7 ms·

> We're trending toward 10-12% of the US population getting infected How can you possibly believe this, given the seroprevelance data? Every indication is tha

by jMyles 6y ago

> We're trending toward 10-12% of the US population getting infected How can you possibly believe this, given the seroprevelance data? Every indication is that more than twice this number (some surveys suggesting substantially more even than that) were already infected a few months ago.

jjcon 6y ago
The 98% is not based on seroprevelance data so using it now would be misleading - their stated number should still hold regardless of seroprevelance
- jMyles 6y ago
  Yeah, fair. 2% seems like a (very generous) upper-bound in this sense.
vkou 6y ago
The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. Given that effectively nobody was dying from COVID prior to March, and the three giant waves of exponential growth that followed, I have severe doubts about the accuracy of these tests. I have a feeling that if those same tests were ran back in 2018, they would have said the same thing.
- jMyles 6y ago
  > The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. That's not quite true. The surveys in that time frame were mostly < 10%. The > 10% surveys came months later. However, it's certainly possible that these are false positives (particularly the wastewater studies). However I'm not sure that this particular observation is a good basis for that conclusion. It takes a substantial mass of cases to produce excess population-level mortality, which is what gets our attention. Since we weren't testing for cases prior to March 2020, we really don't know how many people died while infected with the virus. Now of course we count nearly every such case meticulously.
  - vkou 6y ago
    If people were dying en masse from the virus before March, and we just weren't testing for it, those people and their doctors were either following the most amazing quarantine procedures, somehow preventing it's spread through the general population... Or, more likely, they did not have COVID, and just had the flu.
    - jMyles 6y ago
      I don't think I understand what you mean. It's possible that it was fairly widespread, and some people were dying (and perhaps being reported to ILInet, etc), but not enough to cause a notable increase in population-level mortality for anybody to notice. There is ongoing conjecture on this point all over expert circles.
      - vkou 6y ago
        1. We know if the virus is widespread and killing people, regardless of whether we test them, because mortality rates go up way above the baseline, and hospitals fill up with people unable to breathe. 2. Mortality rates were not above the baseline prior to March. 3. We know that the virus spreads like wildfire when no quarantine measures are taken. No quarantine measures were taken at any point prior to March. 4. The growth in known cases and above-baseline mortality closely matches, starting in March. It's impossible for there to have been a significant presence of the virus in the United States at the start of 2020, as claimed by seroprevalence data, because within a matter of weeks it would have infected a large enough percentage of the population to be clearly visible in the above-baseline mortality rates, and hospitalization rates. A large percentage of people who catch COVID end up going to the hospital, or the morgue when they are unable to breathe. In a pre-quarantine/lockdown world, they also tend to get everyone around them, as well as a whole bundle of unrelated people sick in the process. Either the seroprevalence data is wrong, or the virus was somehow uncontagious or unlethal, until March, when all across the country, all at once, somehow, it turned into something that was quite contagious, and quite lethal. When your measurements claim an invisible, inaudible, imperceptible phenomena that has no physical influence on any other object, the prudent scientific conclusion is that your measurements are broken.

by jMyles 6y ago

jjcon 6y ago

The 98% is not based on seroprevelance data so using it now would be misleading - their stated number should still hold regardless of seroprevelance

jMyles 6y ago
Yeah, fair. 2% seems like a (very generous) upper-bound in this sense.

vkou 6y ago

The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. Given that effectively nobody was dying from COVID prior to March, and the three giant waves of exponential growth that followed, I have severe doubts about the accuracy of these tests. I have a feeling that if those same tests were ran back in 2018, they would have said the same thing.

jMyles 6y ago
> The seroprevelance data claimed that ~10-20% of the population was already infected, back in March of 2020. That's not quite true. The surveys in that time frame were mostly < 10%. The > 10% surveys came months later. However, it's certainly possible that these are false positives (particularly the wastewater studies). However I'm not sure that this particular observation is a good basis for that conclusion. It takes a substantial mass of cases to produce excess population-level mortality, which is what gets our attention. Since we weren't testing for cases prior to March 2020, we really don't know how many people died while infected with the virus. Now of course we count nearly every such case meticulously.
- vkou 6y ago
  If people were dying en masse from the virus before March, and we just weren't testing for it, those people and their doctors were either following the most amazing quarantine procedures, somehow preventing it's spread through the general population... Or, more likely, they did not have COVID, and just had the flu.
  - jMyles 6y ago
    I don't think I understand what you mean. It's possible that it was fairly widespread, and some people were dying (and perhaps being reported to ILInet, etc), but not enough to cause a notable increase in population-level mortality for anybody to notice. There is ongoing conjecture on this point all over expert circles.
    - vkou 6y ago
      1. We know if the virus is widespread and killing people, regardless of whether we test them, because mortality rates go up way above the baseline, and hospitals fill up with people unable to breathe. 2. Mortality rates were not above the baseline prior to March. 3. We know that the virus spreads like wildfire when no quarantine measures are taken. No quarantine measures were taken at any point prior to March. 4. The growth in known cases and above-baseline mortality closely matches, starting in March. It's impossible for there to have been a significant presence of the virus in the United States at the start of 2020, as claimed by seroprevalence data, because within a matter of weeks it would have infected a large enough percentage of the population to be clearly visible in the above-baseline mortality rates, and hospitalization rates. A large percentage of people who catch COVID end up going to the hospital, or the morgue when they are unable to breathe. In a pre-quarantine/lockdown world, they also tend to get everyone around them, as well as a whole bundle of unrelated people sick in the process. Either the seroprevalence data is wrong, or the virus was somehow uncontagious or unlethal, until March, when all across the country, all at once, somehow, it turned into something that was quite contagious, and quite lethal. When your measurements claim an invisible, inaudible, imperceptible phenomena that has no physical influence on any other object, the prudent scientific conclusion is that your measurements are broken.