If 86% of all cases are undetected, that means these 86% are not having symptoms, or so mild they don’t notice or care.
If we assume that this ratio exists over the entire population, then the whole situation changes.
United States, about 300 million people. IF 50% are exposed, under current thought, we have 150 million infected people, and 2%, or 3 million might die.
But if 86% of us are effectively immune, than if we tried to infect 50% of the country:
300 million * .32 = 96 million. 50% = 48 million. 2% die == 960,000.
And if in fact the immune population percentage is more like 90%, the entire “pandemic” turns out to be overblown. Sure, a ton of poeple got sick, because 10% of every population is still a lot, but the whole things peters out a lot quicker than we thought, because it’s like 90% of us already had the thing.
We have done NO studies on what the “infection rate” is for the virus at various viral loads.
Imagine trying to run that controlled study, get 1000 volunteers to just be subjected to various loads of the virus, hold them 14 days, and see how many get positives.
But look at the numbers on the cruise ship, captive audience, no control of spread, little treatment. 710 tested positive out of 3800 (18%). Of the 710, only 300 had symptoms. We credit “isolation”, but what if the 18% was because only 36% were even susceptible to it, and 50% of them caught it?
The administration has said there will be a million test kits available this week. If the CDC is not right now conducting a random sample of at least 10,000 people to determine the infection rate and by inference the mortality rate, then Trump should fire them all (if that were possible). My guess is that the virus has been here for months and there are hundred of thousands infected, most of which were/are asymptomatic or undiagnosed and recovered. If this is the case, we are destroying the economy for a flu.