Do most infected people show symptoms after 5 days?

[AbsentmindedWoman]

Sorry, I'm woozy on pain meds (for period, not respiratory stuff!) and finding it difficult to remember where I saw stuff - but I could have sworn I read somewhere that about 97% of people who tested positive covid 19 had onset of symptoms on day 5. So a small amount took up to 2 weeks, but the majority became sick within 5 days.

Is this true, or is it nonsense my brain made up in a dream or something?

Yes, it’s ninety five percent show symptoms within five days,

annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-from-publicly-reported

Cheers @Bluntness100.

Good to see I was vaguely in the right ballpark.

The median incubation period is 5 days. 97.5% by 11.5 days. The 95% by the median is the confidence interval.

So as many people show symptoms after 5 days as before 5 days.

No, if you read the article you will see that’s incorrect, 95 percent have shown symptoms by 5.8 days. The median is 5.1

Why post if you can’t even be arsed to read it?

Can you point out where it says that? In table 1, it shows that the 50th percentile is 5.1, the 75% percentile to 6.7, and the 97.5th percentile is 11.5.

. The median incubation period was estimated to be 5.1 days (95% CI, 4.5 to 5.8 days), and 97.5% of those who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days (CI, 8.2 to 15.6 days) of infection

5.8 days is the upper end of the 95% confidence interval for the median (50th percentile). Not the 95th percentile.

Thank you for this! Very interesting.

@Bluntness100

Maybe you shouldn’t dismiss other posters out of hand for not reading the article properly when it seems you haven’t yourself!

TheFallenMadonna did read it and is correct. The median is 5.1 days (the 95% is the confidence interval which is the range of values they are 95% certain contains the median...in this case the range is from 4.5 to 5.8 days).

97.5% of people will have shown symptoms by 11.5 days.

Is 5 days the median time for symptoms to show in those who ever show symptoms? If quite a high proportion are as suspected aymptomatic, then we don't really know how many infected are showing symptoms after any time.

I'm so grateful other people have these skills.
So if we seem to symptom free 11 days after today which is when the whole family began being at home we should be in the Cleer.

Thanks folks.

So is it right to say - after 6.7 days (so basically a week..) 75% of people would be showing symptoms? Or am i still not getting it?

Sorry to be thick and muddled - I am terrible at maths. But I'm trying to use it to manage my anxiety a bit by thinking positively as in "if we have no symptoms a week after we went to the supermarket, we have a 75% chance of being ok" as a way of cheering myself on.

I do get that essentially if you are 2 weeks post any exposure then you are very likely to be not infected. But 2 weeks is a long time to worry. I need bits of hope along the way.

That's what the analysis suggests. Always important to consider the limitations though.
From the paper:
Publicly reported cases may overrepresent severe cases, the incubation period for which may differ from that of mild cases.

Thank you. Yes, very much in agreement that we must consider limitations, there are always outliers and it's so early in terms of data available for this virus. I'm just going to use it as a kind of pep talk to myself.

I last left the house on the 7th March. I started showing symptoms (fever) on the 17th.