Initial Covid-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported

news.psu.edu

3 points·taeric··3 comments

I post this curious to hear criticisms. As someone that ticked the ILI number and also tested negative for antibodies recently, really hard to know what to make of all of this.

My understanding is that I should be able to trust a negative test for antibodies. Such that I have to think there was a higher than normal ILI season. Such that, at face value, I can't trust this paper. Right?

I think given the 85 to 99% probability[1] that any particular person hasn't been infected you can more or less trust a negative result. The flip is positive results are likely to be false positives.

[1] Current preponderance of the evidence gives those numbers. Unless the person was part of an outbreak cluster in a communal living situation like prisons, cruse ships, or nursing homes. Or a work place like a big open office, meat packing plant, etc.

That is my point, I know how those numbers land. Such that with those numbers, I agree I should trust it. But this paper seems to paint that as not the percentage. With the seemingly crazy story regarding blood type recently, it definitely has me doubting some.

(For a little more context, I and my entire family of six had fevers near the start of this. With me having a very hard time breathing. Was worse than when I had walking pneumonia. Like I said, I ticked the ILI number, they even sent me for an x-ray. Was before we acknowledge community spread here in Seattle, though.)

Don't get me wrong. Not doing anything "risky". Nor do I want to hurry a reopening. The narrative around all of this is hard to swallow, though.

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