LogFAQs > #942049059

As someone with a Master of Public Health, here's my take:

When people say "mortality rate" what they actually mean is Case Fatality Rate, which is the number of deaths relative to the total number of cases - or, put simply, the probability of dying from COVID19 if you get it.

This is an inherently biased number because the people most likely to be tested are the people with more severe symptoms (the likelihood of being tested if you're asymptomatic is obviously quite low unless you're being screened for other reasons).

With that said, in the US there have been 3.4 million cases and 138,000 deaths, which yields a case fatality rate of about 4.1%. That's a ridiculously high number when you consider the total population of the US is over 300 million.

With that said, most likely at least half or more of cases have been undiagnosed, so the CFR is probably 2% or less. Nevertheless, that's still an absurdly high CFR for a disease as easily spread as COVID19 (the CFR of influenza is around 0.1%, and influenza has the advantage of seasonality)

The long and short of it is anyone who downplays COVID19 clearly doesn't understand epidemiology.


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Well allons-y, Alonso!