Re:The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
by mynegation on Saturday March 21, 2020 @11:13AM
(#22647031)
Until recently Ontario had very stringent testing pre-requisites: 2 or more symptoms, history or travel in the last 14 days. Even then, on average, only 2% of tested people tested positively for SARS-Cov-2. In my opinion that makes the notion of much more larger population having it and not noticing due to the lack of testing, at least at this stage, highly unlikely.
Re:The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
by seanmcdirmid on Saturday March 21, 2020 @11:39AM
(#22647271)
They should be doing some tests via random sampling anyways just to make sure.
Re:The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
by mynegation on Saturday March 21, 2020 @12:03PM
(#22647446)
Ideally, yes. But given the limited testing capability that is a politically hard thing to do. Even if 50-75% of cases are asymptomatic (and that is a very big if), that would mean that on average you have a number of asymptomatic people that is a factor of 1 to 3 of confirmed cases. While it would be great to isolate those people, at this point that is still not a huge number that means anything for the response.
But not all symptomatic people receive tests.
Knowing those two number (number of symptomatic people who would have qualified for a test, were it available; number of test performed) could paint q better picture.