According to the CDC, there are 153 confirmed cases of COVID 19 in the US, with 11 fatalities: 10 deaths in Washington state, and 1 in California. That works out to a 7% fatality rate, which represents a very large increase over the 2% rate we have been give up to this point. This means one of a few things:
1 The other nations are not reporting correct figures with respect to their cases versus fatalities.
2 This illness is far more deadly than we are being led to believe.
3 There are far more than 153 cases in the US, but we aren't catching most of them.
4 The US strain is somehow more deadly than the one in the rest of the world.
I'm going with option 1 and 3. I think every country has far more cases than are reported - since people with mild symptoms don't generally go to the doctor. With an easily spread droplet illness, the rate of spread just doesn't add up unless they're missing a lot of cases. The USA seems to be exceptionally bad about testing, so our numbers are even more skewed than some others.
ReplyDeleteIf I heard right the deaths were registered in a locale where high risk victims were congregated. Senior care center
ReplyDeleteSomeone posted a link to City Journal about how the CDC screwed the pooch on diagnostic tests for the virus because of overregulation. They weren't allowed to issue the test kits.
ReplyDeleteRight now, the numbers are all screwed up because of that lack of testing. In China, they had PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test kits within days back in December. Not here.
It's entirely possible, if not likely, that many more people have had the COVID-19 than is being reported. Like hundreds of times more people have had it than knew it.
I'm with the others above - most of the US cases reported so far have been in vulnerable populations (cruise ship elderly and nursing home elderly) so that will skew the data. But I am also sure that there are far more cases than have been reported so far, both in the US and elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that we are on the edge of a substantial increase in cases as the disease builds momentum in the US AND as testing picks up. There WILL be mistakes made that unnecessarily infect people, particularly hospital employees and their families.
Note that while I don't think the US has a more deadly strain of it, there are at least 2 strains of this going around; it appears that the milder strain grew first and the more aggressive strain is growing now - and MAY be affecting people outside of China more. I have also read that some of the "reinfections" you've read about are people catching both strains.