NIH study suggests Covid-19 prevalence far exceeded early pandemic cases

This infographic from the article itself is quite interesting: https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/scitransmed/early/2021/06...

Also, this stuck out to me from the nih.gov summary:

“The estimate of COVID-19 cases in the United States in mid-July 2020, 3 million in a population of 330 million, should be revised upwards by almost 20 million when the percent of asymptomatic positive results is included,” said senior co-author Kaitlyn Sadtler, Ph.D., chief of the NIBIB Section on Immunoengineering.

From the article itself[0]:

"Our results estimate that as of July 2020 there were approximately 4.8 undiagnosed infections (95% CI 2.76-6.81, Fig. S6) for every identified case of COVID-19, suggesting a potential 16.8 million undiagnosed infections by July 2020 in addition to the reported 3 million diagnosed cases in the United States."

It seems like the original quote should actually read "should be revised upwards to almost 20 million".

[0] https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/21/scitrans...

Not surprising, seeing how slow testing capacities appeared back in 2020. First, the FDA and CDC spent all of February 2020 sabotaging testing Because Procedure, only to slowly release their grip sometime in March ( https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de... ). Then, states slowrolled things, presumably because no one wanted to be the red blot on the yellow sea that everyone else barricades their borders from.

Not to say that this was a US-specific problem; widespread tests didn't appear in Germany until some time in March 2021(!).

The timeline for COVID-19 also needs to be adjusted [0].

"The 2019 Military World Games ... was held from October 18–27, 2019 in Wuhan, Hubei, China" [2]. Many of the athletes are said to have gotten very sick while visiting Wuhan. Similarly, I've talked to many people who were super-sick in the US in December 2019 or January 2020. Some people have reported their suspicions of having #EarlyCovid on Twitter...

Many of the healthy people who are having severe reactions to the vaccine probably already have immunity. I'm planning on getting the T-Detect test [1]. LabCorp doesn't have this test as something that clinicians can order; I've decided I'll probably have to pay for this myself.

[0] Dating first cases of COVID-19 - https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

[1] https://www.t-detect.com/covid-19/for-patients/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games

So if there were more people who had it by July, 16m more than originally figured, maybe we were closer to gaining herd immunity than figured back then. I had it end of December 2020, confirmed by testing, but I am pretty sure I had it January 22, 2020, when there were no tests, because I went to the hospital with a high fever, no congestion, tested negative for flu and strep, and felt weak for two weeks. My wife and I had been to two or three Asian markets in NY/NJ and spoke and ate lunch with many Chinese tourists who had come to celebrate Chinese New Year with their families over here. Funny thing is that I had lived in China for 7 plus years, and I had been to Wuhan. My friend told me about the lab near the wet market, and we both said it probably escaped from there and had a great talk about the Andromeda Strain. I mentioned the lab at work without implying it was malicious, but possibly an accident, and got the looks. The irony is people always viewed people who believed in UFOs or aliens as fringe, and now look. Life is just getting stranger by the year. I am going to go watch Lifeforce for the tenth time now... ;)

Only factor 5? Earlier statistical studies came to factors 6 to 10. Now tests are easier and cheaper, maybe that's why.

Without politicians and the media driving insane levels of fear, COVID would have come and gone, explained simply as a 'serious flu season', like the kinds we have faced about every decade:

https://swprs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sweden-monthly-...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...