Do any of our resident docs or people in the field have any educated guesses at what the multiplier between total reported cases and total actual cases would be?

Do you think at least twice the number of people confirmed positive have actually already had this virus? More than that?

You can work backwards from the death rate. Here is a video from Khan academy...from what seems like a lifetime ago. So the IFR would need to be updated.

Even if it is 10x than approximately 15 million people have had it
Which is about 5% of the us population

Edit
2.5 million cases x10 is 25 million
But that is still less 10% and that is if we use the 10x as the uncounted multiplier

Spaulding said:

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Even if it is 10x than approximately 15 million people have had it
Which is about 5% of the us population

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The US has 2.5MM confirmed cases, so a 10x multiplier would be 25MM.

Just thought I'd chime in to say that the multiplier has changed over time, due to the increased availability of testing. We were rationing the testing early on to only the most severe cases, now we have opened it up to basically anybody. So in March-April 10-20x is a reasonable estimate for a multiplier. Now? Probably closer to 2-3 times. It's impossible to know in the moment, because these things are always estimated after-the-fact via serological studies.

just take the number of hospitalized and multiply it by 30

Even serological studies will undercount if the T cell hypothesis holds. Serology also seems to miss children who in many cases don't develop antibodies.

that said, if younger people are getting it predominantly now, their hospitalization rate is sub 1%, so maybe up to 100x the hospitalization numbers rn

Surely it's not that hard. Just test some random samples of people

Consistent with the UCLA and Stanford (independent of each other) studies approx two months ago. Infected are approx 10x more than thought. The important # to track is hospitalizations and deaths, both of which are going way down.

Does anyone know the current hospitalization rate in Texas? I know the total hospitalization count is increasing as the number of cases is increasing. I'm wondering if the % of hospitalization is still down?

Houston hospitals (icu) are currently around 12% occupied by patients needing care for symptoms related to covid-19.

The number is higher than that

deadbq03 said:

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Picadillo said:

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Consistent with the UCLA and Stanford (independent of each other) studies approx two months ago. Infected are approx 10x more than thought. The important # to track is hospitalizations and deaths, both of which are going way down.

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Congratulations on living somewhere where hospitalizations are going down.

I live in TX.

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Hospitalizations aren't going down in California right now.

https://news.psu.edu/story/623797/2020/06/22/research/initial-covid-19-infection-rate-may-be-80-times-greater-originally

This study puts the multiplier at 80x early on, estimating 8MM+ infections by late March alone.

Quote:

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Many epidemiologists believe that the initial COVID-19 infection rate was undercounted due to testing issues, asymptomatic and alternatively symptomatic individuals, and a failure to identify early cases.

Now, a new study from Penn State estimates that the number of early COVID-19 cases in the U.S. may have been more than 80 times greater and doubled nearly twice as fast as originally believed.

In a paper published today (June 22) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers estimated the detection rate of symptomatic COVID-19 cases using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's influenza-like illnesses (ILI) surveillance data over a three week period in March 2020.

"We analyzed each state's ILI cases to estimate the number that could not be attributed to influenza and were in excess of seasonal baseline levels," said Justin Silverman, assistant professor in Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology and Department of Medicine. "When you subtract these out, you're left with what we're calling excess ILI cases that can't be explained by either influenza or the typical seasonal variation of respiratory pathogens."

The researchers found that the excess ILI showed a nearly perfect correlation with the spread of COVID-19 around the country.

Said Silverman, "This suggests that ILI data is capturing COVID cases, and there appears to be a much greater undiagnosed population than originally thought."

Remarkably, the size of the observed surge of excess ILI corresponds to more than 8.7 million new cases during the last three weeks of March, compared to the roughly 100,000 cases that were officially reported during the same time period.

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