Oxford Model: Coronavirus May Have Already Infected Half of U.K. Population

nymag.com

12 points·guscost··3 comments

Please note that the nymag piece was published on March 24th. On March 26th, a group of scientists criticised the figures because it was based on assumptions that lacked empirical evidence; if interested, here’s their letter of critique: https://www.ft.com/content/ebab9fcc-6e8d-11ea-9bca-bf503995c...

The theory that the virus has been spreading for months just makes no sense at all. By all accounts, COVID has a pretty quick progression and serious cases need to be hospitalized after about one week of symptoms or about two weeks after contraction. How come that the virus has infected millions and millions of people in the last months but none of them got seriously sick. And now all of a sudden, 1000s are dying. Unfortunatly, it seems that even researchers from reputable institutions are now just pulling numbers from their asses to grab some headlines.

Not so fast...

If the mortality rate really is much lower than generally presumed at the moment, with no antibody tests to actually verify, then it is absolutely possible that this has been creeping up on us for a month or two earlier in the UK and Italy than currently presumed.

Esp. if you consider that 1) most of the fatal or critical cases are elderly and/or with comorbidities and 2) the symptoms are easily confused with other diseases.

It may well be that if we re-examined old case files and could test retroactively we would find a bunch of cases that were misattributed to other causes.

It's impossible to know for sure without antibody tests.

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