Just this last week, we have seen some incredible reports released regarding the coronavirus that only serves to confirm what many of us have suspected since the very beginning.

First, we got the CDC numbers that shows that only about 6% of all COVID deaths were a result of COVID alone. In other words, 94% of people who died had something more serious wrong with them like diabetes or high blood pressure, or something else.

Actually, multiple things because the average person who died had 2.6 other comorbidities with COVID.

BUT…the biggest bombshell that dropped comes from data that was compiled from tests across three states which shows that an overwhelming majority of people who tested positive for the virus were no longer contagious by that point.

So in other words, all this time that we’ve been isolating and staying away from people, it may have all been for nothing.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.

One solution would be to adjust the cycle threshold used now to decide that a patient is infected. Most tests set the limit at 40, a few at 37. This means that you are positive for the coronavirus if the test process required up to 40 cycles, or 37, to detect the virus.

NEW: All these months into the pandemic, we may have been testing the wrong way. Data from some state labs suggest up to 90% (!!) of people who get a positive result are no longer contagious and don’t need to isolate.

Strap in, this is important. 1/xhttps://t.co/rR4aBDK4Xl

— Apoorva Mandavilli (@apoorva_nyc) August 29, 2020

This may explain why people in other countries that didn’t isolate may have done so well in eliminating the virus so quickly.

Sources:
New York Times