Check out this distribution of confirmed deaths from the CDC.
All ages - 1,889
Under 1 year - 0
14 years - 1
514 years - 0
1524 years - 0
2534 years - 14
3544 years - 50
4554 years - 113
5564 years - 218
6574 years - 439
7584 years - 526
85 years and over - 528
So, these total numbers are understated by perhaps a factor of five, but the distribution by age should be roughly the same.
In the US, if you don't require hospitalization, you are not going to get tested. Well, about half of America is under 35 years old, and death rates for this demographic approach zero. There are zero reasons why a young person would get infected with this virus at a lower rate than an older person. But, since they are not at risk of dying, none of them are getting tested and turning into a confirmed case.
This means, at worst, our published death rates are overstated by a factor of two. But I think its overstated by a whole lot more than that. If we can miss reporting infections on almost every single person under 25, what does that say about our reporting on people between 35 and 55? Infections in that demographic has to be vastly under reported as well.
If you have a strong immune system, and it doesn't spiral out of control for whatever reason, you are fighting this thing off. There is no other reasonable explanation for the low death rates in under 25. We are MASSIVELY under counting total infections.
What does this do to the prediction models? I'm a little out of my element on this topic, but if your r0 of infections is actually double your assumption, aren't you are missing significantly under-reported exponential growth in total infections? What if it's off by a factor of 3 or 4? My wonder is if this is what all the virology experts realized over the last week or two, and this contributed to the massive revisions downward.
All ages - 1,889
Under 1 year - 0
14 years - 1
514 years - 0
1524 years - 0
2534 years - 14
3544 years - 50
4554 years - 113
5564 years - 218
6574 years - 439
7584 years - 526
85 years and over - 528
So, these total numbers are understated by perhaps a factor of five, but the distribution by age should be roughly the same.
In the US, if you don't require hospitalization, you are not going to get tested. Well, about half of America is under 35 years old, and death rates for this demographic approach zero. There are zero reasons why a young person would get infected with this virus at a lower rate than an older person. But, since they are not at risk of dying, none of them are getting tested and turning into a confirmed case.
This means, at worst, our published death rates are overstated by a factor of two. But I think its overstated by a whole lot more than that. If we can miss reporting infections on almost every single person under 25, what does that say about our reporting on people between 35 and 55? Infections in that demographic has to be vastly under reported as well.
If you have a strong immune system, and it doesn't spiral out of control for whatever reason, you are fighting this thing off. There is no other reasonable explanation for the low death rates in under 25. We are MASSIVELY under counting total infections.
What does this do to the prediction models? I'm a little out of my element on this topic, but if your r0 of infections is actually double your assumption, aren't you are missing significantly under-reported exponential growth in total infections? What if it's off by a factor of 3 or 4? My wonder is if this is what all the virology experts realized over the last week or two, and this contributed to the massive revisions downward.
