[M T]

Because China lied about its numbers

I suspect you were being facetious.

Both Iceland and China attempted to reduce the infection growth by getting sick people out of circulation early.  Anyone who has taken the time to look at what China did would see that they were getting symptomatic cases early.  In a study of 1199 people, the mean time from exposure (not symptom onset) to hospitalization was 4.0 days.  They were not just waiting for self-selected people to show up for a test.  You want groceries? First let's check for symptoms.  They had something like 10K people hunting for contacts.  (My guess is that this didn't find asymptomatic people because they checked for symptoms in the contacts.   Like California, the testing protocol was designed to test those with symptoms.  Still, in one province, China tested 250,000 people.  IIRC, the positive test rate was something like 0.5%)

People tend to give credit to Korea for heavy testing as part of the reason they had a low infection attack rate.  Yet, their protocol, is to test only in the case of a fever or respiratory symptoms. 

We do sometimes apply exceptions for certain high risk groups. For example, we tested all persons linked to certain major clusters (i.e., Shincheonji, Guro-gu call center) regardless of clinical symptoms. We have also recently tested all persons in long-term care facilities in Daegu City regardless of clinical symptoms.

That sounds much like the protocol in the United States or in China.

"deCODE's 'screening program accepts everybody who is not showing symptoms and not currently in quarantine,'" but then an assessment is made that "50% of those who tested positive said they were asymptomatic"   Huh?  Did they test asymptomatic people only, or not?    (My guess is that with a wink & a nod, they let anyone take the test, without determined whether they were asymptomatic.   Nothing wrong with that, but any claim that their screening program was for the asymptomatic was a fib at best.)

Through April 5, deCODE has found 140 cases in 16,009 tests, at a rate of 87.5 per 10K people. For a population of 360K, that would be 3,150 cases.  There is no reporting of how many of these cases become symptomatic.   Discounting the 140 and another 142 (cases before deCODE started testing), Iceland only has had 1280 symptomatic cases found by the normal labs.   One interpretation would be that 3150/(3150+1280) = 71.3% of the cases are asymptomatic if they really did test only asymptomatic cases.  Another possibility is that all the cases are symptomatic, and people that feel a bit off are going for the "asymptomatic" testing before their symptoms kick in (or while they chose to lie about it).   The best I can tell currently is that the number of asymptomatic cases is between 0% and 71%.

What is necessary for these cases to run their course and that the deCODE positive test patients are monitored for symptoms.  Then we can distinguish asymptomatic from pre-symptomatic.

[M T]

Because China lied about its numbers

I suspect you were being facetious.

Both Iceland and China attempted to reduce the infection growth by getting sick people out of circulation early.  Anyone who has taken the time to look at what China did would see that they were getting symptomatic cases early.  In a study of 1199 people, the mean time from exposure (not symptom onset) to hospitalization was 4.0 days.  They were not just waiting for self-selected people to show up for a test.  You want groceries? First let's check for symptoms.  They had something like 10K people hunting for contacts.  (My guess is that this didn't find asymptomatic people because they checked for symptoms in the contacts.   Like California, the testing protocol was designed to test those with symptoms.  Still, in one province, China tested 250,000 people.  IIRC, the positive test rate was something like 0.5%)

People tend to give credit to Korea for heavy testing as part of the reason they had a low infection attack rate.  Yet, their protocol, is to test only in the case of a fever or respiratory symptoms. 

We do sometimes apply exceptions for certain high risk groups. For example, we tested all persons linked to certain major clusters (i.e., Shincheonji, Guro-gu call center) regardless of clinical symptoms. We have also recently tested all persons in long-term care facilities in Daegu City regardless of clinical symptoms.

That sounds much like the protocol in the United States or in China.

"deCODE's 'screening program accepts everybody who is not showing symptoms and not currently in quarantine,'" but then an assessment is made that "50% of those who tested positive said they were asymptomatic"   Huh?  Did they test asymptomatic people only, or not?    (My guess is that with a wink & a nod, they let anyone take the test, without determined whether they were asymptomatic.   Nothing wrong with that, but any claim that their screening program was for the asymptomatic was a fib at best.)

Through April 5, deCODE has found 140 cases in 16,009 tests, at a rate of 87.5 per 10K people. For a population of 360K, that would be 3,150 cases.  There is no reporting of how many of these cases become symptomatic.   Discounting the 140 and another 142 (cases before deCODE started testing), Iceland only has had 1280 symptomatic cases found by the normal labs.   One interpretation would be that 3150/(3150+1280) = 71.3% of the cases are asymptomatic if they really did test only asymptomatic cases.  Another possibility is that all the cases are symptomatic, and people that feel a bit off are going for the "asymptomatic" testing before their symptoms kick in (or while they chose to lie about it).   The best I can tell currently is that the number of asymptomatic cases is between 0% and 71%.

What is necessary for these cases to run their course and that the deCODE positive test patients are monitored for symptoms.  Then we can distinguish asymptomatic from pre-symptomatic.