German Survey Proves Corona Virus Poses No Existential Threat to the Nation

To know how deadly Corvid19 is, one must know how many of those who are infected will die. 

This, governments have thus far failed to determine, which is remarkable since any competent epidemiological research group furnished with a modest research grant could easily find out. The task is simple. The number of deaths due to the disease is known. Thus what remains to be determined is the proportion of the population that has been infected. For this purpose, a small random sample of the population, a thousand or two at most, needs to be tested for current or past infection. For this purpose  there are blood tests that assess the presence of the virus (indicating current infection), the so-call reverse transcriptase PCR tests, and there are blood tests that assess the presence of antibodies to the virus (indicating past infection), namely immunological or serological tests. 

To hear government spokespersons talk about such testing, one might assume it necessary to test every human on the face of the planet to come to any useful conclusion. Thus, for example, President Trump's medical expert on Covid19, Dr. Fauci is reported to have said:

‘Obviously’ I Would Like to Test Whole Country for Coronavirus Antibody... [But] “We’re not going to have testing for everybody in the country tomorrow. It’s going to be a gradual process. We are starting when the next week or two, we’ll be able to scale-up the kind of antibody testing to give you a good feel for what the penetrance of the infection is.”

Clearly the man is an idiot or someone who thinks that Americans are idiots.

To get "a good feel for what the penetrance of the infection is," if one must talk in such ridiculously stilted language, it’s not necessary to test the whole goddam population, all you need is a random survey of a few hundred people.

And thanks to the fact that Germans, if no one else, are not entirely stupid, we now have the results of one such survey:

A team at the University of Bonn has tested a randomized sample of 1,000 residents of the town of Gangelt in the north-west of the country, one of the epicenters of the outbreak in Germany. The study found that two percent of the population currently had the virus and that 14 percent were carrying antibodies suggesting that they had already been infected — whether or not they experienced any symptoms. Eliminating an overlap between the two groups, the team concluded that 15 percent of the town have been infected with the virus.

This work needs to be replicated on a nationally representative sample population of several thousand people in total, but if the result for the town of Gangelt is indicative of the rate of Covid19 infection nationally, it indicates that around 12 million Germans have already been infected. With 2763 deaths to date, the implied death rate is of 2736 per 12 million infections (i.e., 15% of the national population), or 0.0023%.

No doubt the virus is still spreading in Germany, and the national death toll could mount six or seven times higher if the infection were to spread to the entire population. But that is not possible, since herd immunity would stop the epidemic beyond the 50 to 60% infection rate. Thus total deaths in Germany due to Covid19 are unlikely to exceed 10,000, or about three times the annual motor accident death toll. So yes, the cost of the novel Corona virus is high. But note that most virus deaths will be among the over 65's, many of them at the point of death due to other conditions, whereas car crashes kill mainly the young and healthy.

But the German death toll due to Covid19 will certainly not reach anything like 10,000 if the German Government takes the most simple-minded steps to limit the death toll, most importantly by advising the elderly to stay in quarantine, while the rest of the population goes back to work.

So the proper virus response is simple really. But give the likes of Trump and Trudeau, Merkel and Micron the opportunity to grab totalitarian powers, and they will not give them up unless those powers are torn from their hands by an enraged populace and an effective government opposition.

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