US Covid19 Cases Underestimated 80-Fold?

Penn State University reports:

... 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.

The report continues:

...the researchers’ model suggested that [in New York] at least 9% of the state’s entire population was infected by the end of March. After the state conducted antibody testing on 3,000 residents, they found a 13.9% infection rate, or 2.7 million New Yorkers.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine conclude that:

...“Our results suggest that the overwhelming effects of COVID-19 may have less to do with the virus’ lethality and more to do with how quickly it was able to spread through communities initially... A lower fatality rate coupled with a higher prevalence of disease and rapid growth of regional epidemics provides an alternative explanation to the large number of deaths and overcrowding of hospitals we have seen in certain areas of the world.”

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COVID-19, an Agent of Demographic Change: How the New Corona Virus Will Change the World

 The novel corona virus COVID-19 has three interesting properties:

(1) It is highly infectious;
(2) It has a high lethality, killing something like 3% of those infected;
(3) Risk of mortality increases with age.

What that means is that:

(a) Most people throughout the world will likely contract the disease within the next couple of years;
(b) Several hundred million people worldwide will die from the disease;
(c) Most deaths will be of pensioners in the most developed nations.

What that all means is that:

(i)  The burden of social security in the most developed nations will be radically lifted as the number of pensioners is cut by 10 to 30%, and perhaps by well over half if the virus returns over a number of years;
(ii) The number of young people engaged in the "eldercare" business will be radically reduced;
(iii) The cost of housing will fall and fertility rates will rise as the transfer of assets from the old to the young accelerates.

The most important net effect will be to save the Western nations from self genocide by suppression of native fertility (due to the burden of high housing and social services costs) and an end to mass population replacement immigration as native workers are released from service to the older generation, and thus freed to take the jobs that "natives won't do."

Whether as the result of a lucky accident or the planned release of an engineered virus, the overall effects will likely be judged by historians to have been beneficial.

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