Widespread Coronavirus confirmed by testing in Montgomery County Correctional Facility

Montgomery County officials ordered testing of all inmates and staff at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and the results contained a bombshell. Sources say between 17 and 20 percent of all inmates tested positive for coronavirus. This is a shockingly high number given the estimates we’ve seen of 1 to 5 percent mortality.

However, we’d like to point out that what this probably shows, like recent studies from New York, is that we’ve been misled about the mortality rate. The denominator for that rate (the number of people who’ve been infected) is much greater than we’ve been led to believe. Thus, a huge chunk of the population is walking around with COVID-19 antibodies but never experienced any symptoms. This is borne out by the fact that only a couple of the inmates who tested positive actually ever displayed any symptoms of the virus.

One risk is that inmates will be gravely ill in the next few days – assuming recent infections. But we believe the more likely scenario is it’s been there a while, the inmates are asympomatic, and few if any will get severely ill or die.

What does this say about Coronavirus in society right now? We need to protect the elderly and infirm. Strict quarantines at nursing homes and long term care facilities. Find caregivers who can be resident there. Require replacements to quarantine 15 days before replacing the resident caregivers. Those in contact with the elderly or at risk must honor strict quarantine. But let the rest of us work. People die of the flu or viruses ever day. We can’t shut down the economy forever for that reason. More people probably die of car accidents on an average day in Pennsylvania than are dying of coronavirus – we don’t ban cars and shut down the roads. Are you listening Governor Wolf?