The “it’s just the flu” folks are all excited about the Stanford study. So let’s break this down. 1

For comparison, in the 2018 to 2019 season US flu deaths totaled 34,200. Total US Covid 19 deaths are currently up to 37,100. Since the flu numbers were for an entire year and covid deaths are for less than two months the “its just the flu” is already struggling to hold up 2

But the Stanford study!

If the study turns out to be correct, or even correct’ish, that will be good news. The study sampled 3300 people in Santa Clara county for antibodies and suggests a prevalence of 2.49 to 4.16%. Or 48 to 81k people of a total population of 1.9m. 3

The part everyone is fixating on is that Santa Clara currently only has 1870 confirmed cases (it was lower when the study ran) so somewhere between 50 and 85 times more people have it than are captured in the testing. 4

We knew there would be many more cases beyond the confirmed because of test availability, asymptomatic cases, etc, but this is a big number so all the “it’s just the flu” folks are dividing 1% by 85 and saying, see, same mortality rate as the flu. 5

But we already have more deaths in one month than from the flu so... what gives? 6

Well, for starters we have this thing called the flu vaccine which protects something like 40% of recipients from getting the flu at all. Plus, there hasn’t been a novel flu for awhile so most of us have varying degrees of immunity. 7

We have neither for covid 19. So while it’s great news that maybe up to 4% of us have already had this, the unsettling flip side is that, since herd immunity happens at like 80’ish percent, another 75% of us will get it... 8

... (unless there is a vaccine) before community spread will stall. 9

By the time that happens here is what might also happen if we all just go back to normal:

75% of 330m Americans is ~250m. 37,100 of us have died so far. If we assume the 4% high end of the prevalence range, then 330m*.04 = 13.2m of us may have been exposed so far. 10

37,100 / 13.2m = .00281 deaths per infection.

So, 250,000,000 still to be infected * .00281 = 703k. 11

703,000 dead Americans is better than the 2.6m we would get from a straight 1% mortality rate applied until herd immunity was reached, but it’s still not the flu. Not even close. 12

This ignores things like higher mortality rates at higher rates of hospitalization. It also assumes the Stanford study findings apply uniformly across the country (they dont). 13

I’m not an epidemiologist. I might be full of shit. I might have mathed wrong. So feel free to point out errors. But I’m pretty confident the Stanford study TL:DR isn’t “Stop worrying and go do what you were doing before.” Fin

The inspiration (I’m using that term generously) for this thread was a guy yesterday jumping into my mentions to tell me I should be ashamed of myself for “promoting fear” and “misleading information.” Then this morning I ran across this: https://twitter.com/franklomonte/status/1251298878164434953?s=21 https://twitter.com/franklomonte/status/1251298878164434953

Amazing read. A sheriff threatened to arrest a 16 year old girl for posting about her own covid 19 hospitalization experience unless she deleted her post because school administrators were claiming that no one in the district was “confirmed” positive.

And, of course there were no confirmed cases because there was no testing and because a bird with its head in the sand can’t see anything.

So every time someone says “you are violating my rights by imposing stay at home orders” I hear a selfish mental adolescent whose political philosophy is the distilled essence of “You’re not the boss of me!” and is never far from “And I’m the boss of you!”