In 4 US state prisons, 3,300 inmates test positive, 96% without symptoms

I've read that asymptomatic carriers are though to be less infectious than those with symptoms because of the lower concentration of virus in the saliva. Also, many virologists mentioned in recent texts that the initial concentration of the virus you receive can affect how sick you'll get - the more viruses you're exposed to, the faster they can invade the body and the more severe it will get.

Can those two facts be combined into a theory that asymptomatic carriers are more likely to produce more mild and asymptomatic cases?

Don't know if it makes any sense (probably not), but it would certainly explain how in some closed environments there's a prevalence for mild cases, while in others there's a plenty of very sick people, regardless of the age.

Does anyone know if there's been any studies on those who have taken no medications at all in past X days vs those that take any (either OTC or otherwise) and those with and without symptoms?

I ask because I'd assume drug use would be lower in prisons, and among those in poorer countries. I'm just wondering if a particular set of drugs could accelerate/make this worse?

That said, I'm not sure this is even possible to obtain metrics on, it'd just be interesting to see if there's any type of correlation to rule out. I realize there's been conflicting studies on whether certain heart meds may accelerate, but I've not been able to find anything about any drugs use whatsoever.

The asymptomatic rate being that high and that many people being infected implies three things.

1) that the asymptomatic rate for this Coronavirus is much higher than other Coronaviruses.

2) but at the same time, it's more deadly than most Coronaviruses.

3) and it's also the R0 is much higher than other Coronaviruses.

Isn't it more likely there's a testing issue? This seems a lot like a person that runs a SQL query that overturns all established data at a business, and instead of first assuming that their query is wrong, they instead assume everyone at the business is wrong.

I'm not saying the tests are inaccurate. I'm saying when you get highly conflicting data that has critical implications, you shouldn't jump to conclusions. And you should prepare for the worst case, not assume the best.

Not sure why you are being downvoted:

https://www.oxfordbiosystems.com/COVID-19-Rapid-test

"In order to test the detection sensitivity and specificity of the COVID-19 IgG-IgM combined antibody test, blood samples were collected from COVID-19 patients from multiple hospitals and Chinese CDC laboratories. The tests were done separately at each site. A total of 525 cases were tested: 397 (positive) clinically confirmed (including PCR test) SARS-CoV-2-infected patients and 128 non- SARS-CoV-2-infected patients (128 negative). The testing results of vein blood without viral inactivation were summarized in the Table 1. Of the 397 blood samples from SARS-CoV-2-infected patients, 352 tested positive, resulting in a sensitivity of 88.66%. Twelve of the blood samples from the 128 non-SARS-CoV-2 infection patients tested positive, generating a specificity of 90.63%."

That gives us 62% false positive ratio according to (where a study finds the prevalence to be 6% of subjects using the test):

http://vassarstats.net/clin2.html

In some cases we have research being carried out with such low positive results that they can entirely be accounted for by the low specificity. So for example if you took samples from 100 people, based on 90% specificity, even if everyone had never had corona, 10 could be found positive.

Credit to this post:

https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/g7f373/second_roun...

However it should be noted the article in question for this submission does not mention the type of test used.

> Is anybody following up on stories like this?

The best follow-up we have is from the cruise ship, where at the time of testing more than half of those who tested positive were asymptomatic, but ultimately something like 80% of the confirmed infected ended up with symptoms.