Wednesday 8 April 2020

Small sample in China shows 80% of cases of Coronavirus are asymptomatic

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The British Medical Journal (BMJ) reports that, according to the latest data from China, 78% of new test-positive individuals show no symptoms. Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist and honorary research fellow at Oxford, said that these findings are 

"very, very important....The sample is small, and more data will become available. Also, it’s not clear exactly how these cases were identified. But let’s just say they are generalisable. And even if they are 10% out, then this suggests the virus is everywhere. If—and I stress, if—the results are representative, then we have to ask, ‘What the hell are we locking down for?’”"

Jefferson said that it was quite likely that the virus had been circulating for longer than generally believed and that large swathes of the population had already been exposed.



Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said a few days ago that the US can expect 100,000 to 200,000 COVID-19 deaths. Would most of those deaths happen this year anyway, even without COVID-19? I presume so.

100,000 to 200,000 COVID-19 deaths is a lot fewer than the two million deaths in America, or"millions of deaths", I saw predicted by people who expected the virus to infect people exponentially.


It compares with the three million deaths that happen in the USA annually in a normal year.

100,000 to 200,000 sounds rather like the British Government's Chief Scientific Adviser's original 'central estimate' of 100,000 deaths in the UK, a country which has one sixth the population of the USA. He thought we could accept 100,000 in order to achieve herd immunity. When Prof Ferguson raised the estimate to 250,000 Boris changed his mind and decided on lockdown. Professor Ferguson then said that two thirds of guesstimated deaths with, not of, the virus, would happen anyway, even without the virus.


The Swedish government is allowing transmission to go on in the spring and summer, when most people more easily fight off diseases, in order to prevent a second wave of infections in the autumn and winter and to prevent the destruction of their economy. Let's hope they hold their nerve and are successful. They may be pushed by voices on the internet into going for a lockdown. Belarus is less likely to care about foreign opinion. Iceland is a third European country not having a lockdown. Holland is also a partial lockdown.


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