ronburgundy
Contributor
University Researchers tested all 3000 residents of an Italian village. 70% of those infected were completely asymptomatic.
That doesn't count people with mild symptom who, in the US, are being rejected for testing in most places. In Illinois, you have to be near death and/or immune compromised to be tested. Basically, if you aren't already in need of hospitalization, you won't be tested. So, there is easily another 15% of infected not being tested due to only mild symptoms, meaning 85% of infected are going undiagnosed.
The "good" news is that means the US death rate is much lower in the general population than among the select group getting tested and diagnosed. With a caveat that there are people dying before they get tested, and few tests are being done post-mortem. The bad news is that the infected rate is almost 7 times higher than the official count, meaning the US has about 3.5 million infected already and rising by over 200,000 every day. That will mean about 1 in every 50 Americans infected 2 weeks from now, and much higher than that in urban "hot zones". Very soon, getting groceries in many major cities will make you more likely than not to be withing feet of an infected person (and there's a good chance it will be the checkout clerk), and your take out delivery guy will have a high chance of infection too.
Also, there is a diagnosis-to-death lag of more than a week. IOW, if there were no new cases starting tomorrow, new deaths among the diagnosed would continue for over a month, with the median new death occurring somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks. So, the real death rate among those already diagnosed is today's death count divided by the diagnoses cases from at least 1 week ago. That's a death rate of 7%, using a conservative estimate of only 1 week from diagnosis to death (using 2 week lag, it's 20%). So, if your bad enough to get tested and diagnosed in the US, it's very bad news.
That doesn't count people with mild symptom who, in the US, are being rejected for testing in most places. In Illinois, you have to be near death and/or immune compromised to be tested. Basically, if you aren't already in need of hospitalization, you won't be tested. So, there is easily another 15% of infected not being tested due to only mild symptoms, meaning 85% of infected are going undiagnosed.
The "good" news is that means the US death rate is much lower in the general population than among the select group getting tested and diagnosed. With a caveat that there are people dying before they get tested, and few tests are being done post-mortem. The bad news is that the infected rate is almost 7 times higher than the official count, meaning the US has about 3.5 million infected already and rising by over 200,000 every day. That will mean about 1 in every 50 Americans infected 2 weeks from now, and much higher than that in urban "hot zones". Very soon, getting groceries in many major cities will make you more likely than not to be withing feet of an infected person (and there's a good chance it will be the checkout clerk), and your take out delivery guy will have a high chance of infection too.
Also, there is a diagnosis-to-death lag of more than a week. IOW, if there were no new cases starting tomorrow, new deaths among the diagnosed would continue for over a month, with the median new death occurring somewhere between 1 and 2 weeks. So, the real death rate among those already diagnosed is today's death count divided by the diagnoses cases from at least 1 week ago. That's a death rate of 7%, using a conservative estimate of only 1 week from diagnosis to death (using 2 week lag, it's 20%). So, if your bad enough to get tested and diagnosed in the US, it's very bad news.