I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understood the relevance of asymptomatic : symptomatic ratio here. I think what’s at stake in this article is the ratio undocumented : documented cases; it’ll include not only asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic or mildly symptomatic people, but people who got really sick but couldn’t be tested until Hubei had largely improved their testing capabilities.
I do think a 50:1 rate is surprising, though not impossible.
If 50% of the cases in South Korea are asymptomatic and so don’t get tested, their true death rate would be ~0.4-0.5%; if you add people who got sick before their testing capability was improved, etc., it may be lower. But again, I really prefer to be pessimistic in my death rates.
If there is a 1:1 symptomatic:asymptomatic ratio and 2,000,000 odd infections then there are 1,000,000 symptomatic people out there and only 40,000 identified. Of that 1,000,000 we expect 200,000 to require hospitalisation and 50,000 to require ICU.
If this was true I would expect someone to have noticed.
There might be another explanation for the figures that I’m missing but, as I said, I think it’s up to them to explain what they think is going on.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understood the relevance of asymptomatic : symptomatic ratio here. I think what’s at stake in this article is the ratio undocumented : documented cases; it’ll include not only asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic or mildly symptomatic people, but people who got really sick but couldn’t be tested until Hubei had largely improved their testing capabilities.
I do think a 50:1 rate is surprising, though not impossible.
If 50% of the cases in South Korea are asymptomatic and so don’t get tested, their true death rate would be ~0.4-0.5%; if you add people who got sick before their testing capability was improved, etc., it may be lower. But again, I really prefer to be pessimistic in my death rates.
If there is a 1:1 symptomatic:asymptomatic ratio and 2,000,000 odd infections then there are 1,000,000 symptomatic people out there and only 40,000 identified. Of that 1,000,000 we expect 200,000 to require hospitalisation and 50,000 to require ICU.
If this was true I would expect someone to have noticed.
There might be another explanation for the figures that I’m missing but, as I said, I think it’s up to them to explain what they think is going on.