[DevKoala]

> "I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number — and this is just my hunch — but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it's very mild, they'll get better very rapidly. They don't even see a doctor. They don't even call a doctor. You never hear about those people,..."

At the time, the person who said that was called an idiot.

[Jordrok]

He's still an idiot. He chose to believe that not because of research or statistics or the advice of people with expertise, but because it was convenient. This was at the beginning of March when there had only been 11 deaths. He was making the argument that this is no worse than the normal seasonal flu, because he was loathe to take any drastic preventative action that might disrupt his precious stock market.

Well, here we are now, thousands have died, with thousands more on the way, and the economic damage has already been done. That's what happens when you let an idiot run the country.

[etrabroline]

I'm loathe to defend the current US president, but almost no Western country took this seriously until the last possible minute. There is clearly a deeper ideological issue infecting the entire West.

[darkteflon]

Australia and New Zealand have done a superlative job: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/have-australia....

[mcv]

It's absolutely true that most western countries underestimated this. East-Asian countries were better prepared and more willing to take drastic action to do what's necessary. Western countries assumed that, like SARS, Asia would solve this. Turns out it's way more contagious than SARS.

Still, once the seriousness became clear, most countries did take action. Trump continued to deny and spread misinformation, even to this day.

[ebcode]

> There is clearly a deeper ideological issue infecting the entire West.

Amen.

[Gibbon1]

Who do we believe a bullshit artist at the economist or Bob Wachter Chair, UCSF Dept of Medicine.

> @Bob_Wachter > 3/ Another interesting #: @ucsf, we only test pts w/ symptoms, who all think "I have Covid.” But only ~4% of our tests are +, meaning most folks who think they have it, don’t.

https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1247722427620012032

[jrfinkel]

I don’t think it’s that simple about the tests. They’re less accurate than people think. Here’s one article about it (if you google you can find more): https://www.wsj.com/articles/questions-about-accuracy-of-cor...

Also, if you don’t trust the WSJ either (I wouldn’t blame you) here is an article from Nature Medicine that has a comparison of nasal vs stool tests for covid, and Figure 1b really drives home the high rate of false negatives for nasal swab tests compared to stool tests (and throat swabs are even worse than nasal swabs): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0817-4?fbclid=IwA...

[dhc02]

Yep. In fact, false negatives of current test are a function of time since the onset of symptoms:

Day 1? ~7% false negative Day 10? 40% false negative Day 20? 90% false negative

That's really high, and it seems anecdotally likely that a majority of tests have been administered to people who are 7-10 days or more post-symptom-onset.

Here's the tweet discussing this: https://twitter.com/c0nc0rdance/status/1248094573928251398/

And here's the paper: https://t.co/aSdFeLzopH?amp=1

[troelsSteegin]

Even an idiot is right twice a day?

[lurquer]

30 days ago many HN posters were saying this. I guess they were all idiots too. They don't say it much any more, though... why get downvoted? The fact that this has already spread through the US will become self-evident soon enough. ("The peak is coming in CA any day now! Just wait...")

[ardy42]

> 30 days ago many HN posters were saying this. I guess they were all idiots too.

Quite possibly. There are all kinds.

[lurquer]

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Study-investigates-if...

Idiots popping up everywhere, it seems...

[pengaru]

That article is comparing NY to CA with the expectation that they should be more similar.

CA is a very car-centric state, the public transportation situation is a joke. I'd expect this alone to tamp down the spread relative to NY, considering the density of NYC and how ubiquitous public transportation is there.

[etrabroline]

>He does not advocate lifting social distancing rules

I believe the "idiots" referred to above are the people who blindly assumed without evidence the experimental hypothesis of this study simply as an excuse to avoid social distancing and self isolation.