If you present with fever, cough, and similar symptoms, your instructions would probably be to quarantine at home regardless of test results. Most places I know of put restrictions on symptoms rather than test results. For example, if you work in a hospital in NYC, you are allowed back 72 hours after your last fever. You don't have to test negative to go back to work. Also, you don't have to test positive to be pulled off your shifts. So you wouldn't necessarily see much higher rates of infections due to false negative tests.
The apex is region-specific. Maybe you're right about that in the Netherlands, seems to follow the timeline of when nearby spots with similar measures hit their peak.
Yes, you are right, that is the case here as well, but only since the start of week 12 (March 16), while the outbreak started February 27th, officially at least. None of the social distancing measures went into effect before March 16th in The Netherlands. Which is why I would expect a higher positive on the tests, since the guidelines for testing are so strict; you're symptoms have to be really quite severe before you qualify, beyond of what your regular GP would handle, so a hospital visit would be needed with that level of symptoms, and contact with a confirmed infected person. That's the cut off.
We're also having quite a bad flu season over here. We're on week 18 I think with counts of still over double the epidemic-threshold. That could explain why they were tested, but it doesn't explain why so many tested negative, even though they were in contact with a confirmed case, especially since the unmitigated R0 is I think between 2,4 and 3,2, but at least >2.
Now, this brings me back to my original question of immunity. My hypothesis, based on the R0, the number of hospitalisations, ICU-admittances, and fatalities, and their expected values by the different orgs (WHO, CDC, RIVM), is that this virus raged through the population at record speed (we all but know the first three cases were super spreaders, since they went out, with symptons, celebrating carnaval for up to three alcohol-soaked nights; and during the track & trace period the RIVM did (about a week, the idiots) we see the figure doubling daily), but a lot, a very large majority of the population is either immune or asymptomatic. That would explain a lot of the numbers we've seen. And, again, since the measures in The Netherlands only went into effect on March 16th, the virus was able to spread, doubling daily, unmittigated, between ~February 23rd and March 16th. If we take an R0=2, with the inital number of three, you end up with about 3 million "infected" (i.e., came into contact with) on March 18th (way before the assumed incubtion period, so it probably grew with an R0=2 of 48 hours, giving us an even higer number of infected).
Again, I'm just trying to make sense of the numbers, and so far, all the faults I've tried to find in this high number, have been dismissed. I'm getting, VERY cautiously, optimistic.
, for all of their insightful contributions and number crunching in this thread. Most of which is way over my head but is wonderful to read and learn from. Cheers gentlemen!!
