COVID-19 and the great Chinese puzzle:
Would like to know the opinion of forum members.
@vesicles may I know what's your take on this. Thanks in advance.
First of all, let me just say that I strongly disagree with this article. I am deeply disappointed that a virologist would say these nonsense things. Literally nonsense.
The central theme of this article is that the downturn of an epidemic requires at least 70% of its population infected to achieve a herd immunity. China's infection rate is far below that. Therefore, their data is faked.
OK, in the US, everyone is now talking about "flattening the curve", which means decreasing the amount of people getting infected. If successful, everyone hopes that the percentage infected will be well below 70%. When that happens, does that mean the US has faked our data too?
Virtually all infected regions in the world have implemented some sort of isolation protocol in an attempt to "flatten the curve" and prevent the nightmarish 70% infection rate from happening. Does that mean every country is in the middle of trying to fake data?
The herd immunity of 70% infection rate is based on a single premise: nobody does anything to interfere with the natural progression of a virus. By the time ~70% of the population is infected, the virus will slowly die off because vast majority of the population has acquired antibodies and immunity. The UK tried to claim to do this a few weeks ago, and was hugely criticized by its own people and ridiculed by everyone else in the world. They have since changed their policies to more proactively prevent this nightmare from happening.
The China puzzle, claimed by the article, is actually very simple to solve: their "draconian" measures to isolate the infected population and the virus. Every other country is trying to do similar things, accepting that what the Chinese have done is effective and valid. With various methods to interfere with the natural course of the virus, it is very easy to understand how China's number is well below the 70% mark. As a matter of fact, at this point, no one in their right mind would predict the infection rate of any country would go even near 70%.
Further, the authors say "
All diseased are infected, the reverse is not true. Not all infected are sick or tested. Hence, information from China is unhelpful to confidently project the probabilities/proportions that will get infected; get COVID-19 symptoms; develop pneumonia; die." Well, how do they propose to find out the number of infected people who are not sick in any country? In the US as of today, you will have to show symptoms, not just one symptom but ALL major symptoms, in order to get tested. In Texas, we have been told to call the hospitals first and conduct phone interviews. Only when your symptoms meet all the criteria, you will be issued a code. You will need this code to get tested. If you go to a testing site without a code, you will be turned away even if you suspect that you have the virus. So how do they suppose we will find out how many infected-but-not-sick people in the US, or any other country?
If this article has been written by a regular journalist, I would be willing to give them some benefit of the doubt. However, one of the authors was a virologist. He should know better. In fact, I am sure that he knows better. When virtually everyone in the world knows that various intervention methods implemented by the governments have been intended to keep the infection rate to the lowest possible, a professional virologist claims that anything less than the worse case scenario of 70% infection rate would be lying???
Lastly, if you compare the progression of the virus in China and elsewhere in the world, you will see that China's curves, time line, exponential growth rates, fatality, etc, match those of the vast majority of the countries. Since China experienced the outbreak first and has generated these curves before anyone else, they would have to travel to the future to learn how everyone else will be doing and fake their own numbers to match others'.
My 2-cents