[TheFiend7]

How does a disease that's close to 3x more contagious than the flu stop at 80k people in the densely populated cities of China?

The current numbers are the ones that don't add up. Even John Hopkins estimates up to 500k cases in the US at the moment.

[spookthesunset]

That is the thing. Nobody knows because we have no earthly clue how many people have it currently or had it in the past few months. People quoting “death rates” are pulling the denominator (number of deaths) for that rate out of their ass. Same for transmission rate. Any rate requires a good denominator—we have zero clue what that number is. We have little testing here in the states, and my understanding is we currently do not have a way to test if you previously had it.

We are making massive social and economic changes based on very unclear data. People are sitting at home with nothing to do but watch live streaming YouTube videos of “confirmed cases” on a map or looking at some website showing the same and freaking the fuck out. But it is all based on crap data.

We can “pause” our global economy for a short while (week or two) but any more than that is going to have massive issues. Those toilet paper memes are funny until you run out yourself. Not having baby wipes in stock isn’t very funny. People are going to start getting into physical violence in stores over that shit (if it hasn’t happened already). People are gonna relapse into addiction. People are going to mill themselves. Supply chains are going to fall apart.

We can’t make massive sweeping changes like this for very long without a solid understanding how how pervasive this virus is.

[TheFiend7]

All I said was things don't add up. If anything we agree in some regards?

[spookthesunset]

Yes we agree. I’m just elaborating even more :-)

[infinity0]

Everybody knows the real number of cases is greater than the confirmed number of cases, everywhere, regardless of what country is reporting the numbers.

[zabana]

how would you know that ? Can you provide sources to backup this claim ? I'm interested to know.

[spookthesunset]

Nobody knows. Anybody that cites numbers is pulling them from a very biased sample. With the exception of a few countries, most of the testing is done on a very self-selected set of people. Those with symptoms who were ill enough to get tested and willing deal with a with a 14 day quarantine if they turned up positive.

Even counties with good, pervasive testing can’t test for how many people already had it and are carrying antibodies.

We are flying very blind here. Treat all numbers with a huge grain of salt.

[infinity0]

It's by definition. If you can see 3 ducks in your house, that means there are 3 or more ducks in your house including the ones you didn't see.

[stjohnswarts]

No it's about knowing how diseases spread. This is not a new disease. the mortality rates come from the ratio of known deaths to known infections. Obviously not all cases are known especially in the USA where we don't even have enough tests to test people coming in with severe symptoms.

[naasking]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCa0JXEwDEk