@Statto1 @Laughing , would it be fair to assume that the vast majority of the population have already had it?
Reason I ask this as it's becoming known the virus was starting to fly around Europe as far back as November last year. If the virus is as contagious as we are told it is (airborne, surviving for days on end on surfaces etc) you don't have to a scientist to come to the common sense conclusion it's been everywhere. Climate obviously plays a huge part in all of this too as seen by the cases falling when the weather was superb and rising again when it started getting colder, none of these inside outside ventilation excuses.
Thoughts?
No, it wouldn't suggest the vast majority of the population have had it (which I'm taking you mean 66% plus?), for a few reasons:
1) Cases/ graphs/ deaths etc wouldn't grow so fast, the effective R rate would have reduced as there would have been less susceptible people to pass it on to.
2) This was proven by the antibody test on New York, after they came out of their nightmare. They had 10 times more cases than they thought, but it was still only 1 in 7 of the population, and it got bad there.
3) We've also done antibody tests and surveys, which bring out the same results.
4) It's pretty well known that 80% don't get symptoms, so if you can find out the 20% that have, and work that v the population it gives a rough number.
No, it wasn't the climate (not for 80% of it anyway), as if it were, we would have had a blip in March and then a decline in April and May, not exponential growth.
The growth and death numbers reversed once we locked down (after the known delay), and because human contact was down by 70% (proven by phone analytics), and that's even including for the fact that people were practically guaranteed to pass it on to who they live with, as it was impossible for everyone to isolate alone.
One or two may have had it in November in Europe (whether it does makes little difference), but I don't think they did, as if they had there would have been the exponential growth and an absolute nightmare over Christmas with thousands on ventilators and an obvious excess death peak, which obviously did not happen.
The transmission capability has been proven, and proven as a big problem, as it's been proven by the cases, deaths, growth and countries that have all successfully tracked and traced (not us).
The climate does play a part as does UV light, everyone of credibility agrees it does, but what plays a bigger part is 80% being asymptomatic, yet contagious for days without even knowing it. It's got a natural R of somewhere between 2-4 times that of flu, and 5-10 times more lethal than flu. It's a big problem in summer, it's a massive problem in winter.