Yet More Evidence on the True Infection Rate

Several more studies find that the coronavirus infection rate is far higher than that reported by positive test results and that all these unreported infections are asymptomatic or mild cases.  The first study comes from four prisons.  (Prison Study)   Prisons have been a concern due to concentration of residents in a small area.  In one prison out of 2300 inmates tested, 2028 were positive for infection and 95% had no symptoms.  In total, 4693 tests were conducted across the prisons and 3277 were positive, with 96% being asymptomatic.  Now prisoners are not representative of the general population.  They are much younger and much more male.  But the level of asymptomatic disease is startling.   Some public health experts are concerned that this means the virus may be spreading faster than we realize, but the most important lesson is that for the vast, vast portion of the population this is an absolute nothing of a disease.

Next up, an antibody study in Miami.   (Miami Study)   Researchers at the University of Miami are leading the study, which is an ongoing random survey of residents.  The first results from the study indicate that 6% of the population, or around 165,000 people have been infected. The county has only 10,600 confirmed cases by positive test results, so there are 15 times that number in unreported cases.  Half the participants reported no symptoms in the two weeks prior to the study.  The remainder clearly had mild cases.

Okay, now this would not be my chosen field of study, but you will recall the Massachusetts sewage study I posted about a week or so ago.  Researchers in Delaware did the same thing, looking for evidence of how widespread coronavirus was.  (Delaware Study)  The sample came from a Wilmington sewage plan and the analysis was done by researchers at MIT.  Those researchers estimated that 3% of the population, or 15 times (gee, did we just see that number) the number of confirmed positive test results, had been infected.  All of these people must have been asymptomatic or had mild illness.

Here is the importance of this.  Policymakers and the public health “experts” are scaring the public by using very unrealistic risks of serious illness and deaths.  That has to stop, or even when the lockdowns are lifted, the economy won’t recover.  Only when we know the true rate of infections, can we begin to understand the true risks for different age groups and people with different health conditions.

So, for example, Worldometers says we currently have or have had 981,000 cases in the US and 55,094 deaths.  (let’s leave aside the fact that an astounding percent of these deaths are occurring among long-term care residents, in my state 75%).  That looks like a death rate of 5.6%, which would be pretty scary.   But if you multiply those cases by 15, all of a sudden the rate drops to .37%, which is not great but a lot less scary.  Now take out the long term care deaths and take all long-term care residents out of the denominator, and suddenly your death rate looks more like .1% or less.