Data on visits to doctors for "influenza-like illness" imply covid-19 has spread 200x faster than official US data show. Counterintuitively, if true, this would be good news. New in @TheEconomist https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/04/11/why-a-study-showing-that-covid-19-is-everywhere-is-good-news 1/2

It implies covid-19 might have a similar death rate to <gasp> the flu, but is FAR more contagious. The reason NY hospitals are swamped would be that it's equivalent to cramming a year of flu cases into 1 week. Paper by @inschool4life & @Alex_Washburne.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.01.20050542v1 2/2

FWIW, the paper's estimate of 7% of US pop getting covid-19 during 3 weeks in March is a similar order of magnitude 2 other estimates. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Europe-estimates-and-NPI-impact-30-03-2020.pdf had 3% for many countries at similar stages of epidemic. Serology in one Italian town found 13.5% https://www.unz.com/isteve/even-a-town-in-northern-italy-is-still-pretty-far-from-herd-immunity