I suspect the death rate is actually lower than we think, because we are counting the deaths of those diagnosed and hospitalized who died, compared to those actually diagnosed. We actually have no idea how many people have had it, and recovered and never even knew they had it.

I think that rather like SARS, we will find out more once it is over.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure it’s been endemic here in the Pacific Northwest since sometime in early January. Too many people around here have had symptoms of something that damn sure mimics what’s been released already about COVID-19 symptoms, and if they start doing retro-studies to see who has had it, I think we’re going to be in for a hell of a surprise.

This is one of those diseases that you look at and have to wonder if it wasn’t almost tailored to be hard to catch before it blew up into a pandemic. SARS had relatively early onset and good symptoms to use for identifying people who had it. This stuff? I’m almost certain it uses asymptomatic carriers to spread, most of whom don’t show severe enough symptoms to screen for. I’d almost plump down for saying it’s a two-stage disease, and that there’s something else that triggers the secondary severe stage, maybe an interaction between variants. Could be that the COVID-19 sufferers who are getting really sick are somehow like AIDS patients in that their immune systems are getting compromised by something else, or an atypical interaction with the COVID-19 virus itself.