Preliminary results from antibody tests in Los Angeles County indicate that the true number of COVID-19 infections is much higher than the number of confirmed cases there, which implies that the fatality rate is much lower than the official tallies suggest. “The mortality rate now has dropped a lot,” Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said at a press briefing today. In contrast with the current crude case fatality rate of about 4.5 percent, she said, the study suggests that 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent of people infected by the virus will die, which would make COVID-19 only somewhat more deadly than the seasonal flu.
Based on a representative sample of 863 adults tested early this month, researchers at the University of Southern California (USC), working in collaboration with the public health department, found that “approximately 4.1% of the county’s adult population has antibody to the virus.” Taking into account the statistical margin of error, the results indicate that “2.8% to 5.6% of the county’s adult population has antibody to the virus—which translates to approximately 221,000 to 442,000 adults in the county who have had the infection.” That is 28 to 55 times higher than the tally of confirmed cases at the time of the study.
As of noon today, Los Angeles County had reported 617 deaths out of 13,816 confirmed cases, which implies a fatality rate of 4.5 percent. Based on that death toll, the new study suggests the true fatality rate among everyone infected by the virus is somewhere between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent (without taking into account people infected since the study was conducted). The lower end of that range is about the same as the estimated fatality rate for the seasonal flu.
“These results indicate that many persons may have been unknowingly infected and at risk of transmitting the virus to others,” Ferrer said in a press release. “These findings underscore the importance of expanded polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing to diagnose those with infection so they can be isolated and quarantined, while also maintaining the broad social distancing interventions.”
Since the number of infections in Los Angeles County is much higher than the official numbers indicate, Ferrer said at the press briefing, the risk of infection is correspondingly higher, which reinforces the case for social distancing measures. At the same time, she said, the fact that 95 percent or so of the county’s adult population remains uninfected shows those measures, including the statewide lockdown, are working. She also acknowledged that the revised estimate of the fatality rate, which is dramatically lower than many people feared, is good news for residents who are infected despite those precautions.
“The fatality rate is lower than we thought it would be,” said Neeraj Sood, the USC public policy professor who oversaw the study. But he also emphasized that “we are very early in the epidemic,” meaning the number of infections and the death toll are bound to rise.
Sood addressed two of the methodological concerns that were raised by a recent study of Santa Clara County residents, which likewise estimated that the COVID-19 fatality rate is not far from the rate for the flu. Critics of that study suggested it may have been undermined by biased sampling and false-positive antibody test results.
The sample for the Los Angeles County study, Sood said, was randomly drawn from a database maintained by the LRW Group, a market research firm. The researchers capped subjects representing specific demographic groups so the sample would reflect the county’s adult population.
As for the accuracy of the antibody tests, Sood said validation by the manufacturer of the test kits, Premier Biotech, found a false positive rate of 0.5 percent in 371 samples. In subsequent tests by a Stanford laboratory, there were no false positives. “We think that the false positive rate of the tests is really low,” Sood said.
While Ferrer portrayed the study as proof of the need for aggressive control measures, a fatality rate as low as the Los Angeles County and Santa Clara County tests suggest also changes the calculus of those policies’ costs and benefits. If COVID-19 really is only a bit more lethal than the seasonal flu, the benefits that can be expected from continued lockdowns, in terms of deaths prevented, are much lower than most projections assumed. If these results are confirmed, they should play an important role in discussions about when and how to reopen the economy.
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Well, though the fatality rate may be alarmingly low, we have to remember that 125% of the population is going to get infected which would mean that the seemingly insignificant .1% fatality rate translates to literally MILLIONS of people dying. Like tomorrow.
hey man as long as I get more free Showtime. I think they’re going to screw me 1 week shy of finishing season 8 of Homeland
Yep, and we crashed it over something that will be a lot less deadly once most healthcare workers have antibodies. The current mortality rate is what happens when the staff in nursing homes and cancer wards have no immunity and very little warning.
Funny but true. Progressivism is the new religion for secular socialists. They have a complete ideology with some ridiculous beliefs, and those that question or challenge their dogma must be silenced and banished. They have abandoned any pretense of true liberal thinking–as in all devout believers.
Please don’t tell the millennials. Their coddled upbringing did not allow for this discouraging truth.
Even as reality intrudes upon the sacred territory of irrational hysterics, the fearmongering intensifies, the overreach expands, and our civil liberties continue to erode.
The less deadly it becomes, the more intensely will we find ourselves scrutinized and controlled. Without the ability to sufficiently justify their prior excesses, our state and local governments will continue to expand the scope of their executive powers until the catastrophe at hand is perceived to be of such an astounding magnitude that relinquishing complete control will appear to be a non-starter.
The liberal scum figured out immediately that there was no way in hell that worthless senile old asshole Joe Biden could possibly beat Trump under the status quo we had going. General American satisfaction was the highest it had been in years, and was rising.
So they had to gamble on a massive hail mary play: wreck the world and hope like hell that people would blame Trump for what they did. It was the only chance they ever had, so it’s not surprising they would do it, being the shamleless cretins that they are.
Fuck man… I’m busted. I told the Chinese that impeachment wasn’t going to work and we needed a Plan B. It looks like my plot has worked. Yay!
And the goal posts will shift. On ABC News tonight the study was mentioned, but mentioned nowhere was the implication for the death rate. I’m betting the average viewer will interpret the news as “OMG, a ton of people are sick!” and that may have been the intention. Instead, the piece focused on the fact that there’s no evidence that these infected people are now immune. When did anyone say that our goal is to get everyone immune? There is never any goods news for these people and nothing that would suggest we should reopen.
The jury is still out on the details of SARS-CoV-2 immunity, but it seems likely that, as is the case with several other viruses in seasonal circulation, immunity will vary, sometimes dramatically, from person to person. Immunity is never going to supply a one-size-fits-all solution and, therefore, is as unreliable a metric for reopening the economy as the ambiguous curve we have been trying to flatten.
If immunity was truly the goal, then attempting to minimize exposure to the virus was counterproductive. The lockdowns prove that obtaining largescale immunity is not now, and never has been the goal. Relying on immunity as a threshold for when we can return to work is a complete sleight of hand; a reason to extend the lockdowns indefinitely.
The Pants-Shitting Brigade is desperately trying to suppress and deflect from it, but as more and more reports keep coming out about this and places like the homeless shelter in Chelsea, a lot of people will eventually just say, “fuck it, this isn’t any different than any other bad strain of common cold, and as long as I’m not a fat piece of shit, I should be okay.”
I don’t know, man. It seems like every female I talk to about the subject is reflexively on board with the lockdowns; and not just the moms, either. The single and divorced chicks are even more Gung-ho than even the women with children (whose desire to protect their children is at least understandable, even if ultimately unsound).
“Social distancing” is really taking off among the younger club sluts and divorcees like its the new abortion. They are militant about this shit to the point of absurdity. I had a chick blame me today for “literally” killing her father because I posted a question concerning scientific basis for the lockdowns.
“You literally killed my fucking dad! I couldn’t even bury him because of you and your stupid attitude. Stay the fuck inside!”
Dudes, on the other hand, seem to split one way or the other; but I haven’t spoken to a single woman as of yet that has expressed an opinion against the lockdowns.
Call me crazy but you have moms, club sluts, cat ladies, and divorcees united on this shit, a few angry guys aren’t going to shift the balance. I think we’re staying locked down for a good long while.
Having predicted the actual situation correctly in no way cushions the blow of being ignored and ridiculed for months. The fact that there will be negligible repercussions for those who were so very, very wrong (2.2 million, 10% kill rates) will only encourage this same pants-shitting behavior in the future. After all, we could have been party to the deliberate and callous murder of Cuomo’s mom.
For the next act, we can save her from global warming by adopting a completely unreliable power grid.
“The fact that there will be negligible repercussions for those who were so very, very wrong (2.2 million, 10% kill rates)” The repercussions will be that they will continue to be treated as heroes. The conventional wisdom is being written as we speak. If not for Cuomo, Whitmer and the rest of these tyrants we’d be facing extinction. All else is conspiracy theory.
Like seriously, I don’t know what to say anymore. Any news, no matter what (including/especially data showing that statistically, essentially no one dies from this) just further “reinforces the need for aggressive social distancing measures.” If tomorrow the studies showed that it was minimally contagious but more deadly, the takeaway would be the same. What the hell kind of world are we living in?
My neighbor lost his job. Doesn’t know how he’s gonna pay for little Timmy’s hysterectomy. He was really venting to me about his situation. Bearing his soulpain.
But I said to him, “But look at how good the air quality is now.” And he felt ashamed for complaining.
While our left wing fearmongering scumbags like JSlave, Brandybuck, and sarcasmic have been busy trying to scare the shit out of us, some of us (like me) have been saying this from the earliest days of the martial law: that WAY more people were going to catch this highly contagious but harmless to most people virus.
If this is indeed true then not only were the lockdowns an unnecessary infringement on our liberty but they were actually counterproductive. If we allow the virus to run its course then we will more sooner developed herd immunity. The lockdown has only delayed the process. Yes we should protect the vulnerable populations but the rest of us will more than likely be OK
Clearly you are not an expert. Cause it says right in the article that genuine experts agree this just shows that we need to lock down harder.
Boy, all these old Trump supporters showing up at quarantine protests sure are going to enjoy a stay in the ICU. I’m staying home, drawing my fat paycheck and catching up on WestWorld. Damn! I’d sure like to violate that Dolores robot. I’m planning on jerking off a lot to that fantasy— not struggling to breathe n a ventilator because Dear Leader told me it was ok.
Boy, all these old Trump supporters showing up at quarantine protests sure are going to enjoy a stay in the ICU.
Funny, I keep hearing that, and yet I’ve not developed BatCoof despite breaking my government-imposed house arrest every day and visiting the local grocery stores and gas stations.
Maybe if we had done testing like south korea we would have known this long ago. But Trump is an incompetent fool who couldn’t manage it. If indeed the death rate is lower, it isn’t the epidemiologists fault, who can only work with the available data. The tanking of the economy due to Trump’s failure to be the president he was elected to be is solely on his shoulders. The stable genius does have ultimate authority, doncha know?
It’s literally their only line. You’d think they’d have come up with at least one other thing for some variety by now
*We* knew long ago that this wasn’t a big deal, based on the South Korean testing. People have been saying so on this board for a long time. It’s a bit rich of you to come out now and say that it’s our fault you interpreted the data incorrectly.
It is the fault of those politicians who believed models based on data that was inadequate to make sound predictions. It is the fault of people who acted like tyrants the moment they perceived a hint of danger.
And if South Korea did all the testing necessary, why couldn’t we use their data to conclude things? Did South Korean testing conclude that the rate was no worse than the flu? If it did, what was tanking the economy for exactly? All the politicians who are responsible for it had access to the data of South Korea. Why was it ignored in favor of the dire predictions of models based on flawed assumptions?
If I recall, Trump once said that he thought Covid-19 was similar to the flu. Was he right? It wasn’t Trump who shut down the economy, it was governors and mayors.
//If indeed the death rate is lower, it isn’t the epidemiologists fault, who can only work with the available data.//
Of course. Nothing is the epidemiologists’ fault. Not one thing. They are just neutral observers of neutral and incontrovertible facts and they never make mistakes, draw speculative conclusions, or exhibit patterns of biased thinking.
A bad model is just the result of bad facts. A good model is the result of good facts. The intermediary responsible for data entry and analysis is obviously irrelevant; a perfect, unerring conduit for truth.
From day one the left has been wrong about everything, created fear when none was needed. And now they are realizing they’re going to pay the price in the 2020 election. What I know is that Trump wins reelection, keeps the Senate, and we hopefully get two more conservatives on the court. Fuck the left.
“These findings underscore the importance of expanded polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing to diagnose those with infection so they can be isolated and quarantined, while also maintaining the broad social distancing interventions.” No. These findings underscore the pure insanity of destroying the economy and suspending the constitutional rights of a couple hundred million Americans over a bad flu season.
Ron Bailey has accordingly lowered his prediction, as data has come in, to just 250,000+ dead. He is the science-y guy after all
If the deaths had been confined to NYC politicians, police, and activists, it might be seen more positively.
Over 98% of them were in pretty shitty health to begin with, so a bug like BatCoof was going to jackhammer them anyway.
So if 3% has been infected and we need 60% for herd immunity then we should brace ourselves for a 20x increase in deaths?
“The mortality rate now has dropped a lot,” Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said at a press briefing today.
“And to make it drop still further, I am directing everyone residing in Los Angeles County to spread the virus as best they can.”
So it turns out that up to 99.9% of those exposed will survive this virus and the vast majority won’t even know they had it. As a percentage of the total population the actual death rate amounts to a rounding error. Does this even qualify as an epidemic?
“Novelty” is the fresh, newly minted panic button for the next generation. The data and statistics concerning the actual lethality and infection for COVID-19 do not really matter. Every conceivable government intrusion is inherently justified because, at the end of the day, “we just don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
At least with JesseAZ I acknowledged my mistake and apologized. Though he’s too much of a bitch to admit it.
You can either man up and get Coronavirus like a boss or you can sit home and jerk off like a fucking pussy.
Fortunately, I suspect I already got it back in February. I’m looking forward to finding out as soon as I can so I can show my papers to the cops when Im walking alone on the beach.
I was sicker than shit for the first two months of the year. I suspect I may have gotten it but I don’t know how. Other than family and random women I meet online to have sex with its not like I… oh. Maybe I got it from some floozy.
this study proves the point. Trump shouldn’t have run off his Pandemic office at NSA. They could have advised him and he could have counseled the nation, and perhaps he then instructed his Executive Branch to swarm resources to acute places like NYC. all the while re-assuring us that we have to surge to some cities, but the rest of you all we be fine.
“The new study suggests the true fatality rate among everyone infected by the virus is somewhere between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent . . . The lower end of that range is about the same as the estimated fatality rate for the seasonal flu.
“These findings underscore the importance of expanded polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing to diagnose those with infection so they can be isolated and quarantined, while also maintaining the broad social distancing interventions.“
I don’t understand how or why those premises lead to that conclusion (in bold). If the fatality rate were much higher than expected, wouldn’t that also have meant we need to maintain “broad social distancing interventions”?
If the fatality rate more or less matching the seasonal flu doesn’t mean that “broad social distancing interventions” are unnecessary, then what test results do mean that forced social distancing and government inflicted lock-downs are unnecessary?
Somehow it seems like they’ve decided that forced social distancing and lock-downs are necessary no matter what–and the rest of it is just fluff. Well here’s a news flash for the experts: making it against the law for people to reopen their businesses or go to work is an absurd and authoritarian imposition of the qualitative preferences of experts for safety–inflicted on those who do not share their qualitative preferences. And the qualitative preferences of experts are no more authoritative than the qualitative preferences of idiots.
If the experts’ qualitative preference is for public safety over the public’s financial well-being and that qualitative preference is informed by statistics and facts, those statistics and facts don’t make the experts’ qualitative preferences any more authoritative than the qualitative preferences of people with room temperature IQs.
If an expert prefers strawberry ice cream to vanilla because consuming locally sourced strawberries accurately decreases her carbon footprint by a factor of 0.4362 relative to vanilla, that doesn’t make her qualitative preference for strawberry any more authoritative than a down syndrome patient who prefers vanilla to strawberry because “it tastes good”.
Qualitative preferences simply do not become scientific facts because they’re informed by science or facts, and the experts’ qualitative preference for our safety over our financial well-being has no authoritative basis.
“We are experiencing all sorts of counterproductive consequences of not well-thought-through policy …
Well, we will see maybe a total of fewer cases—that is possible. However, we will see more cases among the elderly, because we have prevented the school children from creating herd immunity. And so, in the end, we will see more death because the school children don’t die, it’s the elderly people who die, we will see more death because of this social distancing …”
Like in economics, in public health the people paid by government advocate government solutions. In contrast, Dr. Wittkowski is currently CEO of a company.
I’d like to apologize. Not for being right about insisting this was no big deal, but for my worst reasonable case scenario still being unreasonably bad. I didn’t think this was going to get down to the level of seasonal flu. If the 0.1% IFR holds up, I was wrong, and I admit it.
Also, even the worst 0.3% IFR estimate here means 95% of people can stop social distancing and we can end the lockdowns. Only the elderly need to social distance at that point. Sullum’s call to maintain social distancing is nonsense.
Maybe if NYC had locked off the nursing homes early on, they could have limited the damage. Oh well, lesson learned.
Considering they never even needed the number of vents they were screeching for, your hysterics seem pretty outdated right now.
” At the same time, she said, the fact that 95 percent or so of the county’s adult population remains uninfected shows those measures, ”
so 600 of 5%, means 11,400 for the other 95%. of course all depend on whether those die over a month or a year.
Ferguson already admitted that most of the people who died from this were likely to do so anyway within the next year or two anyway, you moron.
Time to get a gun— for myself. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s only one Dear Leader instead of 2. That’d be devastating.
Just remember to point the barrel up at your empty brain pan when you pull the trigger, not towards the back of your head.
On the other hand… I’m sitting at home drawing a fat paycheck for working while some rich assholes are complaining about their ability to make 100,000/yr rent payments during the quarantine. Maybe I’ll stick around to see how that ends up. After all, I’ll still have Brother #1 to look to at his daily press briefings.
I was told by many on this board that if one didn’t have their financial affairs in order enough to survive for 6 months than we shouldn’t really worry about people who are so mal-equipped to deal with reality. There’s so much bitching about the plight of the poors on this board that I’m beginning to wonder if the commenters here are secret SJWs who work with the homeless. I thought I was dealing with the vanguard of the hard-nosed preppers not the vanguard of whiny bitches. Sad.
Possible really good news from a population screening antibody test study in Santa Clara County, California
Plus: Drudge challenges Trump on traffic claims, France taxes links, COVID-19 in Ohio prisons, and more…
The tests indicate that the number of infections in the county is around 40 times as high as the number of confirmed cases.
Post time: Apr-21-2020