Large antibody study on US baseball teams finds only 0.7% infection rate

With 1.4 million confirmed infections about 0.4% of the United States has had a known infection. But we know testing is inadequate given that there is such a high positive test rate (14% of all tests so far are positive). So we know the real rate of infection is higher than that.

The group that did the Santa Clara antibody test have run another test on 5,600 baseball employees and this time found only 0.7% carry the antibodies. The researchers were surprised.

About the only message we can really draw from this is the US is a long way from Herd Immunity, and as the US reopens there are twenty to fifty times as many people who could still catch this.

LA Times: Fewer than 1% of MLB employees test positive for COVID-19 antibodies

Of the 5,603 major league employees who submitted to what researchers called the largest national antibody study to date, only 60 tested positive, researchers said Sunday.

The researchers announced an estimated positive rate of 0.72% after adjusting the results for what they said were false positives and false negatives.

Still, the minute percentage of positive tests provided a data point as scientists […]