Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Older Bolder Links, Reads, Recipes, and More 24 March 2020

I don’t know if you’re one of the many who are suffering from a bit of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 fatigue these days, we certainly are around our camp, but it remains a critical imperative that we all stay in the loop to pick the gems of reporting and updates out of the flood of misinformation out there every day.

From where I sit today as a retired physician it is reassuring to see more acknowledgement of the simple and critical fact that we have no idea how big the actual denominator is – how many are actually infected and experiencing the mild or asymptomatic forms of the COVID-19 clinical syndrome (most suggest 80% or more of the actual total). Knowing the actual denominator is of course the only way the true CFR (case fatality rate), actual risks of serious infection and clinical outcomes, and overall R0 values can be accurately determined.

And finally, a quick reminder on nomenclature. The virus itself is the SARS-CoV-2 you see in the literature and news, and COVID-19 is the clinical syndrome / disease the virus causes in humans.