CDC Now Estimates There Have Been Over 20 Million Coronavirus Cases

Coronavirus data has been, in a word, maddening since the initial outbreak began in China. Beginning with initial reports from the WHO and China, it's been very hard for the average person to know what is truth and what is fiction.

Hopefully that's beginning to change.

On Friday, in a story that received relatively muted media coverage, the CDC released its latest data on the prevalence of the coronavirus in the country and the results are fairly eye opening, especially for those who haven't paid much attention to the antibody studies in this country -- the CDC now estimates there are ten times as many cases in the United States as our testing has uncovered.

That is, instead of around 2.6 million cases in the country there have actually been 26 million cases.

Those of you who have been following the national antibody studies aren't surprised by this data, but I feel like that's a small part of the overall country.

So for most of the country this should land as a certifiable blockbuster.

Why is this CDC finding significant?

Well, it means nearly one in every ten Americans have already had the coronavirus, which is a fairly gigantic finding. It also means many of these infected people had such mild cases they felt no need to receive treatment. In fact, it probably means the majority of the people who have had the coronavirus in this country never even knew they had it.

But it also means, and this is perhaps the most significant data point, the coronavirus is far less deadly than we've been led to believe.

In fact, the CDC study suggests the all age death rate from the virus is roughly .5%. Meaning 99.5% of all people infected with the coronavirus, regardless of age, recover. (There are other studies that suggest the .5% death rate is still far too high, but it's still significant that the virus has a 99.5% recovery rate per the CDC).

Now as a point of fact we know that deaths from the coronavirus are heavily slanted towards nursing homes and the elderly -- most states report over half of all deaths in nursing homes -- so this means, as was reported via a study by Stanford scientist John Ioannadis, most people in this country are under a greater risk of death driving to and from work than they are from the coronavirus.

Yes, I know, the media is in the middle of a second wave of fear porn over increased cases in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, among other states, but it remains to be seen whether these cases, which are mostly in people in their twenties and thirties as opposed to in people in their sixties, will translate into an increased death count. While deaths are a lagging factor, Florida posted its lowest Saturday death total in eight weeks today:

And the nation as a whole posted its lowest Saturday death total since March 21st. Indeed, while 506 people died of the coronavirus, an average day in America sees 7500 people die. This would mean the coronavirus, at least on Saturday, represented just 6.6% of all American deaths in the country. The coronavirus received, conservatively, 99.99% of all the death coverage on the news, however.

Is it possible that deaths, which continued to fall this week even amid the media fear porn of a second wave, could rise again? Sure, anything's possible.

But it's also possible that the death rate could continue to fall even with the increased cases in many states. How could that happen? Because the death rate from the coronavirus for people under forty in this country is minuscule. So even if cases are increasing the fact that they are increasing in the young may not be that big of a deal.

In the meantime, you might be asking yourself, isn't it kind of big news that the CDC now says there are over 10x the number of cases in this country as have been reported? Shouldn't the news media be covering the fact that the CDC now says nearly one in every ten Americans have had the virus?

The answer, of course, is yes.

The next question you might want to ask yourself is this, why isn't this CDC report headline news everywhere?

And the answer to that question is, sadly, because it's good news about the coronavirus and the mainstream media news purveyors have determined that good news detracts from their fear porn ratings. So they are mostly ignoring this data.

Which is yet another reason, as if you needed any at all, why you can't really trust most in the media to share the facts with you.

Thank god for Outkick, right?

Hope y'all are having great Saturdays and, as always, thanks for reading and supporting the site.