…The model's conclusion: On any given day, the actual number of active cases — people who are newly infected or still infectious — is likely 10 times that day's official number of reported cases.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days
26,939,515 x 10 = 260,939,515
Estimated United States population 330,074,711.
260,939,516 / 330,074,711
= 79.1 % already infected
However the above comes from reading the headline. Looking at the underlining more conservative presentation of data:
The sustained periods of high transmission in the U.S. also mean that by now, quite a large share of the U.S. population has been infected beyond what the tallies of reported cases would indicate. Nationwide, Shaman estimates that about 120 million people have now been infected, just over a third of the U.S. population.
using the above statistic:
120,000,000 estimated cases / 26,963,516 CDC cases
= 4.45 times more cases than CDC has reported.
Would this not also equally mean that COVID-19 is 77.5% less deadly than being reported?
i.e. If there are five times the infections than have been currently reported by CDC, would that not also mean that percentage fatality rate has to be 20 percent of what current CDC is been reporting?
Accuracy in infection and mortality data is if course important for understanding and making policy decisions.
It would seem the math points toward herd immunity of a less (than originally suspected) fatal disease. Else, the only things that would justify an ever-present-ongoing-policy of recommending/requiring multiple masks, social distancing, and business/social lockdowns, where the vast majority of individuals have either had already COVID and recovered or been vaccinated for it, would be concerns of short-term immunity, and/or mutations, and/or the often cited “asymptomatic” spreading. Those topics deserve further study/exploration.
