Comment: Of course it's 'less fatal than previously thought'. But they already knew that. They're just 'letting you down gently'...
Early antibody testing for the coronavirus in 19 New York counties suggests up to 2.7 million people could have been infected in the state alone, meaning the real death rate may be much lower, Governor Andrew Cuomo has revealed.
Results from a random testing sample of 3,000 New Yorkers have revealed that some 13.9 percent of state residents have likely had and recovered from the coronavirus, Cuomo stated in a press conference on Thursday.
While the governor cautioned that the results were preliminary and varied county by county, he still managed to throw the perception of the virus as a mortal threat for New Yorkers into question. The new numbers indicate that this revised infection rate, compared to 15,740 deaths linked to coronavirus statewide, points to a fatality rate of only about 0.5 - much lower than previously believed.
New York is the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the US, and New York City has been hardest hit given its high population density. However, even in the city, where 21.2 percent tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies (1.77 million people) during this trial, a casualty count of 15,000 deaths points to a fatality rate of 0.8 percent.
Outside the city, the rates are lower - Long Island residents tested positive at a rate of 16.7 percent, while Westchester and Rockland Counties were 11.7 percent positive. The rest of the state returned much lower results at 3.6 percent.
Cuomo has acknowledged that the virus does not menace the entire state equally and spoke earlier this week of reopening upstate regions before dealing with the densely-populated metropolitan areas. However, he recently extended the state's lockdown until mid-May and cautioned against permitting anyone to go back to work without widespread testing.
The antibody tests were conducted at grocery and "big box" stores in 40 locations across 19 New York counties, and did not include bedridden patients or those too sick to venture out of their homes. However, the results support the conclusions of researchers in Santa Clara, California and Chelsea, Massachusetts, who found similar widespread asymptomatic and mild infection in populations previously believed to be unaffected by the virus.
IMO this is THE most important information coming out since this entire implosion started.
Before we could make a good educated guess at the true denominator since it was obvious how widespread it was prior to any intervention and there weren't bodies stacked like cordwood all over the country.
Now we KNOW the true infection spread is massive and that's not to be feared! That's good! And I hope there are more and more of these antibody tests are forthcoming. Why this wasn't done two months ago is a mystery (actually, it isn't to SOTTites)
My mistake was assuming people I've tried to talk down off the ledge these past few months knew what a "denominator" was, or what the significance was to a true population fatality rate vs hospital case rate. Be sure when trying to explain the truth to scared mask-people to speak on VERY simple terms. Think like a 5 year old and be brief as well. Even some people who I know were 'bright' before the event are at least 50 IQ points lower now operating under this mass hysteria induced fear. You're talking to a lot of brains running solely on primal neurons when confronting them.
I've purchased a ton of cheap thumb drives and will be distributing them (sanitized in baggies!) to the mask-people who want them. On this drive is a simple text file with links to articles like this. Please do likewise.
I feel as far as videos go, John Ioannidis's latest is the best. His tone and simple logic hopefully might be able to save a few from the ledge.