California antibody test suggests many more people may have been exposed to Coronavirus than first thought

A woman wearing a facemask. The Hill. 

A California antibody test study suggests many more people may have been exposed to Coronavirus than first thought. The Hill. The study tested 3300 people in Santa Clara country and found that 2.5 to 4.2% of people in the country could be infected. That would mean that 48,000 to 81,000 people could have had the virus compared to the roughly 1000 people that tested positive by the county. That would mean that in California there could be 50 to 80 times more infections than have been reported. The study has yet to be peer reviewed and even if confirmed it would show that 90 to 95% of the population has yet to be exposed to the virus and has no immunity. 

My Comment:

I have heard similar things from other countries. In both Denmark and Iceland, where testing people without symptoms have occurred for different reasons, they also found that a lot of people had the disease who had either extremely mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.

If these studies are confirmed than it vastly changes the way we perceive the disease. Right now the Coronavirus is seen as a deadly virus that kills up to 4% of the people infected with it. If we find out that 50 to 80 times more people have gotten it without a huge number of deaths and infections than we probably need to reevaluate our reaction to this disease. 

This could reduce the death rate by a massive amount. If we are missing so many cases than the percentage of deaths for people who get infected would be much lower than we think it is now. It could mean that the true death rate is much closer than the common flu than the current estimates of 2 to 4%. 

That would mean that we should probably change how we are reacting to this virus. If we are missing thousands of cases, most of which are mild or without symptoms, than we should seriously consider accelerating how fast we open the country up. The most vulnerable will still have to stay home but the less at risk people can return to work and get the economy going again. 

However there are some important caveats. We need to realize that Santa Clara country might be unique in some way. For one thing the obesity rate in California is a lot less than the rest of the country so that could be holding the severe and lethal cases rate down. It could also be due to the weather or dozens of other factors we don't know. And the study could, of course, be flawed. 

And even if even more cases are mild or asymptomatic that doesn't mean that there isn't a huge threat to older and more vulnerable people. Even if the death rate is around what the flu is the virus is so infectious that it could spread a lot faster than the disease and still kill tens of thousands of people or even overwhelm hospitals. 

Either way more testing is needed. We need to confirm this studies findings before we take any actions and we should probably be doing antibody testing on pretty much everyone in the country. In general, we need much more information about the SARS CoV-2 virus as there are far too many "known unknowns" right now, including a lot of basic stuff like the death rate and rate of spread.

Though this is certainly not scientific I do remember hearing reports from many of the people I know that had illness in the run up to the outbreak in January, February and March, before the disease was supposed to be widespread. If we are missing a lot of the cases than it's very possible that the virus already went through and this actually is the "second wave" that everyone is talking about.  

I also think that if the Santa Clara rates are true it's possible that hard hit places like New York might be getting close to herd immunity. With roughly 200,000 confirmed cases, if they actually have 50 to 80 times more cases than New York could actually have 10 million to 16 million cases, which would be more than enough for herd immunity to kick in. Those numbers don't seem quite right but even if it's close to that than it means this outbreak is almost over. 

I do sincerely hope that this study is right and we have missed a lot of cases. That means the virus is not anywhere near as deadly as feared and that it will be over a lot sooner than we expected. If confirmed that would be the best news we have gotten so far in this outbreak.