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> Can't you just send out test kits to 10000 random Italians and then use that to calculate the number of infected people?

I think at this point, it's still very early in the spread of infection and the distribution of infection might not be random and might be clustered around certain locations, social circles etc.

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I would LOVE to see a full population test sample... Would be expensive (probably need 5 K - 10 K tests for a significant read, most of which will likely be wasted on "likely healthy" members of the community... but would decisively settle this outstanding question of asymptomatic infection frequency.

The closest data point we have is likely that South Korean church, where I think they hunted down more or less every member and tested them... Doesn't give you a true view of asymptomatic presence in the general population but does provide a cue about relative size vs. known infected...

The scary part is the WHO mission were adamant that they failed to find a large number of asymptomatic/mild cases in the population at large, and they tested 300.000 people. I can't get this to match up with my other hunches, so I might be very wrong on this.

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