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This article is really good at predicting those "dark" cases: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://mediu
by paulhodge 7y ago
This article is really good at predicting those "dark" cases: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
If we assume that the growth chart is similar everywhere, then with our 1,000 confirmed cases in the US, we probably have around 30,000 unconfirmed dark cases.
Also a really crazy fact is that South Korea did a good job of containing 30 out of 31 of their initial cases in the early days. But then the 31st was responsible for thousands of infections.
- adventured 7y agoVery likely true re dark cases. China had at least a million positive cases of the virus. China has 23 times the population of Italy, but only saw eight times the cases (eventually that will narrow even further). It's obviously absurd, especially given China moved slow to stop the spread in the early going. Every day that goes by we're getting confirmation that China lied aggressively about how extremely infectious the virus is, how easily it is spread, how large of a population it could infect and how quickly. That information would have helped the world a lot. Italy's mortality rate is extreme right now, at 6.6%. Most likely they have a lot more cases than have tested positive thus far, probably at least two to three times as many are infected vs the official tally. I expect this will be a common theme almost everywhere, including in the US.
- scarmig 7y agoOutside of Hubei, China's done extensive community testing of everyone who presents symptoms that would be associated with coronavirus. The vast majority are negative. This isn't consistent with the hypothesis that there are millions of undiagnosed cases.
- dilyevsky 7y agoNot that crazy when you consider that every novel disease (or maybe even life itself) started with just one or a few individuals.
- scarmig 7y agoWhat's interesting is that it is containable: Taiwan and Singapore both have managed to avoid sustained community transmission, and they did this by rigorous contact tracing and travel regulation. And South Korea acted similarly! But one bad case got through (and the cult responsible is uniquely problematic), and that's costing South Korea many lives and billions of USD. The learning here shouldn't be that mass coronavirus death is inevitable, but that good policy that takes it seriously can contain it and make it manageable.
- bamboozled 7y agoWhy call it a “dark case” ? How about an asymptomatic case ?
- paulhodge 7y agoWas thinking like dark matter, you can't measure it directly, but you can infer its size from other signals. Also it's not just asymptomatic cases, it's also symptomatic but not tested. Some people ignore it since it can present as a minor cold. Some people want a test but can't get one.
- bamboozled 7y agoYeah idk, just sounds a bit dramatic / alarmist. The media would love this term. Maybe you should try patent it.