If SARS-Cov-2
is already endemic in the population, there is nothing we can do to stop it —
but no great reason to try to stop it, either
Another day, and yet more evidence has appeared that could indicate
the number of people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which
causes COVID-19, might be vastly higher than official figures suggest. This
time a Californian study suggests the figure in one county could be more than
50 times the number who knew they had had the virus.
A team from
Stanford University and other colleges recruited volunteers in Santa Clara
County via Facebook adverts and produced a sample of 3,000 representatives of
the county as a whole. They were then invited for blood tests to detect the
presence of antibodies to the virus. The result was positive in 1.5 percent of
cases. Adjusting for age, gender and ethnicity the results suggest that 2.8
percent of people in the county had already had the virus. That might not seem
many, but at the time of the study — on April 4 and 5 — only 1,094 people in
the county were recorded as having the virus. The study suggests the
real figure is between 48,000 and 81,000.
Like many studies which have been
pre-published in order to aid understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper
produced by the Stanford-led team has not yet been peer-reviewed. Moreover, it
took place in a part of the United States where very few people have so far
tested positive with the virus. It would be interesting to see the experiment
repeated in New York City, where recorded infections are far higher.
But it is one
more piece in a jigsaw which is slowly building up a picture of a virus which
may be far more prevalent — and possibly far less deadly — than was at first
believed. As has been argued here before, knowing the general level of infection
in the population is absolutely crucial because this informs both the virulence
and the mortality rate of the infection. If only a small percentage of the
population have had the virus, then it might be worth continuing with lockdown
policies. But if SARS-Cov-2 is already endemic in the population there is
nothing we can do to stop it but no great reason to try to stop it, either: it
has already ripped its way through the population with only a small proportion
showing any symptoms.
Last week, I
reported a similar study from the town of Gangelt in
north-western Germany where 15 percent of the population were found to have
antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. Were that to be reflected in the wider population, it
would still mean we were a long way short of the 60 percent infection rate
which scientific advisers originally considered necessary for ‘herd immunity’
of the population. But it would mean we were well on the way.
That scientists in Germany and
California have been able to perform antibody tests on good-sized samples of
the population yet again raises the question: why have we still not performed
such studies elsewhere? One of the problems, we are told, is that antibody
tests have proved inaccurate. The UK government bought a job lot of antibody
tests from China and then decided they were useless. But surely we have the
facilities to perform high-quality laboratory tests of the sort used in the
Stanford and Gangelt studies? Isn’t it about time we got moving on this?
This article
was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.