In California, there has been testing for Covid-19 antibodies. Officially, California has 27,689 infections as of April 16. That represents 0.07% of the state's population. However, antibodies have been found in 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested. This could indicate that the infection has been far more widespread and the lethality is much, much lower. Suppose that 2.5% of Californians contracted Covid-19; That would be 988,000 people. Of that group, only 27,700 felt sick enough to get tested and show positive; that's around 3%, much lower than the proposed 20% that were going to end up in the hospital. Lower even than the 5% that would be on ventilators. 952 people have died so far in California, which is a 0.1% fatality rate, about as lethal as the flu.
Clearly, the death tolls show this is not just a bad flu season. Maybe this is more contagious than thought. It may be just as deadly as the flu but twice as many people get it. As in my last post, we need to discover the denominator of this disease. We need to find out who has antibodies and set them free.
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