Mindmeld, I keep hearing the "not enough testing" excuse over and over again from the Internet "experts."
First of all, you can't fake the death toll. NY currently has 247,215 cases and 18,776 deaths. That's a 7.6% death rate. CA currently has 31,675 cases and 1,178 deaths, which corresponds to a 3.7% death rate.
Let's say you're right and there are many more asymptomatic cases in CA that went undetected compared to NY. That means when it comes to actual death rates, CA's death rate would be FAR lower than NY's.
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption to make, since I don't think we Californians are more resistant to viruses than New Yorkers. If anything, I'd assume New Yorkers are more resistant given that they live in a colder, harsher climate, and given that NYC is generally dirtier than any large city in California.
Hence I really don't think the number of untested, asymptomatic cases are going to change the relative numbers between CA and NY all that much.
Second, I get the notion that India's numbers are going to be unreliable because of the sheer size of their population. But the right to speech in India isn't as suppressed as much as that of China. If there are a ton of coronavirus cases there that the government isn't reporting on, then we'd be hearing about it.
Third, you still didn't address Korea.
Anyway, I draw different conclusions from the Stanford study than those you have drawn. Whether there are a ton of undetected coronavirus cases or not, I believe the current lockdown in CA helped flatten the curve. I also believe the lockdown in NY was next to useless, but at this point that's an academic exercise given their state of emergency.
But if the infection rates are much higher than the current numbers suggest, then that means we should be able to lift the lockdowns soon and not fear a resurgence of coronavirus cases, for we will already be closer to the state of "herd immunity" than originally thought.
That's the good news to draw from the Stanford study and other studies that back up their conclusions.
Tenchusatsu |
