Blaze Media How can you stop the spread of a virus that has already spread to every corner of the country, to some degree, for months? And if it was already this widespread, doesnât it mean the fatality rate of the virus is much lower than what the media and politicians have been warning about in justification of martial law, jailbreak policies, and a total shutdown of our economy?
The answer to these questions has devastating implications for the lockdown strategy employed by Western governments in combating the spread of COVID-19, as opposed to the balanced approach of most Asian countries. A new Stanford antibody study, as well as information from around the country and the globe, now contradicts the entire premise of our governmentâs strategy in dealing with the SARS-2 coronavirus.
On Friday, Stanford Universityâs school of medicine announced the findings of the first publicly released random sample antibody study of an entire county in the United States. Researchers sampled 3,330 Santa Clara County residents of all demographics to see how many had the antibodies of SARS-2 in their blood, which would demonstrate how many have already been exposed to the virus and are immune to it. Using basic serology, the researchers at the nationâs fourth highest-rated medical research school concluded that anywhere from 2.49%-4.16% of the people in this county of 1.9 million already had the antibodies in them.
Why is this such a bombshell? It means that instead of fewer than 2,000 people having the disease, as public tallies based on testing show, the virus has really infected 50 to 85 times more people in Santa Clara County. More importantly, what that means is that the infection fatality rate is equally 50-85 times lower than what the government data suggests. For example, in Santa Clara County, the California Department of Health reports that 70 people have died from the virus and that the fatality rate is 3.8%. But based on the new discoveries by Stanford, that fatality rate plummets to roughly flu-like levels.
âIf our estimates of 48,000-81,000 infections represent the cumulative total on April 1, and we project deaths to April 22, we estimate about 100 deaths in the county,â concluded the study. âA hundred deaths out of 48,000-81,000 infections corresponds to an infection fatality rate of 0.12-0.2%.â
That is a very different story from the 3-4% figure the global governments and the World Health Organization have been working with.
Obviously, there are hot spots like New York City where the fatality rate is definitely some degree higher, although we donât know exactly how much higher because the denominator of total cases could be exponentially higher than in any other city. A more densely populated area than Santa Clara County could have a much higher infection rate. For example, another antibody study of Chelsea, Massachusetts, that was just conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital Physicians found virus antibodies in almost one-third of the samples. Chelsea is the second-most densely populated city in the state.
We are seeing this in other countries as well. Researchers at the University Hospital in Bonn tested antibodies in Ganglet, Germany, and found 14% of the residents have already been infected. If that were the average in America, it would mean close to 50 million people have already had the virus, previously chalked up to the winter flu or else completely asymptomatic.
