Interesting - thanks for sharing that. I suppose the confirmed case rate could be somewhat off if availability of testing is better in some states than others. My understanding is that we have the lowest rate but we also have had limited testing availability all along. However all states testing capacity may be comparably limited.

That's an excellent point. I think NY has done much more testing than anyone, but I may be wrong on that. I wish a "% of the population tested" stat was included.

VT might be small and rural, but the winter skiing industry is large and brings in lots of people all the way from Boston down to NYC, so it would be easy for weekend skiers or people with winter/ski houses from major metropolitan areas to bring the virus to a rural area.

In my younger days, I used to drive up to VT from NJ every winter weekend to stay at a ski house/club. 5 hour drive each way ... diehard skiers will drive crazy distance to get to good snow! Those were crazy fun days!

I think that Oregon's rate is lower than you thought it would be because a large part of the state if fairly rural/sparsely populated. In my southern Oregon county - Jackson County we have 49 confirmed cases/0 deathths (yay!) out of approximately 220,000 people.

Further, the Oregon Health Authority Covid statistics page breaks down each county by number of tests given, how many positive, how many negative and how many deaths.

This website has a whole array of interesting data by country and, within the USA, by state. I'm in NJ and the information reported here is exactly what the state officially reports.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

@Bestyears I think the term 'confirmed' is very misleading because we have such limited and varied testing state to state. In most places only those who meet very specific criteria get tested so that makes the %/100,000 look far less ominous than it really is. I think we'd all be surprised to learn how many people would test positive with little or no symptoms - which in some ways makes me breathe a huge sigh of relief because most people won't have dire illness or outcome. I'm also questioning the reporting. I just looked up my county and there are numerous numbers reported, none of which are current according to our county commissioners. We have had a series of nursing home positive tests and deaths which makes our numbers 8% of the total deaths in our state and our county population is only 110,000 in a state with 10.5 million.

DLM -I completely agree that there are many more people who have COVID-19 than the statistics imply. The skeptical part of me thinks this is by design -that our government (at least on the federal level) is deliberately not making tests available so as to understate the problem. A recent Stanford study indicated that far more people are walking around with COVID-19 antibodies than California state testing would suggest. Here in Texas, anecdotally I know of a number of people like my daughter's roommate who had a fever, sore throat and exhaustion, who first did Teledoc, and then went for further testing on that advice. She was given both a flu and strep test and tested negative for both, but she was refused a COVID-19 test. She was sick for a week or so, and then fully recovered. Did she have it -who knows? I've also heard of a few cases like one of our local retired news anchors, whose wife went into the ICU with double pneumonia after failing a COVID-19 test. The physician said, "I have no doubt this is Corona" -but if memory serves, she failed two tests. I haven't read much about false negative test results, and like I said, this is all anecdotal, but certainly interesting. How I wish we would take on full testing and tracing.

I just found out that 6 out of 10 friends of mine, who went to Las Vegas at the end of January, thought they had the flu when they got back, it was before anyone really thought it could be coronavirus. They all took a test last week to see if it could have been and it came back positive for those six. Made me think how many has had it and who is and was walking around asymptomatic also.

The tests my friends had, were where blood was drawn. Feel pretty darn good they were accurate. True though, not everything is COVID-19. And, I agree, there are plenty of unintentional mishandling of tests that could turn out negative.

The tests my friends had, were where blood was drawn. Feel pretty darn good they were accurate.

So they had antibody tests done. Where do they live? As I understand testing for antibodies isn't yet widespread.

NYT article today.

“People don’t understand how dangerous this test is." “It’s a real mess." “If you are getting an antibody test and it’s being conducted in your physician’s office, it’s a red flag."

Antibody Test, Seen as Key to Reopening Country, Does Not Yet Deliver

The tests, many made in China without F.D.A. approval, are often inaccurate. Some doctors are misusing them. The rollout is nowhere close to the demand.

Not to say there aren't tests out there that aren't accurate, but most of my friends that took this particular test were doctors themselves, so I'm going to err on their side, if you don't mind.

zinnia, I can't read your article because of paywall, and I definitely won't pay for NYT, so I'm sorry, I couldn't read it.

The article is not behind a paywall.

Sorry, I guess I should have said, I don't want to sign up for an account. My mistake.

The article is about how the tests were rushed to market and can be faulty, giving incorrect results. Your friends being doctors doesn't have any bearing on the accuracy of the tests, obviously.

Obviously, gaile618, you don't have any bearing on what this test is or how it was conducted. Nothing is perfect, but this test is pretty darned close, as the Sensitivity, Specificity, PPV and NPV are all very high percentage. So, with that, I will leave you all to argue amongst yourselves, as there is no way I am going to give you what you want to hear, proof or not, it wouldn't matter to you.

You also don't have to sign up for an account. Why are you afraid to read the article?

You are right, I don't have any bearing on what that test is or how it was conducted. I'm not sure I even understand what that means. I was just saying that your were acting as though your friends being doctors increased the accuracy and/or validity of the tests. I guess they just got the good tests.

Best years said:

"The skeptical part of me thinks this is by design -that our government (at least on the federal level) is deliberately not making tests available so as to understate the problem."

There is no doubt many more people are infected and doing just fine, so I would think the government would want as many tests done as possible, to be able to say that the risks and mortality rate are much lower than anticipated. By not doing the tests you are actually overstating the problem. I just don't think getting medical tests out to the whole country is as easy as it sounds ... we can't even get paper products in some areas!