UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
Patients with undiagnosed flu symptoms who actually had COVID-19 last winter were among thousands of undetected early cases of the disease at the beginning of this year. In a new paper in The Lancet’s open-access journal EClinicalMedicine, epidemiological researchers from The University of Texas at Austin estimated COVID-19 to be far more widespread in Wuhan, China, and Seattle, Washington, weeks ahead of lockdown measures in each city.
In the U.S., about a third of the estimated undiagnosed cases were among children. The researchers also concluded that the first case of COVID-19 in Seattle may have arrived as far back as Christmas or New Year’s Day.
Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of integrative biology and statistics and data sciences who leads the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium, worked with her team of researchers to extrapolate the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan and Seattle based on retested throat swabs taken from patients who were suffering from influenza-like illnesses during January in Wuhan and during late February and early March in Seattle. When the samples were analyzed later in each city, most turned out to be flu, but some turned out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“Even before we realized that COVID-19 was spreading, the data imply that there was at least one case of COVID-19 for every two cases of flu,” Meyers said. “Since we knew how widespread flu was at that time, we could reasonably determine the prevalence of COVID-19.”
When the Chinese government locked down Wuhan on Jan. 22, there were 422 known cases. But, extrapolating the throat-swab data across the city using a new epidemiological model, Meyers and her team found that there could have been more than 12,000 undetected symptomatic cases of COVID-19. On March 9, the week when Seattle schools closed due to the virus, researchers estimate that more than 9,000 people with flu-like symptoms had COVID-19 and that about a third of that total were children. The data do not imply that health authorities were aware of these infections, rather that they may have gone unseen during the early and uncertain stages of the pandemic.
“Given that COVID-19 appears to be overwhelmingly mild in children, our high estimate for symptomatic pediatric cases in Seattle suggests that there may have been thousands more mild cases at the time,” wrote Zhanwei Du, a postdoctoral researcher in Meyers’ lab and first author on the study.
According to several other studies, about half of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic, leading researchers to believe that there may have been thousands more infected people in Wuhan and Seattle before each city’s respective lockdown measures went into effect.
“We can go back and piece together the history of this pandemic using a combination of investigative techniques and modeling,” Meyers said. “This helps us understand how the pandemic spread so quickly around the globe and provides insight into what we may see in the coming weeks and months.”
The new technique for estimating the amount of unseen COVID-19 based on the ratio of influenza cases to COVID-19 cases has also been used to determine how many children were actually infected in each city and the pace of the early pandemic in the U.S., Meyers said.
The finding in the new paper is consistent with work that Meyers and her team have done on the virus’s early spread. Using travel data, she and her team estimated how far the virus had spread and concluded that there were as many as 12,000 cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan before the lockdown.
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In addition to Meyers and Du, graduate students Emily Javan and Ciara Nugent at The University of Texas at Austin and professor Benjamin J. Cowling of the University of Hong Kong contributed to the research. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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And more people are immune to its effects with progressive safe sanctuaries for its residence and reproduction. Treatment with HCQ (i.e. border control)+Zn (i.e. Planned Pathogen)+AZ, and closure of Planned Parent facilities (notably NYC), would have dramatically reduced disease progression and excess deaths. Regulating migration and immigration would have also been a positive contribution to reduce exposure of Americans at risk.
We are now in a casedemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU3OibcindQ
many cases but an insignificant number of hospitalisations and deaths
I estimated back in January that we were seeing 1 in 20 cases. It isn’t because I am smart or a medical researcher, I just know my history. It accounts for why the spread accelerated so quickly. Any typical thoughtful person would have seen the same thing. Why this surprises those in the medical field – anyone in the medical field – is just pathetic.
We will be reaching herd immunity much faster than people suspect. The only questions that remain, is how long immunity lasts and how fast the stupid virus mutates. I predict the mutation is fairly slow, and that immunity lasts longer than people currently think (they are saying 3 months). If immunity lasted only 3 months then this virus would have broken out into a pandemic much sooner (so I think). Immunity is likely to last at leas 9 to 12 months based on the virus being contained so long.
If mutation is slow enough then outbreaks will be every 8 to 10 years. If it’s quick, then expect outbreaks to be every 2 to 3 years. A vaccine will relegate this to a niche disease.
If immunity is just 3 months, the only thing begin a constant pandemic and health is a vaccine. I just do not but this scenario as yet (lacking any proof). This could then replace Flu as the most prevalent seasonal killer, but I am guessing it won’t.
Here is the really ironic lesson – we should be encouraging children to get the disease before they get older to develop a strong immunity. By closing schools we slow the disease spread down but make it a bigger problem in the future (lacking a good vaccine). Yes, some children will get the disease and have severe symptoms, bit most will have trivial symptoms and then be stronger in the future against the disease. Yes more older people will die but more younger people will live longer lives. It comes down to a a decision on what is important – more healthy years total or more elderly unhealthy years right now. It sucks to be my age and know that I am expendable, but it’s right for the young people I love.
Seems to me the only way to protect the old people is to severely lock them down whatever the cost then lift all restrictions to blast it thru the rest of the population.
This continuous low level rate caused by lockdowns and restrictions just means eventually it will get into the homes
“Doctors Pen Open Letter To Fauci Regarding The Use Of Hydroxychloroquine for Treating COVID-19”
https://austrian.economicblogs.org/zerohedge/2020/durden-doctors-pen-letter-fauci-hydroxychloroquine-treating-covid-19/
If we take at face value the numbers that we are given, i.e.:
– Infection rate is 3
– A person becomes infectious on day 2 of being infected and remains infectious for up to 14 days
– This is a “novel” virus never encountered by man, ergo, we are all susceptible
Then, the math says that the entire global population would be infected within 40 days of this virus making its appearance.
Day 1 – 1 infected person
Day 3 – 4 infected persons (the original person + 3 other individuals)
Day 5 – 16 infected persons …
The question therefore is:
How long does it take for the medical profession to identify and then come to agreement that a new virus has appeared on the scene? Especially, a virus that presents all the symptoms of a very common illness?
That being the case, of course infections are far more widespread than we could ever test for.
On the other hand, already by the end of February, due to the data we had from the cruise ships and war ships, we already knew that not all would be susceptible to this virus.
So….