# 20% of Americans have had Coronavirus?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377>\
**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:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![castanea108](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/castanea108/32/5536_2.png) [@castanea108](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/castanea108)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2020, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/41 "2020-12-22T02:38:40Z")

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If 20% of the population has sufficient exposure to the virus to develop antibodies, and assuming that developing antibodies will give them immunity for at least a while, while that is way short of the percentage needed for herd immunity (infection rate of 1), it should still reduce the infection rate by some amount, however small. (If I went out and infected 5 other people at the start of the pandemic, all other things being equal, under conditions of 20% immunity, now I’m only going to infect 4, because one of them (on average) will be immune.) Slowing the infection rate is a good thing, because it reduces the stress on the hospital system to have people showing up at the hospital at a slower rate, even if the final total number of cases is the same.

Does slowing the infection rate at bit compensate for the widespread presence of undetected infections just waiting to show up in a nursing home or hit a superspreading event and blow up? Of course not.

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**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2020, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/20-of-americans-have-had-coronavirus/928377/42 "2020-12-22T02:53:23Z")

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> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> 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.

I’ve never been tested. Testing seems to be widespread in certain occupations, but I would say is not common in the US.

I work in an essential industry, and had to stay home this past week, as I was working with someone who felt ill and tested positive. But I was advised to only get tested if I felt ill, not otherwise.

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