# What percentage of people do you think will never be directly touched by COVID? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [July 3, 2020, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-do-you-think-will-never-be-directly-touched-by-covid/914218 "2020-07-03T22:09:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2020, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-do-you-think-will-never-be-directly-touched-by-covid/914218/21 "2020-07-22T17:19:46Z")
I think FOAF is close enough to make an impact by that standard, if they get really sick. A good friend at work losing her spouse or parent. A teacher at your kid’s school, even if you didn’t know them. Those might hit harder than a person you yourself know, but only slightly. It’s seeing your community hurt that makes the difference ---
**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:** [July 22, 2020, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-do-you-think-will-never-be-directly-touched-by-covid/914218/22 "2020-07-22T23:11:10Z")
That’s the survey you want to run with? Cool[.](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19infectionsinthecommunityinengland/july2020) > The remaining 67% of positive cases either did not report having any of the specific or general symptoms on the day of their positive swab test, preceding swab test or subsequent swab test, or did not answer both questions. **While this suggests there is a potentially large number of asymptomatic cases, it is important to note that symptoms were self-reported rather than professionally diagnosed, and those without any evidence of symptoms will include instances where the questions relating to symptoms were not answered.** > > This analysis is based on **115 individuals** in the sample who tested positive for COVID-19. **This is a very small denominator, meaning the confidence intervals are wide.** Additionally, with such a small number of cases included in this analysis, if any of these are false positives this would have a large effect on the results. So it’s not as high as 78% as that is only on day of testing, but could be 67%, hell, could be 10%. On almost every metric on every chart in the entire study, the confidence interval is wider than the actual metric itself. But, what the hell, let’s run with it and call this gospel. That means the following are also now canonical: > There is **no evidence of differences** in COVID-19 infection rates over the study period by **sex and age bands** , and only limited evidence of differences by ethnic groups We might need to rethink the idea of opening up the schools. ---
**Author:** ![RealityCheck71](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitycheck71/32/3493_2.png) [@RealityCheck71](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityCheck71)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2020, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-do-you-think-will-never-be-directly-touched-by-covid/914218/23 "2020-07-22T23:48:31Z")
Great. You should post that in school openings thread. Did you respond to make some point? That post was from 2 weeks ago and I kinda lost the line of conversation here. ---
**Author:** ![RealityCheck71](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitycheck71/32/3493_2.png) [@RealityCheck71](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityCheck71)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2020, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-do-you-think-will-never-be-directly-touched-by-covid/914218/24 "2020-07-23T00:05:50Z")
Looking around, the numbers on asymptomatic infections seem more all over the map than I recalled. So I’ll retract my confidence in that one survey’s results. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-do-you-think-will-never-be-directly-touched-by-covid/914218.md?page=1)