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China is furious that environmental readings have exposed lies around COVID-19 deaths. The data collected shows a clear mismatch from the information released by the Chinese government about how many people died and at what time. This is a very sensitive subject with China engaging in a cold trade war with Australia over the origins of COVID-19 while providing support to affected smallers countries as calls are made for China to pay billions in penalties due to their coverup.
Before Beijing's crackdown, China's bureaucracy had been conducting business as usual – analysing, assessing and reporting on everything about its citizenry. The researchers from Washington University and Ohio State University say they have tracked down this early government data and combined it with reports in state-controlled and social media.
Among this data was the activities of eight crematories in Wuhan. By January 25 these were inexplicably operating around the clock.
Based on such sources, the researchers argue the total number of infections and fatalities before February was at least ten times that of the official figure announced by Beijing.
[...] The study tracked the sale [of] funeral urns to verify these estimates. In the January-March period during which the crematoriums were operating at peak levels, some 36,000 had been distributed.
(Score: 1) by claywar on Tuesday June 16 2020, @02:08AM (1 child)
And in local policies, if your protest is noble, the consequences are negated. A most noble-novel-coronavirus we must have. If the IFR of 0.26% is cherry-picked, could you please inform the CDC? We're still using them as a reference, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2020, @09:42AM
Did the virus also promise not to infect the protesters with long guns on the Michigan Capitol steps [nbcnews.com]? In both cases, the answer is no. However, the risk of being infected is considerably lower outdoors [nytimes.com] because the virus is rapidly diluted in the air outdoors, particularly if there's a breeze. A person has to be exposed to a certain dose of the virus in order to be infected, whereas lower exposures are not likely to result in infection. It's harder to receive a large enough viral dose outdoors. Both protests are almost certainly safer than Trump's planned rally in Tulsa [nbcnews.com] that will take place with limited safety measures to prevent the spreading of the virus [nbcnews.com].
As for the study in question, here is the actual preprint [medrxiv.org]. It is a preprint, meaning that it hasn't passed peer review. To be clear, peer review is far from bulletproof, but is an important step where concerns about the methodology, analysis techniques, or interpretation of results can be raised. This was an initial study based on antibody testing in Santa Clara County, CA. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of antibody testing. The tests were performed on volunteers recruited on Facebook so the sample of people that were tested may not be representative of the population. To my knowledge, this was the first large-scale study using antibody testing to report results. Reproducibility is critical for any experiment, so additional studies were needed to support the result discussed in this preprint.
Focusing solely on the infection fatality rate really is cherry picking what information to present. An infection fatality rate is roughly 2-3 times that of the seasonal flu most years. The issue is the very high incidence of significant adverse long-term health effects [forbes.com] including decreased lung function [bloomberg.com]. Focusing on the infection fatality rate ignores the significant long-term consequences for many of the people people who survive being infected.
As for the CDC's estimate, that comes from a document with various scenarios to inform modeling studies of COVID-19 in the US [cdc.gov]. The fifth scenario uses what the CDC considers the current best estimate of a number of parameters that describe the behavior of the virus. Notably, these include a 0.4% infection fatality rate for people who are symptomatic and that 35% of people remain asymptomatic, producing an overall infection fatality rate of 0.26%. Scientists have criticized the CDC estimates as being too optimistic [npr.org] and have questioned whether the estimates are being revised downward due to political pressure.