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Comment by illuminati1911 | Hacker News Reader

illuminati1911

I have a feeling, the reason why we are now hearing politicians, celebrities etc. being infected is probably because they are getting tested anyway. Symptoms or not. They either have the money to do it or they are in important positions and are prioritized.

Which could mean that the actual number of infections truly is much much higher than we know and therefore the fatality rate could also be significantly lower than what has been estimated so far.

I'm not a medical professional at all. Just guessing.

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I’m a medical professional and I think you’re right.

There are medical professionals I know who are quarantined with obvious COVID (or H1N1) symptoms but not tested because they don’t fit the requirements. It matters because if it’s just H1N1 they can be back in action sooner.

Not saying we shouldn’t test famous people, just saying we should expand that type of testing much more broadly.

Where do you work that medical professionals with ILI symptoms don't meet screening criteria?

Oh, to be clear - the person with symptoms hasn’t had patient contact in a long time. But the fact that they can’t get tested causes another asymptomatic person who does have very heavy patient contact to be quarantined for 14 days.

> ... because they are getting tested anyway. Symptoms or not

Not in this case.

> Trudeau will also stay in isolation for 14 days, but on the advice of his doctors, will not be tested because he has no symptoms.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid19-trudeau-premiers-co...

I have a question. Do we test all death? What if many death are not tested for coronavirus hence the death number is not accurate either?

The US doesn't. A few flu/pneumonia tests were done on dead people and turned out positive but that's it.

Politicians travel around the world to shake hands with one another and bring crowds together.

Or at least they used to until recently.

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