April 26 - Big Positive Up-tick but Probably Largely due to Mis-reporting

1. Huge positive jump in both the USA and the World but probably because of the previously observed 'weekend effect' of delayed reporting. Still, it feels good to report such decisively good numbers:

Days-to-Double:

• USA -- for deaths ~33 days, for positives ~25 days!

• World -- for deaths ~38 days, for positives now at ~28 days!

2. Because of its importance, will repeat this point virtually unaltered from previous posts. 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 21% compared to ~40% a week ago;

• 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 a few days ago, suggest that ~14% of the population in NYS is infected. This is consistent with what we have been saying here for over a week now. In reality, probably 20-40% of NYS is infected, dominantly among the populations of NYC and Long Island.

• Either that, or the virus is getting progressively less and less lethal with time (as one would in principle expect), and rather quickly at that.

#COVID-19