And?
With the Flu, they look at Flu-like symptoms and many cases go unreported so the actual numbers of those infected with the Flu are logically higher than reported - but you're nuts if you think we've had 250M cases of the Flu in the US this year (and your math doesn't add up so you may have put in an extra zero) so I guess should stop here.....but
If you watch the Task Force briefings, you get some good info...right now, the original, really bad predictive models/numbers aren't adding up....by a long shot. The only way for some numbers to even approach some of the models (one model predicted 500K deaths in USA alone and had to be modified to a possible 20K) is if there are massive numbers of truly asymptomatic cases running around and now they are searching to see if those cases even exist and, if so, what the actual numbers may be....because none of the predictive models was worth beans and only served to cause panic...now, as true data comes in, the virus can still be deadly, but the picture is way rosier than it used to seem.
And?
With the Flu, they look at Flu-like symptoms and many cases go unreported so the actual numbers of those infected with the Flu are logically higher than reported - but you're nuts if you think we've had 250M cases of the Flu in the US this year (and your math doesn't add up so you may have put in an extra zero) so I guess should stop here.....but
And what?
Yes, of course the numbers are higher, but not 30x higher than confirmed numbers. Flu-like symptoms can be a range of not-flu causes, including the common cold, respiratory infections, mono, meningitis, bronchitis, strep, RSV, etc etc. But many times, docs just assume it's the flu because many of these get the same treatment, so why bother testing for influenza? Real flu numbers are certainly higher than the confirmed cases, but nowhere near as high as the CDC claims they are. Same thing with "flu" deaths - even the confirmed ones are often flu+pneumonia, so the patient likely dies from the pneumonia cause, not from the flu. So not only do you have the same random inflation as above, but even the confirmed number is likely lower than it's claimed. Actual deaths than can be definitively determined to be caused by influenza are a couple hundred to a few thousand each year.
If you follow the link in
this other thread, you'll see that the two big influenza reporters (clinical labs and public health labs) report a total of 280M positive specimens for influenzas. (No extra zeros!) Out of a total of 1.3MM total tested. So for every case thought to be flu
and tested for it, only 21.5% of those were even positive. So yes I do agree with you that there's been more than 250M flu cases this year, that's just the bottom number based on confirmed tests. But the real number is certainly not anywhere close to the 39MM that CDC is claiming. That is a
140x guesstimate of the provable numbers!
If you watch the Task Force briefings, you get some good info...right now, the original, really bad predictive models/numbers aren't adding up....by a long shot. The only way for some numbers to even approach some of the models (one model predicted 500K deaths in USA alone and had to be modified to a possible 20K) is if there are massive numbers of truly asymptomatic cases running around and now they are searching to see if those cases even exist and, if so, what the actual numbers may be....because none of the predictive models was worth beans and only served to cause panic...now, as true data comes in, the virus can still be deadly, but the picture is way rosier than it used to seem.
A couple studies I've seen place the number of hidden infections at less than 20% of the total case number. The Chinese study that claimed 86% was (besides being unreliable coming from China) based on China going full-deny/coverup mode. Once they switched to quarantine/incinerate mode, that study's authors dropped their estimate to 35%. The Diamond Princess study estimated unknown infections to be 17.9%. Another study I've seen drops it to 14-16%. So 20% is a higher-end, but likely close, estimate for unknown infections; which is good and bad. (While high unknown infections mean more people with it and more getting exposed, it also means the CFR is much lower than confirmed cases will calculate to. A low percentage running around means less spread/better containment, but the CFR estimates of 1-3% are more accurate, and that's a lot of people at the rate this thing spreads.)
Hopefully though, between the quinine treatments and some of the other stuff being tried, we've at least found an effective treatment that will bring the mortality rate to a crashing halt. All the higher estimates of 1-5% are based on nothing but ventilators with almost no drug support. Once effective drugs are added in, we should see 50%, 80%, maybe even 95% of 'death' cases recover instead.