h/t Instapundit
[WP] - Results from coronavirus antibody tests have started to trickle in, and they bolster the consensus among disease experts that the virus is significantly more lethal than seasonal flu and has seeded the most disruptive pandemic in the past century.
"I think it is the worst pandemic since 1918," said Cecile Viboud, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center, alluding to the "Great Influenza" pandemic that claimed an estimated 675,000 lives in the United States.
The new serological data, which is provisional, suggests that coronavirus infections greatly outnumber confirmed covid-19 cases, potentially by a factor of 10 or more. Many people experience mild symptoms or none at all, and never get the standard diagnostic test with a swab up the nose, so they’re missed in the official covid-19 case counts.
Higher infection rates mean lower lethality risk on average. But the corollary is that this is a very contagious disease capable of being spread by people who are asymptomatic — a challenge for communities hoping to end their shutdowns.
The crude case fatality rates, covering people who have a covid-19 diagnosis, have been about 6 percent globally as well as in the United States. But when all the serological data is compiled and analyzed, the fatality rate among people who have been infected could be less than 1 percent.
But as infectious disease experts point out, even a seemingly low rate can translate into a shockingly large death toll if the virus spreads through a major portion of the population.
Doesn't even have to be a major portion - just an essential one, as we're seeing with meat packing plants.
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said Monday that the latest antibody numbers in New York City indicate that 25 percent of the population of 8.8 million has already been infected.
Chinese made antibody tests?
The city has recorded more than 12,000 confirmed covid-19 deaths, and lists another 5,000 as probable deaths. That is an infection fatality rate between 0.5 and 0.8 percent, depending on which death toll is factored in. (A spike in all-cause deaths in recent weeks also suggests that some coronavirus-related deaths have not been captured by mortality statistics.)
...Epidemiologists have said somewhere between 40 to 70 percent of the population will likely become infected in the next couple of years if there is no vaccine and the public does not take aggressive measures to limit the spread of the virus.
"Do the math!" said Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist who has been studying the coronavirus since early in the outbreak.
Shaman and his colleagues have developed a model of the coronavirus spread that estimates that only 1 in 12 infections in the United States have been documented in official counts. That leads to an infection fatality rate of 0.6 percent, he said — a figure that roughly matches what has been seen in New York City.
At that rate, the United States could potentially experience 1 million deaths if half the population became infected and no efforts were made to limit the contagion through social distancing, a vaccine or proven therapeutics, Shaman said.
But, at least, the Economy would be saved! 
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