First, can it make sense that this virus is really transmissible and also really dangerous (1%+ mortality rate)? I think this is a big contradiction in the official narrative. 1,400 ppl died in NYC as of yesterday. If the naïve case mortality rate (naïve because more people from this infected group could still die) is 1% that would mean 140k NYers had this as of about 3 weeks ago. 140k NYCers is 1.6% of NYC. Iceland is doing a blind test on the general population that implies about 0.84% of their general population has it. NYC likely got COVID first and it almost certainly spread exponentially faster than in Iceland; the city is 60x as dense as Reykjavik and we have 3 international airports and a bustling Chinatown and an overcrowded subway system. There is no way the penetration in NYC is comparable to Iceland- ie if almost 1% of Iceland has COVID, it would be really surprising if only 1.5% or even 3% of NYC was infected with the virus.

How far could we be off in terms of estimates for infection rate? I think there is actually a good chance we are off by a factor of 10–20x, but that’s a non-scientific guess. Anecdotally, it was recently reported 17% of the NYPD is calling out sick right now and a lot of them are testing positive. If on a normal day 1 in 20 cops are out sick, that would still mean 12% of the NYPD is symptomatic. Thanks again to Iceland, we know that 50% of people are probably asymptomatic, which means 24% of the NYPD could have this. The NYPD is a skewed sample because they interact with a lot of people, but could over 20% of the NYPD have COVID and less than 5% of NYC? Not as anecdotally, hospital patients are beginning to test positive for COVID at a very high rate (see below-looks like between 25% an 77%), and the general (non-blind) testing thus far has resulted in a 38% positive rate. This compares to Iceland’s general testing infection rate of about 6%.

Additionally, there was a recent article published in an Italian newspaper that the total case count in the country could be 5mm to 20mm (vs official case count of 120k). This would mean the official case count could be off by 40x–160x. Also in Italy, 67% of a group of blood donors who did not think they were infected tested positive for the virus.

Are there other signs the infection rate is very high and as a result the mortality rate could be a lot lower than the 1.5% — 3% range? Well so far in NYC about 99% of deaths had preexisting conditions, and Neil Ferguson, who led the initial study out of the Imperial College projecting 500k UK deaths, has said that 2/3 of people who died from COVID-19 may have died this year anyway. In Italy, the same seems to be true, and in fact the deaths from the flu has been steadily climbing in the country for years (25k died in 16/17 winter). We may soon have a better idea as Sweden prepares to release a study distinguishing those that died from COVID-19 as opposed to with COVID-19.