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Nobody seems to be taking real estimated number of infections, instead they take number of confirmed cases. Confirmed cases don't include - infected people in i

Nobody seems to be taking real estimated number of infections, instead they take number of confirmed cases. Confirmed cases don't include - infected people in incubation phase, infected people with non-severe symptoms that were not scanned (age weighted on probability and mapped back on age weighted population) - then you calculate dubling on this estimate, you may have surprise when geometric growth shoots above hospital capacity. All of above can be calculated with one exception - kids will have to be excluded because we don't know if they carry/infect and don't get symptoms or they don't have symptoms because they are immune. But this calculation is easy enough to give rule of thumb estimate formula to apply to official confimed cases to get back real estimated number of infections.

k__ 7y ago
I also read: Infected people measured also includes dead people who would have died anyway and just happen to be infected before their death. And more than 50% of people without symptoms were tested false positive.
- adrianN 7y ago
  It's pretty hard to get a false positive from the Coronavirus PCR test we're using. False negatives happen, but false positives are extremely rare.
  - k__ 7y ago
    Good to know, thanks.
gamegod 7y ago
No and no. 1) Epidemiological papers usually estimate the true number of cases, based on an estimate of the percentage of cases getting tested. The definitely include this in their outlook, and have correctly predicted the outcome of the epidemic in China. Saying "nobody" is doing that is totally incorrect. There's literally people's jobs who it is to model epidemics, who have PhDs and devoted their entire careers to it. The amount of ignorance about the quantity and quality of scientific research out there just floors me. 2) We do know now that kids are just as susceptible to be infected as adults [1]. We don't know exactly what their role in transmission is, but you could conservatively assume that they probably spread it just as much as everyone else (speculation). Some clinical characterization of cases in children are available in refs [2] and [3] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0817-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0817-4 [3] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2003717 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2003717

k__ 7y ago

I also read: Infected people measured also includes dead people who would have died anyway and just happen to be infected before their death. And more than 50% of people without symptoms were tested false positive.

adrianN 7y ago
It's pretty hard to get a false positive from the Coronavirus PCR test we're using. False negatives happen, but false positives are extremely rare.
- k__ 7y ago
  Good to know, thanks.

gamegod 7y ago

No and no. 1) Epidemiological papers usually estimate the true number of cases, based on an estimate of the percentage of cases getting tested. The definitely include this in their outlook, and have correctly predicted the outcome of the epidemic in China. Saying "nobody" is doing that is totally incorrect. There's literally people's jobs who it is to model epidemics, who have PhDs and devoted their entire careers to it. The amount of ignorance about the quantity and quality of scientific research out there just floors me. 2) We do know now that kids are just as susceptible to be infected as adults [1]. We don't know exactly what their role in transmission is, but you could conservatively assume that they probably spread it just as much as everyone else (speculation). Some clinical characterization of cases in children are available in refs [2] and [3] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0817-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0817-4 [3] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2003717 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2003717