I have never avoided the question of my credentials. PhD scientist, with considerable experience in various aspects of infectious disease and toxicology research, public health, etc. I worked in pandemic response during the 2015 Ebola outbreak in Western Africa and I was head of a research department. Also, FYI, the majority of my lab techs had Masters degrees, but nice try to disparage my credentials by calling me a lab tech.
PLEASE include your methodology. Here are the FACTS. there are approximately 7M cases WORLD WIDE, and 2M Cases un the United States. USING YOUR NUMBERS, you are projecting that there should be 200M cases in the United States. That would be 30x the number WORLDWIDE. Your determination is completely faulty.
I have posted my graphs in previous Covid-19 threads. The methodology is simple enough: using the early case numbers and an R0 value of 2.5, I determined that each round of infection was occurring every 9 days. So, with each infected person infecting 2.5 other people every 9 days, it was a simple matter to determine how many people would be infected at any given point in time. I'm sure, if you have any grasp of mathematics, you can generate your own projections of how many people would be infected without any measures to control virus spread. The projections and actual case data matched very well up until April 11, at which point cases started falling below the projections. Given that control measures were implemented in the last two weeks of March, and that the incubation period of Covid-19 is from 2 to 14 days, it is clear that cases were dropping because of the control measures. The difference between uncontrolled growth and the actual growth with control measures in place has only continued to increase.
IgG antibodies are a part of the immune system for the lifetime of a patient. While the serial dilution may decrease, there is NO REASON for you to BASE this ridiculous argument that flies in the face of immunology accepted theory for over 100 years.
Obviously, you have no practical experience working with antibodies and are completely unaware of their cross-reactivity with any protein that is similar to the immune inducing antigen. A lot of people get colds, and many of those colds are caused by coronaviruses. All an antibody test can reliably show is that a person has had a recent coronavirus infection, but it can't tell which coronavirus it was.
Also, the statement that IgG antibodies are part of the immune system of the patient is only true if you are considering the antibodies as a class, but the durability of IgG responses to specific pathogens is variable. If immune responses lasted forever, booster vaccinations would not be a thing.
And your Sherlock Homes like analysis or whether there would be virus in January as a first wave is a circular argument. You obviously have no appreciation for the scientific method, and yet you really think you can proffer an opinion.
I'm pretty sure I'm not the one showing no appreciation for the scientific method here. I honestly do not think you showed any capability of following my scientific reasoning. Most people cannot, in fact, follow scientific reasoning.
There is a widespread belief that Covid-19 was already circulating widely back in December/January, even though at that time, there were few cases which were only in China. A component of this belief is that somehow, Covid-19 is causing absolutely no symptoms in hundreds of millions of people, while only a small minority show symptoms. There are a host of reasons why this belief is untrue and completely unscientific; I was addressing only the role of testing in dispelling this belief. It appears that you are one of the people who has embraced this belief. If the scientific knowledge I apply here contradicts the belief, the problem is not me or the scientific method--the problem is the belief.
Please, if you choose to answer, address your methodology and awful mathematics in the context of the actual data. But truly, you do not have to answer because I have serious reservation as to your comprehension of the topic.
Please share, what is your educational background? What is your scientific specialty? Have you ever worked in any research capacity? Written a thesis or dissertation? Written scientific papers?
I keep a spreadsheet of the Covid-19 case data, where I do a number of analyses that I have not decided to share here, unless I see something that I think might be interesting to those who read the Covid-19 update thread. Have you been keeping track of case data? Have you been reading the medical literature? Have you done any analysis?
Just a little observation here--when I see someone resorting to all caps, I automatically assume that they do not have facts on their side.
What is your Ph.D. in. Lots of worthless Ph.Ds out there. I worked pandemic responses as well for clinical sides and planned disaster responses for major cities and acute inpatient settings. So pound sand on that.
In all your Ph.D. glory you picked an RO that has been demonstrated to be incorrect. As the science has changed all you have done is stuck to dogma. You pulled typical BS when you did not answer the question. You have postulated 200M cases in the US when there are 7M case world wide. You clearly had NO IDEA what you are talking about
Combine this with real scientific data that hypothesize that lock downs and mitigation make no difference — and you are stuck with that you are just plain wrong.
As for your tenuous grasp on antibodies — there is CLEAR evidence as published by peer reviewed sources that previous corona virus infection confers cross immunity because they are in the same class. You have also not accounted for the two papers that demonstrate attenuation of the virus to less virulent and less severe
I suppose that when some one BOLDS their text it is the same as capital letters. You have, pure and simple, been wrong since the get go. I originally prognosticated nothing more than a bad flue season. And your theory is laughable about it not spreading in the US prior to January when there is probe data of cases on the West coast at the first of January.
This is your problem, you dont know a thing about clinical science. There have been numerous ARDS cases in January - April that were influenza negative and retrospectively were CoVID by clinical scenario (although I also insist that we should not include them in a confirmed data set). The fact of the matter is there are reports in the Deep South of entire schools being out in December for horrendous GI and respiratory syndromes. Sound familiar? And yet the kids did FINE.
There is little question in anyone’s mind that this has been circulating probably since late December or early January here in the US with no overwhelming of the system.
Combine this with OVERTESTING and the recent WHO statement that asymptomatic spread does NOT exist, and you end up with a big goose egg.
However, I come back to your calculations and work, and you are unwilling to accept this. You said according to your work, we have 1% of the cases that we should have, leading to 200M cases in your estimation. You are not only wrong, you are laughably wrong. You are off by a factor of at least 100, if not more, and the world data where there was not great mitigation simply does not support your hair brained hypothesis.
What is your Ph.D in? What is the title of your dissertation. And for the love of all that is good, I would get your money back.