re: #190 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

The problem is, there are now a lot of testing going on. And about 90% of the tests come back negative, in Florida for example.

The people chosen for this testing includes those who were in contact with the positives. So if this pool of possible candidates is still coming back at 90% negative, the rest of the population who have no known contact with positives are unlikely to test positive at a higher rate than possible contactees.

Until we do a large random sample with the antibody test we won’t know.

On the flip side, there are a lot of cases out there with symptoms consistent with the virus that cannot get tested because they aren’t in contact with a known positive or don’t fall into one of the high risk groups.

That said, the 90% number doesn’t surprise me because one of the early studies about spread in the US was that only about 10% of household contacts with known cases developed the virus. The number was lower for non-household close contacts.