[BostonCard]

If the study comes back revealing that there is a very large population that have been infected asymptomatically, and therefore the fatality rate is an order of magnitude smaller than 1%, would that be a reason to lift some current restrictions?

I can't imagine so.   The immediate goal is still to minimize the (over)load on the healthcare system.  Critical cases are still critical cases even if the figurative bar to be considered a generic case changes.

Agreed.  One thing it would do, however, is give you much more confidence that there might be a substantial amount of previously unknown herd immunity out there.  Let's take New York, as an example.  There are currently 3,500 deaths or so.  If the CFR was 1%, then that means that ~350,000 people have been infected (114,000 have been reported), out of a population of 20 million in New York, which is not enough to offer herd immunity.  If the undetected prevalence is actually 10x higher (that is, the CFR is closer to 0.1%) then 3.5 million out of 20 have been exposed.  Still not quite enough to offer herd immunity, but we are getting somewhere.  If the CFR is closer to 0.06% as the authors of that piece surmise, then the number of infected so far is closer to 5.8 million and that might be enough to start to make a dent on the susceptible population, especially because we haven't yet reached the peak number of deaths.

I think, however, that we are a ways away from the total number of deaths in New York, and once we hit 11,400 deaths, it will be clear that a CFR of .06% will be impossible unless 100% of the population had already been infected.

My guess is that the truth will be somewhere in between.  Everything I've seen has suggested that between 1/4 and 2/3 of cases are asymptomatic, and thus the CFR may well turn out to be less than 1%.  But it looks to be substantially higher than 0.1%.

BC

[BostonCard]

If the study comes back revealing that there is a very large population that have been infected asymptomatically, and therefore the fatality rate is an order of magnitude smaller than 1%, would that be a reason to lift some current restrictions?

I can't imagine so.   The immediate goal is still to minimize the (over)load on the healthcare system.  Critical cases are still critical cases even if the figurative bar to be considered a generic case changes.

Agreed.  One thing it would do, however, is give you much more confidence that there might be a substantial amount of previously unknown herd immunity out there.  Let's take New York, as an example.  There are currently 3,500 deaths or so.  If the CFR was 1%, then that means that ~350,000 people have been infected (114,000 have been reported), out of a population of 20 million in New York, which is not enough to offer herd immunity.  If the undetected prevalence is actually 10x higher (that is, the CFR is closer to 0.1%) then 3.5 million out of 20 have been exposed.  Still not quite enough to offer herd immunity, but we are getting somewhere.  If the CFR is closer to 0.06% as the authors of that piece surmise, then the number of infected so far is closer to 5.8 million and that might be enough to start to make a dent on the susceptible population, especially because we haven't yet reached the peak number of deaths.

I think, however, that we are a ways away from the total number of deaths in New York, and once we hit 11,400 deaths, it will be clear that a CFR of .06% will be impossible unless 100% of the population had already been infected.

My guess is that the truth will be somewhere in between.  Everything I've seen has suggested that between 1/4 and 2/3 of cases are asymptomatic, and thus the CFR may well turn out to be less than 1%.  But it looks to be substantially higher than 0.1%.

BC