Corona Quiz

Nathan Algren: I have questions.
Katsumoto: Questions come later.
--The Last Samurai

I've been dreaming of drawing up a ten question quiz on the CV19 situation. Infection and mortality rates, what studies currently say about how virus is transmitted, efficacy of PPE such as masks, etc. My sense is that the average score would be low, and that mistakes would be skewed toward answers that suggest people believe that the situation is worse than it is.

The results of the below survey confirm my suspicions. A thousand people surveyed across five countries were asked what percentage of their country's population had contracted the virus and how had died from it.

This survey explains so much about the public’s response to #Covid. 1,000 people in several countries were asked what percentage of their nation’s population had died of the virus. Answers ranged from 3% in Germany to 9% (30M people!)in the US. Congrats panic porners. You’ve won. pic.twitter.com/abvYeTgBGF

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) July 28, 2020

Results indicate that people are wildly overestimating number of infections by about 30x the official case counts in their countries. Deaths? 150x higher.

US respondents indicated that 20% (over 60 million) of the citizenry has been infected. That's 20x the CDC case count. To be fair, if we took results of the scattered seroprevalence studies into account, then these survey responses might not look so high.

Death estimates are a different story. US respondents estimate that 9% (nearly 30 million) of the population has died from CV19. That's 225x more than the surely  inflated CDC death count. For reference, the deadliest epidemic is US history associated with the 1918 Spanish flu sported a population fatality rate of less than 1%.

The above Tweet doesn't tell us much about the survey or the nature of the sample. But I wouldn't be surprised if my 10 question quiz, if ever administered, revealed similar levels of hysteria.