Fun With Math – 1,222,429 cases of COVID-19? Mario Diaz-Balart and Ben McAdams, test positive

Today two members of Congress announced that they had tested positive for COVID-19.

Mario Diaz-Balart and Ben McAdams both testing positive. That is two out of 535 members of congress or .37383177570093 percent of the total congress. 

We know that like rich sports players and other politicians, the privileged members of congress have ready access to tests the rest of the country does not have. Is the US congress a good statistical sample, representative (pun intended) of the US population?  No, it isn’t but let’s do the math anyway. If it were a representative sample one could then apply the .37 percent number above to the US population to get a better sense of what true infection rates are. (since nearly everyone else can only get a test if they are HIGHLY symptomatic and also lucky).

327.2 million US population times the percentage (.37383177570093 percent) and you come up with a total of 1,222,429 projected cases in the USA.

Sort of makes you go HMMM!