There’s so little definitive information about the coronavirus that it’s no wonder people excitedly seize on any new data, however inconclusive, that might provide some insight. irin writes
Photo: Jamie Grill/Getty Images/©JGI/Jamie Grill/Blend Images LLC What can 200 pregnant women tell us about how many people already have the coronavirus or how sick they get?
Former Obama health-care official Andy Slavitt, who has over 400,000 followers on Twitter, immediately declared that the takeaway is that 15 percent of New Yorkers may already have COVID-19. Scott Gottlieb, who ran the FDA until last year, also speculated that the data in the letter suggested “exposure in New York to COVID could be very high.”
Another reason the data was greeted so eagerly is that New York’s hospitals have been ordered to stop all elective surgeries and the public has been told to avoid the hospital unless it’s a true emergency, making pregnant and laboring the only predictable flow of patients. And some New York City–area hospitals are only testing women with symptoms, which makes it hard to figure out how many people are asymptomatic.
The study’s authors also never said their 215 women were remotely representative of the general population. They don’t disclose any of the pool’s demographics besides their pregnancy . “Pregnant women are younger in general,” Gaw pointed out, whereas most of the worst-affected by the coronavirus are older men. There’s another problem with drawing conclusions from the data. “Pregnant women are very different physiologically than nonpregnant people,” Gaw said. “Your immune symptom is suppressed.
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