From the UK, which is not countering care home deaths as other countries, hospital deaths only. Yes there are good reasons for this however there is a political angle. The UK office of national statistics estimates this is lowballing by 52 percent (conservatively).
1. They reclassified people who died in the past few weeks as a covid death. It's not new deaths that have been tested for covid. 2. All assumed cases are currently being included without testing. Even some doctors are now reporting they have no idea why some deaths they have personally seen have been recorded as covid. 3. New hospitalizations is the more accurate measure, since there's no standard in death classification. That has been off the mark since March, and the models ASSUMED social distancing.
So what do you think the number is in nyc? Factor of 10? 20? When was the virus first here in nyc? I live here, the subways are still packed at rush hour. Why are the new hospitalizations so off the mark and all the new makeshift hospitals empty?
So as reported by Fox News you go and test a mere 200 residents at the top hot spot in Massachusetts (Chelsea). 64 of the residents test positive for anti-bodies. On top of this - "While the participants appeared healthy, about half told the doctors that they experienced at least one symptom of COVID-19 in the past four weeks." "Ambrosino called Chelsea the epicenter of the crisis in Massachusetts. Chelsea has the state’s highest rate of confirmed cases, with at least 712 confirmed cases and 39 deaths – an infection rate of around 2 percent." So 100 of the 200 residents in a top hot spot exhibited symptoms of COVID-19 in the past four weeks, and people act surprised when 64 out of the 200 test positive for anti-bodies in a quick blood test of questionable accuracy. On top of this the company providing the test, BioMedomics, has come under fire for inaccurate tests - including those distributed in North Carolina. BioMedtronics is small start-up located in our RTP area of North Carolina and has continually hyped itself for years -- claiming they have rapid tests for everything from sickle cell anemia to many other diseases. The FDA says that serological tests like those offered by BioMedomics are inaccurate and while the FDA would provide Emergency Use Authorization but would not likely ever approve the tests beyond the emergency use. Founded in 2007, BioMedomics is a privately-held clinical diagnostics company located in Morrisville, North Carolina.
So the tests are faulty, but it's perfectly fine to classify a death as covid without testing. Okay doomer.
Ya have to believe that somewhere Elizabeth Holmes is off crying over how her timing was off and she missed out on some of these antibody lab test "opportunities."
I read somewhere that any antibody test will show if a person has antibodies against any coronavirus not necessarily SARS-CoV-2. Does anyone know if this is correct?
Well, therein lies the problem/opportunity. There are about twenty antibody tests being pitched for FDA approval and whose pharmaceutical maker wants to be selected as the or one of the volume suppliers to the government. They all allege to measure differently. If it measures antibodies against "any coronavirus" then it would be worthless or misleading because the common cold- for example- is a coronavirus. And when a corona virus patient's immune system tries to fight off covid it recruits and elevates antibodies that the body generically uses to fight other infections. For example covid patients who successfully fight off the disease are able to elevate immunoglobulin G. However, influenza B patients do the same. So, on one hand - from a treatment point of view it is good to know that that antibody is a key player when exploring transfusion options- but on the other hand it is not unique to covid so it is useless as an antibody test. That's a long winded way of saying that all the new antibody tests allege that they test covid-specific- but the current reliability problems indicate that they are not there yet. Just to leave it on a more optimistic note, Fauci said that that is not uncommon at this early stage and that the CDC, NIH, etc have already conferred with some of the pharmaceutical companies and given recommendations on how they can fix some of their problems. I don't know about all that but the fact that there are so many antibody tests being submitted for review, makes you believe- for now anyway- that some good work is being done somewhere. And all these companies allege that they are ready to go. It shouldn't be hard to confirm the reliability of various tests because we know that a full cdc lab test is reliable for comparison to the quickie tests being proposed.
With respect to H1N1, the estimates for fatality rates 10 week into the pandemic were any where from 0.1% to 5.1%. Years later, the health authorities have concluded that the fatality rate is only 0.02%. The above info is from a paper that Marcos Lopez de Prado just published. He is a professor not, but, he was previously considered the best quant trader in the world. From the paper: