death, are getting disprortionately infected from every age group and this is inflating perceived fatality rates.