[credit_guy]

My bet is that it's much more than 10%. In NYC I think it's at least 20%-30% by now. Obviously, I don't have any more data than what you can find online, but anecdotally, I think one of my sons had it; he most likely got it from his piano teacher who exhibited all the Covid symptoms (fever, dry cough, loss of smell), but was never tested. I think at least myself and my wife got this from him as well; likely his two siblings, but they were completely asymptomatic. Our kids' nanny has Covid now (tested at the hospital), and her son too (he's in ICU). I have other anecdotes, and no, I don't have systematic data, but I believe at least 20%-30% of NYC has had Covid by now.

Another point of reference is this: according to [1], a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the number of Covid-infected is 100 times the number of dead. It's about 8000 now in NYC, so about 800k infected. That's about 10% of NYC's population, exactly the number you mentioned.

[1] https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/BackOfTheEnvelopeCOVID19.html...

[usaar333]

15% of pregnant woman in NYC that delivered had active Covid infections (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2009316) detectable by PCR. It's highly unlikely under 20% of the population was infected. I'd bet closer to the 30% in fact.

[smallgovt]

Does this study change your mind on that 20-30% figure? After all, the study measured a 35% infection rate for people living in close quarters with other infected individuals. Surely, the overall population would yield a much lower infection rate than this?

[6nf]

NYC is the definition of living in close quarters.

[dajohnson89]

brooklyn resident here. fwiw (not much), it feels like easily 1/3 of the local people i know got some mild fever symptoms in the same 3-week timespan.

[arcticfox]

As a counterpoint, I saw a lot of people supporting the idea (with similar anecdotes) that there was a huge outbreak in California in December before we were even testing for COVID at all. Which was empirically demonstrated to be untrue by the later Seattle Flu Study testing of the viral genome.

That said, it's a whole lot more likely that you're right than the December-California-epidemic folks, just saying that that type of anecdotal evidence is fairly easy to come by in the winter.

[TSiege]

Also from bk. I'll anecdotally second this sentiment. I even got sick with a terrible cough for 2 weeks in the end of February and lost my sense of smell for 2-3 days. My roommate didn't get sick, but I just spoke to my neighbors and they mentioned similar symptoms the week after me.

[jrockway]

Do you think this happened in early February? If so, I agree. Sort of.

The problem is that according to the data, none of us that had the "weird cold" in February ever went to the hospital and tested positive for COVID-19. So it was probably something else, but it is weird that there was a widespread "weird cold" in New York right before the COVID-19 cases, isn't it?