A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-COVID Strategy
Excerpt: Seroprevalence is what I worked on in the early days of the epidemic. In April, I ran a series of studies, using antibody tests, to see how many people in California’s Santa Clara County, where I live, had been infected. At the time, there were about 1,000 COVID cases that had been identified in the county, but our antibody tests found that 50,000 people had been infected—i.e., there were 50 times more infections than identified cases. This was enormously important, because it meant that the fatality rate was not three percent, but closer to 0.2 percent; not three in 100, but two in 1,000. When it came out, this Santa Clara study was controversial. But science is like that, and the way science tests controversial studies is to see if they can be replicated. And indeed, there are now 82 similar seroprevalence studies from around the world, and the median result of these 82 studies is a fatality rate of about 0.2 percent—exactly what we found in Santa Clara County. [Imprimis is a 10 times annually publication from Hillsdale College (available for free, by the way, just sign up). I’ve been a subscriber for decades, literally from 2 houses ago. Somehow, they decided my title was Reverend rather than Mister, so that’s how all their emails to me begin, Rev. Pittenger. This article concerns information from Santa Clara county in California. The information was widely quoted–and criticized–at the time, but is now accepted as valid. The article is worth reading. I’m not convinced the prescribed policy changes are the best possible, but over 43,000 public healthcare professionals have signed onto the recommendations. It can’t hurt us to have too much information, and it can hurt us to have too little. Judge for yourself. I added emphasis. Ron P.]
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