April 24 - Jump in Positives

1. A sudden jump in the number of positives is seen, largely due to the USA. Consequently, Days-to-Double for the positives takes a big hit, worsening to ~17 days (down from ~23) for the World and to ~14 days (down from ~19) for the USA.

2. Days-to-Double for deaths remains flat, at ~20 and ~15 days for the World and for the USA, respectively.

3. Becasue of its importance, will repeat this point virtually unaltered from yesterday's post. The actual number of infected in NYS is a big open question especially when thinking of the second phase:

• The percentage of positives is ticking lower, now at 23% compared to ~40% a week ago. More than anything this probably implies that ~60-70% of the population in NYS is not infected;

• However, the number of observed deaths in NYS implies a much higher number of infected than the reported number of positives would suggest. Indeed, if the IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) for Covid-19 is at or below ~1%, then the observed deaths would imply ~x10 more infected than there are reported positives! Thus, the observed ~250,000 positives may in fact mean ~2.5 Million infected in NYS!

• In fact, the number of infected is probably even higher than that given the recent Lancent study that puts Covid-19 IFR lower than 1%, namely at ~0.66% (0.39-1.33).

• The antibody test results in NYS made public yesterday, suggest that ~14% of the population in NYS is infected. This is inline with what we have been saying here for about a week now. In reality, probably 20-40% of NYS is infected, dominantly among the populations of NYC and Long Island.
  

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