“Mounting evidence suggests the coronavirus is more common and less deadly than it first appeared.”
That’s what the super-liberal National Public Radio now says.
Ya’ think?
We’ve been saying that for weeks, months even!
Here’s more from NPR’s report:
The evidence comes from tests that detect antibodies to the coronavirus in a person’s blood rather than the virus itself.
The tests are finding large numbers of people in the US who were infected but never became seriously ill. And when these mild infections are included in coronavirus statistics, the virus appears less dangerous.
Let’s pause here: Appears? No, it IS less dangerous — far less dangerous when cases in which the infected who showed no symptoms are factored in.
Back to the piece: “‘The current best estimates for the infection fatality risk are between 0.5% and 1%,’ says Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. That’s in contrast with death rates of 5% or more based on calculations that included only people who got sick enough to be diagnosed with tests that detect the presence of virus in a person’s body.”
But the death rate is far lower than that.
Studies across the country have shown that far more people have antibodies for COVID-19 than has been known, meaning far more already had the virus, many showing no symptoms at all.
An antibody study was conducted last month in New York City and found that 1 in 5 (21.2%) of residents have already been infected with the coronavirus. There are 8.5 million people in New York City, so that would mean 1.8 million New Yorkers have had the virus. At the time of the study, there were 16,249 deaths in the city attributed to COVID-19, which means the death rate in the city was 0.89% at the time — far lower than reports in the U.S. media.
A recent Stanford University antibody study estimated the fatality rate from the virus is likely 0.1% to 0.2%. The World Health Organization (WHO) had estimated that the death rate was 20 to 30 times higher and called for isolation policies. On which version do you think the media focused?
In New York City, the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, the death rate for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01%, or 10 per 100,000 in the population. People aged 75 and older, though, have a death rate 80 times that. For children under 18, the rate of death is zero per 100,000. That’s zero.
Results of antibody survey in Los Angeles found as many as 442,000 Los Angeles County residents might have already been infected with the coronavirus by early April, a number far higher than the 8,000 cases confirmed at the time. The survey suggested that the death rate from the virus could be as low as 0.18% of COVID-19 patients, which means the actual death rate in the city is far lower than reported.
NPR concurred:
The Indiana State Department of Health … led a study of more than 4,600 people statewide [in May]. Most were selected at random.
Participants got two tests. The first was the standard test that looks for the virus. It shows whether you have an active infection. The second was a test that looks for antibodies to the virus in a person’s blood. It detects people who were infected but have recovered.
Preliminary results showed that the coronavirus had infected about 3% of the state’s population, or 188,000 people.
“That 188,000 people represented about 11 times more people than conventional selective testing had identified in the state to that point,” Menachemi says.
And 45% of the infected people reported having no symptoms at all.
That’s nearly half.
Then NPR added this: “Indiana’s infection fatality rate turned out to be about 0.58%, or roughly one death for every 172 people who got infected.”
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