# 20% of Americans have had Coronavirus? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [December 19, 2020, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377 "2020-12-19T02:13:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2020, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/21 "2020-12-19T23:48:20Z")
Indeed, the news tonight implied there is a new strain in London, England with a 70% higher rate of transmission but similarly morbidity. They claim this has been found in 60% of new cases, although virologists say this is “not a major worry” nor rare for viruses. > **[New coronavirus variant spreading quickly, U.K. medical officer says -...](https://globalnews.ca/news/7532785/new-coronavirus-variant-uk/)** > > Britain's health secretary first referred to the new variant this week, saying it is believed linked to the rapid surge of COVID-19 cases in southern and southeastern England. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/22 "2020-12-20T00:36:46Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > But when we’re on the brink of immunizing the population through vaccination, the fact that there are more asymptomatic carriers is _bad_ news, unless the number of infections is already so high that we’re close to herd immunity through infection. Barring that (and we’re not close to those numbers) it just means that the virus has a greater probability of reaching everyone it _can_ kill before they are vaccinated. @Chronos, thinking about this, what I wrote not completely accurate (or at least not complete). With a simplistic model, for a known number of deaths (and serious cases) suppose the total number of infections is unknown. Then varying the rate of transmission inversely with the infection fatality rate _can_ just cancel out. So, more asymptomatic infections implying higher transmission and lower IFR arguably could still be a net positive in the vaccination scenario, because if the larger number of asymptomatic infections are now immune, it takes fewer vaccinations to achieve herd immunity. However, I think there are other factors that probably outweigh this, and make the discovery of more infections thus a higher rate of transmission with a lower IFR bad news. One is that perhaps there are long term effects that we are not yet aware of, so some proportion of the apparently asymptomatic infections may eventually have bad outcomes. The other, and probably more significant, is the fact that a more harmful but equally infectious mutation may arise. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/23 "2020-12-20T13:51:40Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > perhaps only one or two infective virii “Virii” is not a word, and is certainly not the plural of “virus,” if that’s what you were going for. “Virii,” with 2 letters I would be the plural of “virius,” if such a word existed, and it doesn’t. “Viri” is not the plural either, because that’s the plural of “vir,” which means “man.” 2nd declension masculine nouns end in -us and become -i in the plural, but “virus” is not one of them. “Virus” is not a countable noun; it’s a mass noun. As such, it does not have a plural in Latin, where it means something like “yucky stuff.” It could refer to anything from venom to the product of emesis. If you need a plural in English, it’s “viruses,” and that is used to discuss different types of viruses, such as smallpox, and polio, and COVID, etc., If you are talking about individual infectious particles, there actually is a word for that as well: “virion,” with the plural “virions.” ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/24 "2020-12-20T14:20:13Z")
I have never had a symptom and have been tested multiple times, primarily for work. I do background acting and have been tested at least a dozen times for that, and I’ve received antibody tests three times on blood that I’ve donated. Almost everyone I know has received at least one test, most of the time for employment purposes, but sometimes in conjunction with a medical procedure. My son and daughter-in-law were both tested when they went to the hospital to have their baby. ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/25 "2020-12-20T16:34:35Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > So, more asymptomatic infections implying higher transmission and lower IFR arguably could still be a net positive in the vaccination scenario, because if the larger number of asymptomatic infections are now immune, it takes fewer vaccinations to achieve herd immunity. That’s what I was thinking too. If there are less hosts for spread, the effective reproduction rate will drop. The virus spreading more slowly will give more time for the vaccine to get out. Unless we have issues with immunity and mutations, I was also thinking that the Christmas surge will be the last big surge. If there’s another later surge, it will be very small. Again, assuming we don’t have substantial reinfections or new strains of which we lack immunity. I think that’s unlikely (fingers crossed). ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/26 "2020-12-20T16:54:25Z")
> [@Tfletch1](#): > > Unless we have issues with immunity and mutations But I don’t think you can dismiss this lightly, I think it’s overwhelmingly more worrying that the possible positive aspect. And there’s the possible unknown long term health effects from the _current_ virus. We have a virus that overall has a low rate of mortality and - **so far as we know** - no serious symptoms for most people. Discovering that more people have been infected than we thought, hence that it has an even lower infection mortality rate than we thought, but is much more transmissible and infectious, is not good news to me. The higher transmission rate makes it potentially more dangerous if it mutates to greater lethality. And we just don’t know for sure that all the people who are seemingly asymptomatic won’t have any long term negative effects. Let’s put it this way, looking at it from the perspective of the great majority of people who have never had symptoms and don’t know if they have been infected asymptomatically. If my options are: (a) Turns out I’ve had it - I was asymptomatic, no _known_ health effects, and I’m probably immune to reinfection; and the world will probably reach herd immunity and get back to normal in 4 months; (b) I have never had it, and I have to wait a bit for my vaccination; but I’m not at any risk of unknown potential long term health from a new and poorly characterized virus; and the world will probably reach herd immunity and be back to normal in more like 6-8 months. I quite definitely choose (b). ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/27 "2020-12-20T17:08:06Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > The higher transmission rate makes it potentially more dangerous if it mutates to greater lethality. And we just don’t know for sure that all the people who are seemingly asymptomatic won’t have any long term negative effects. Is there precedent with other viruses that would justify either of these concerns? I guess – among ones that have spread all over the world in relatively short order, that is. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/28 "2020-12-20T17:18:53Z")
> [@SayTwo](#): > > Is there precedent with other viruses that would justify either of these concerns? I guess – among ones that have spread all over the world in relatively short order, that is. Is there precedent for viruses spreading all over the world in relatively short order? Quite obviously yes. Is there precedent for viruses mutating to more dangerous forms? Quite obviously yes. Has anything _more_ lethal than influenza or SARS-CoV-2 or _more_ widespread than Ebola done this _yet_? No, because it’s tautologous that the worst thing that has happened yet is the worst thing that has happened _yet_. Got any better arguments to minimize what’s going on with this pandemic? ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/29 "2020-12-20T17:26:26Z")
I’m not up on the reading about the viruses that have mutated into more lethal forms, which is the reason I was asking. I would tend to imagine that if they were quite widespread ones they didn’t mutate into something much deadlier than the flu, else I might have heard of them already. But asymptomatic people experiencing long-term effects of something their immune system apparently handled without much difficulty? That’s the one I’d especially like to learn more about. I wonder how they can even be sure what caused it, in those cases, unless it’s something that was widely tested for. Which viruses did you have in mind? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/30 "2020-12-20T17:43:59Z")
> [@SayTwo](#): > > I would tend to imagine that if they were quite widespread ones they didn’t mutate into something much deadlier than the flu There’s a negative _correlation_ between debilitating symptoms and transmission. With Ebola, it doesn’t spread far because it kills you so quickly, so you tend not to encounter too many other humans. But it’s a correlation, it’s not a perfect relationship. It’s quite conceivable that a virus could be infectious enough or have slow enough onset of symptoms to allow an infected person to walk around normally unaware that they are sick, for long enough to infect dozens of other people _before_ the onset of debilitating symptoms that ultimately kill them. We’ve just been lucky that this phenotype has never _yet_ occurred. > [@SayTwo](#): > > But asymptomatic people experiencing long-term effects of something their immune system apparently handled without much difficulty? That’s the one I’d especially like to learn more about. I wonder how they can even be sure what caused it, in those cases, unless it’s something that was widely tested for. Which viruses did you have in mind? Are you really unaware that several viruses cause cancer, for example? Do you imagine that we have always known this? > **[Human papillomavirus infection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus_infection)** > > Human papillomavirus infection (HPV infection) is caused by a DNA virus from the Papillomaviridae family. Many HPV infections cause no symptoms and 90% resolve spontaneously within two years. In some cases, an HPV infection persists and results in either warts or precancerous lesions. These lesions, depending on the site affected, increase the risk of cancer of the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, anus, mouth, tonsils, or throat. Nearly all cervical cancer is due to HPV, and two st An HPV infectio... > **[Human papillomavirus infection | History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_papillomavirus_infection#History)** > > In 1972, the association of the human papillomaviruses with skin cancer in epidermodysplasia verruciformis was proposed by Stefania Jabłońska in Poland. In 1978, Jabłońska and Gerard Orth at the Pasteur Institute discovered HPV-5 in skin cancer. In 1976 Harald zur Hausen published the hypothesis that human papilloma virus plays an important role in the cause of cervical cancer. In 1983 and 1984 zur Hausen and his collaborators identified HPV16 and HPV18 in cervical cancer. > The HeLa cell line con... I’m not for a moment seeking to scare people about SARS-CoV-2 that we might all die of cancer in 5 years. There’s no reason to think that. But viruses are not our friends, and we know little about the long term effects of this one. If we can take common sense measures to mitigate the unknown risk then we should certainly do so. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/31 "2020-12-20T18:16:54Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > I have never had a symptom and have been tested multiple times, primarily for work. I do background acting and have been tested at least a dozen times for that, and I’ve received antibody tests three times on blood that I’ve donated. Almost everyone I know has received at least one test, most of the time for employment purposes, but sometimes in conjunction with a medical procedure. My son and daughter-in-law were both tested when they went to the hospital to have their baby. As opposing evidence, here in Kansas (population just under 3 million) they’ve done 930,000 tests. Even on raw math that’s not a good ratio, but then you need to understand that they are counting tests, not people tested, so it’s even worse. The people I know who’ve been tested have almost all been tested multiple times apiece (the prison inmate tested four times as the disease swept through the facility, the elderly woman tested prior to multiple planned hospital visits); most of the people I know haven’t been tested at all. I haven’t been, and until quite recently (mid- or late-November) I wasn’t even eligible: not symptomatic, not living or working in health care or prison, not returning from abroad or high-risk states such as North Dakota, not adjacent to a known cluster. The state health department had criteria as to who was eligible to be tested, in order to ration scarce test supplies, and most working adults in non-high-risk jobs didn’t qualify. Apparently tests became much more available recently, but as noted that has been quite recent. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/32 "2020-12-20T19:05:16Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Even on raw math that’s not a good ratio, but then you need to understand that they are counting tests, not people tested, so it’s even worse. The people I know who’ve been tested have almost all been tested multiple times apiece Yeah. We have pretty much two-and-a-half kinds of Americans: - Those who’ve never been tested (me). - Those who’ve been tested a dozen times (my wife). - Those who’ve been tested dozens of times (her doctor). In the early days they tried to gather data tied to individuals to account for this effect but between HIPAA, incompatible tech systems, general confusion, and political interference that never came together. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/33 "2020-12-20T19:53:11Z")
A lot of people who had Covid allegedly ended up with cardiomyopathy, lacunar “mini” strokes, renal problems or lung scarring or atelectasis. These are not always trivial and may be much more common than one might wish. Although these may not apply to patients initially with few symptoms (which I defined above as nothing making them seek care), it does not necessarily follow that they can’t end up with real problems later. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/34 "2020-12-20T20:38:51Z")
So, we have either a disease that has high transmissibility, but low lethality, or low transmissibility, but high lethality (comparatively speaking on both scores, of course). And yes, the disease with high transmissibility might mutate to also have high lethality, and we all agree that both of those being high is the worst-case scenario. But couldn’t you just as well argue that a high-lethality disease might mutate to spread more easily, getting us to that same worse state? I’d think that that’d be at least as likely. Probably more so, because there’s selective pressure on the virus to become more transmissible, but not to become more lethal. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/35 "2020-12-20T20:48:02Z")
Yes, I can’t dispute your reasoning there. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/36 "2020-12-20T20:54:27Z")
So I guess a fair summary would be that for the given number of deaths & serious cases that we know about, if it turns out more people have been infected asymptomatically and the IFR and incidence of serious disease per infection is accordingly lower - the implication is positive with regard to how quickly we reach herd immunity through vaccination, because probably more people are already immune; neutral to perhaps also slight positive with regard to risk of mutation; the principal negative would be if we later discover long term bad outcomes in a significant proportion of people who were apparently asymptomatic. Does that sound reasonable? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/37 "2020-12-20T21:01:20Z")
Actually I suppose there’s one way maybe I could dispute your reasoning - that the faster it is spreading, the more replication implying more _instances_ of mutation. But I don’t know if that’s the limiting constraint on exploring the landscape of possible phenotypes. I think your argument that there is selection for increased transmission, but not selection for greater lethality, outweighs that. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2020, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/38 "2020-12-20T22:58:36Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > But this interesting approach in The Economist suggests 20% of Americans might have had Covid. 8% of Americans might have had COVID. 80% of Americans might have had COVID. We don’t know and we don’t have enough randomly sampled seroprevalence data to have any idea. When you start with an unknown (IFR) and extrapolate from there with other unknown variables (such as variance between geographical entities), you’re starting at unsure and moving quickly towards no fucking clue. The IUPUI study, which truly attempted to do this properly showed 7.8% of people in Indiana had been infected as of early October. While their selection methodology looks sound, I can’t find info about how persistent they were in pestering their randomly selected participants until they were tested. Unlike the Economist, I’m not going to attempt to claim that that study is representative of other locales, but at least they are doing it right. Find me 50 IUPUI-type studies, one for each state, and we can start determining the numbers that everyone wants to take a stab at. Is there anyone other than the CDC and IUPUI that is even trying to get randomly sampled seroprevalence data? How far have they gotten so far? ---
**Author:** ![Tfletch1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tfletch1/32/5340_2.png) [@Tfletch1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tfletch1)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2020, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/39 "2020-12-21T01:15:52Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > But I don’t think you can dismiss this lightly, I think it’s overwhelmingly more worrying that the possible positive aspect. Not dismissing, just don’t even wanna think about it! ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/40 "2020-12-21T17:19:36Z")
I am quite surprised by the limited attempts to obtain seroprevalence data. There are certainly problems with the approach used by the Economist, but it is also true testing has its own set of problems. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377.md?page=3)