[Taxacom] MERS pandemic (genus Betacoronavirus)

[Kenneth Kinman]

Followup on  genus Betacoronavirus pandemics:
       Worldwide there were supposedly only 2,519 confirmed cases of MERS as of January 2020.   However, way back in 2015, a study published in The Lancet had already estimated from antibody testing (from the year 2013) that between 27,000 and 72,000 individuals older than 15 years were probably seropositive for MERS-CoV in Saudi Arabia.   Who knows how many might have become infected since 2013 in Saudi Arabia alone (not to mention worldwide).
        Sounds like only the seriously ill (most likely to die) from MERS have been tested, that the fatality rate is thus extremely over-estimated, and it has likely spread mostly undetected since 2013.   If soldiers and others coming back from the Middle East were just carriers with mild symptoms, they almost certainly would not have sought testing, much less met the CDC's stringent "PUI" criteria for MERS testing.   If testing, testing, testing is the key to tracking COVID-19, shouldn't the same have been done for the MERS coronavirus?   Shouldn't a MERS testing study be done?  Especially if many of the false positives on COVID-19 might actually be reacting to MERS?

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(15)70090-3/fulltext

At the end of January 2020, a total of 2519 laboratory-confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), including 866 associated deaths. ( http://www.emro.who.int/pandemic-epidemic-diseases/mers-cov/mers-situation-update-january-2020.html )