A New Statistic Reveals Why America's COVID-19 Numbers Are Flat
Few figures tell you anything useful about how the coronavirus has spread through the U.S. Heres one that does.
How many people have the coronavirus in the United States? More than two months into the countrys outbreak, this remains the most important question for its people, schools, hospitals, and businesses. It is also still among the hardest to answer. At least 630,000 people nationwide now have test-confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to The Atlantics COVID Tracking Project, a state-by-state tally conducted by more than 100 volunteers and experts. But an overwhelming body of evidence shows that this is an undercount.
Whenever U.S. cities have tested a subset of the general population, such as homeless people or pregnant women, they have found at least some infected people who arent showing symptoms. And, as ProPublica first reported, there has been a spike in the number of Americans dying at home across the country. Those people may die of COVID-19 without ever entering the medical system, meaning that they never get tested.
There is clearly some group of Americans who have the coronavirus but who dont show up in official figures. Now, using a statistic that has just become reliable, we can estimate the size of that groupand peek at the rest of the iceberg.
According to the Tracking Projects figures, nearly one in five people who get tested for the coronavirus in the United States is found to have it. In other words, the country has what is called a test-positivity rate of nearly 20 percent.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/us-coronavirus-outbreak-out-control-test-positivity-rate/610132/
A long read, but good info.