Antibody test study indicates official figures might be reporting only 2 percent of cases.

Here's another study of the same topic. The Netherlands seems to be testing for antibodies quite a bit but I wonder why they are keeping most of the data to themselves? Of course the WHO came out and said it remains uncertain as to someone even with antibodies can ward off future infections. Dutch study suggests 3 per cent of population may have coronavirus antibodies

Goonie said:

Antibody study suggests coronavirus is far more widespread than previously thought

Interesting, if correct the mortality rate might be just .12 to .2 percent. Though given the fact that it is just one study, not yet peer reviewed, it's early days.

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I've been thinking the same thing, even before I saw this article.

It's possible given the fact not everyone has been tested for the virus.

If proven true, then our response are all but useless. We simply wrecked the economy and compromised people suffering from more dangerous ailments for nothing.

It would be the biggest most stupid, most expensive mistake the world has ever made.

Nothing good as ever come from excessive fear for one's mortaility - this is the opposite of what Christ teaches. Do we all hate and do the opposite of Christ's teachings?

timewerx said:

If proven true, then our response are all but useless. We simply wrecked the economy and compromised people suffering from more dangerous ailments for nothing.

It would be the biggest most stupid, most expensive mistake the world has ever made.

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Hold your horses there, a lot of people have still died, and will die. How you read the stats doesn't bring people back to life or stop them dying.

Tom 1 said:

Hold your horses there, a lot of people have still died, and will die. How you read the stats doesn't bring people back to life or stop them dying.

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Even if 7million dies, that's only less than 0.1% of the total population.

It means you only have 1 in a 1000 chance of dying from covid. Those are good odds enough

timewerx said:

Even if 7million dies, that's only less than 0.1% of the total population.

It means you only have 1 in a 1000 chance of dying from covid. Those are good odds enough

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That’s some pretty strange logic.

Unfortunately, there seem to be serious problems with this study. The biggest one is that they have only a rough idea of the false positive rate for the test they're using. Taking the uncertainty on that rate into account, all you can really conclude is that somewhere between 0% and 2% of the samples they tested actually had antibodies to the virus -- which tells us just about nothing.

Tom 1 said:

That’s some pretty strange logic.

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it's easier when it's other people.

Tom 1 said:

That’s some pretty strange logic.

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oh, that's nothing compared to this:

Luke 17:33
Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

The other major issue with this study is that it wasn't a random survey: they solicited volunteers on Facebook. There is a real chance that this biased the sample toward people who'd had symptoms, and therefore were more likely to have been infected. Or maybe it biased toward people who were staying home and had time to kill, and therefore less likely to have been exposed. My take-away is that it shows they tested some people.

The test in the OP is an actual finger prick test. But there have been analyses of city sewage that have yielded corroboratory results.


I don't know how accurate this test was, though the lab is associated with MIT and Harvard. But if it's close it would indicate that the denominator needs to grow by a factor of some 230,000, which would make for a massive decrease in the original projected death rate.

timewerx said:

Even if 7million dies, that's only less than 0.1% of the total population.

It means you only have 1 in a 1000 chance of dying from covid. Those are good odds enough

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I'm wondering if you have any at risk family members that you would be willing to sacrifice to "those are good enough odds"?

My concern is the very low number of officially diagnosed people in their population. If you apply a factor of 50 to NJ, you show half the population infected. That seems improbable.

Tom 1 said:

Hold your horses there, a lot of people have still died, and will die. How you read the stats doesn't bring people back to life or stop them dying.

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Unlike in the US, where many people who appear sick and want to get tested are simply turned away, in countries with widely available testing, the death rate for COVID is around 0.7%. That's still 7 times higher than the flu, which kills tens of thousands of people every year in the US alone.

Goonie said:

Antibody study suggests coronavirus is far more widespread than previously thought

Interesting, if correct the mortality rate might be just .12 to .2 percent. Though given the fact that it is just one study, not yet peer reviewed, it's early days.

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It was good while back now I learned that in 11 European countries (as estimated on March 28th) the likely spread was on the order of 50 or 60 times the detected cases (from The Economist ), I don't know a basis to be able to estimate the death rate could be as low as .2% -- that seems unlikely/speculative to me. How can you calculate a death rate while a significant portion of the people that could die are still on ventilators, and many won't resolve one way or another for weeks yet? The lowest possible death rate (based on piecing some things together and many assumptions) I could calculate based on stuff I've read even if most survived (and that would be very unlikely) is more like .4%. But gov Cuomo reports that about 80% that are on ventilators won't make it off alive.

Grabbing something off the top of the search results just now, this looks like a good-enough summary of the failure to count fully for the official deaths:

Official COVID-19 death toll estimates are bad enough. Thus far, the U.S. has lost more than 34,000 people to COVID-19. Worldwide the number is approaching 150,000. But, governments around the world have been underreporting deaths.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), state, county, and municipal authorities report cases and deaths in which the presence of the novel coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. However, many people who died and had COVID-19 symptoms - at home, in a nursing home, or a long-term care facility - are not being tested.

This problem is magnified in the country’s epicenter, New York City. City officials say they currently don’t have the testing capacity to include large numbers of people dying in their homes. An estimated 180-195 people per day may be dying in their homes from COVID-19 in New York City, and go uncounted as victims of the coronavirus as they haven’t gotten a laboratory test confirmation.
Underreporting Of COVID-19 Coronavirus Deaths In The U.S. And Europe (Update)

Of course, you can probably get dozens of articles like this, to any level of detail you like.

paul1149 said:

The test in the OP is an actual finger prick test. But there have been analyses of city sewage that have yielded corroboratory results.

“On March 25, the area represented by the sample had approximately 446 confirmed cases of Covid-19,” Biobot researchers wrote Wednesday in a post about their research. “Based on our sewage analysis, we estimate that up to 115,000 people are infected and shedding the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Massachusetts sewage suggests more than 100K coronavirus cases in state: MIT lab​

I don't know how accurate this test was, though the lab is associated with MIT and Harvard. But if it's close it would indicate that the denominator needs to grow by a factor of some 230,000, which would make for a massive decrease in the original projected death rate.

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One of the most watched mainstream projection for U.S. deaths, the IHME, has been pointed to something close to 60,000 U.S. deaths (by August) for quite a while now.

It seems we currently have probably something a ways over 40,000 deaths so far. I only hope it's possible to arrive at a great outcome like 60,000-70,000 once the diagnosed deaths at home are better accounted for and the national surge has ended (which ending itself is still an open question, as it means we have to manage to prevent a new surge).

Is that the 'projection' you were referring to?

It's a really great low death outcome we are all hoping we can manage to achieve, from this huge effort at great economic cost to stop the spread.

If we'd done little, it's generally understood it would have spread to more like 50% of the population rapidly, instead of only 15%, and the ability to give many intense ICU type care would have been very overwhelmed and then you get that situation where only a small fraction can be taken care of intensely.

Then in that unlimited spread scenario (what we avoided) you then get a much higher death rate also -- since you can't take care of most of them all at once -- giving a number of deaths in that no-stay-at-home scenario more up close to numbers like 700k to 2 million. Is that the 'projection' you think was wrong, without accounting for what it projected, how we avoided testing that wild scenario of unhindered spread?

sfs said:

The other major issue with this study is that it wasn't a random survey: they solicited volunteers on Facebook. There is a real chance that this biased the sample toward people who'd had symptoms, and therefore were more likely to have been infected. Or maybe it biased toward people who were staying home and had time to kill, and therefore less likely to have been exposed. My take-away is that it shows they tested some people.

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Stanfordella's prof is the the one who lead the study, he's named Dr. Bendavid.She had her account here closed tho. Which is healthy for her bummer for here bc she has some interesting insight into this that the media hasn't reported on.That's true that they solicited volunteers on Fb but from what I understand - & I could be misconstruing what she's said about it so don't trust me on this - not just Fb. There was an issue with Fb that caused a delay & so the volunteers quickly did outreach to find ppl wanting to participate. I think. It was supposed to go up like at midnight or something so time was wasted bc ppl didn't realize there was the glitch till the morning. It took a while to get sorted out & only did bc somebody w connections to Sheryl Steinberg called her & then she took care of the problem. The researchers attempted to recruit a set of participants representative of the country’s demographics through targeted ads.

They tested 3000+ ppl. There was massive overflow in all locations, w way more ppl wanting to participate in it than they could have bc they had a limited number of PPE & those collection tubes for the blood.It's def. true that some ppl had come bc they were more at risk. Like this nurse was completely devastated bc she was desperate to know but was too far back in the line. But a lot of ppl told the volunteer team they were just super bored & wanted something to do & to be a part of it.

She said there's some concerns w the study but Idk what they are.

This is good Stanford made COVID-19 tests available for health care workers. Now, it's considering wider distribution