Coronavirus Fatality Rate or Death Percentage: The Most Accurate Estimate

ironchef · Mar 1, 2020

dealmaker said:
News-Tech
Coronavirus Fatality Rate or Death Percentage: The Most Accurate Estimate
Published on February 29, 2020 at 1:24 pm by Inan Dogan, PhD in News,Tech
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If you are looking for the new coronavirus’ fatality rate or the percentage of infected people who will die, this is the most accurate estimate you will find on the internet. I did a Google search and none of the answer I found on the first page were accurate enough. Some articles claim that coronavirus’ fatality rate is between 2% and 4% which is based on the case fatality rate in China’s Hubei province. I will explain what case fatality rate is later in the article, but you should know that actual fatality rate is much lower than 2% or 4%.

So, please share this article on social media so that other people have access to accurate information and make the right decisions for themselves.

We are estimating coronavirus fatality rate in order to estimate the potential damage this new coronavirus may inflict on our lives and economies. The last time we had a pandemic in the United States was in 2009 (H1N1 swine flu) and it infected around 50 million Americans within 12 months. If this coronavirus infects 50 million Americans and its fatality rate is 4%, then it will kill 2 million Americans. I am 100% confident that it won’t infect 50 million Americans and its fatality rate is much less than 4%. I will provide an estimate at the end of this article. Let’s start with some of the basics.

The most asked question by math students is “when will i ever going to use math in real life?”. The answer is now. Specifically we are going to use statistics to calculate the most accurate estimate for the new coronavirus’ death rate. If you go New York and ask people “randomly” whether they will vote for the Republican or the Democratic nominee for the president to estimate who will win the national election, you will fail for one simple reason: your sample isn’t representative. New Yorkers are liberal, they don’t represent the entire country. So, your estimate will be biased. Let me give a couple of examples:

As of February 29th (morning), Iran reported 388 “confirmed” cases and 34 deaths due to coronavirus. If we rely on these numbers, we can estimate that coronavirus’ fatality rate as 8.76% (34 divided by 388). Are there really 34 deaths in Iran due to coronavirus? Are there really a total of only 388 people that are infected with the coronavirus in Iran? We don’t think so. Iran is an authoritarian country with a poor healthcare system. They don’t have the resources, organizational capabilities to identify, to test, and to track all potential coronavirus patients. They probably tested mostly infected people who are already in critical condition. They also don’t have any incentives to truly report the actual number of deaths. The only thing we can assume about the numbers reported by Iran is that the correct numbers are greater than what is reported.

Earlier this week World Health Organization disclosed that the “case” fatality rate in Wuhan is between 2 to 4% and 0.7% in the rest of the country. How could this be possible?

I believe the fatality rate in Wuhan isn’t much different than the rest of the world. Here is why. Chinese officials are probably estimating the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus more accurately than the number of infections. Some people show only very mild symptoms, so they are more likely not to attribute their symptoms to the new coronavirus and wouldn’t seek treatment. We know that the Wuhan region had experienced shortage of testing kits anyway, so even if they sought to get tested, they probably wouldn’t be allowed. That’s why I think the number of infections in the Wuhan region is severely undercounted.

On the other hand, we believe the 0.7% fatality rate for the rest of China can be used as an upper bound for the new coronavirus’ fatality rate. This is a very large sample, but Chinese health workers weren’t able to test a large number of people during the periods when they were experiencing shortages of test kits. But we are confident that a few months from now, when we have more complete data, scientists will confirm this point.

As of February 27th, South Korea was the #1 country in terms of deploying more resources and testing more people for coronavirus. Japan reported 3 deaths, 330 infections and administered 1890 tests. On the other hand, South Korea reported 16 deaths, 2931 infections, and administered 66652 tests. This is a huge number. This really makes us think that Japan tested mostly potentially infected people as 1 out of every 6 people tested were infected, whereas Koreans tested people who don’t show any symptoms. In Korea 1 out of every 22 people tested were infected.

That’s why we believe using South Korea’s case fatality rate will give us the most accurate estimate for coronavirus’ fatality rate. As of February 29 (morning), South Korea’s case fatality rate was 0.546% (16 divided by 2931). Three days ago this figure was closer to 1% (11 deaths for 1146 infections). As you can see, as Korea tests tens of thousands of more people and identify mild cases of coronavirus infections, its case fatality rate converges to the actual fatality rate.

Recap

We don’t know how many people are actually infected with the new coronavirus, but we have a pretty good idea about the number of people who died because of COVID-19. That’s why our best estimate is very likely to be higher than the actual fatality rate. Since South Korea tested around 1 out of every 1000 people and no other country with widespread infections tested a higher proportion of its population, South Korea’s 0.546% fatality rate is closest to the actual fatality rate of the new coronavirus.

We wouldn’t be wrong to assume that COVID-19’s fatality rate is not more than 0.5%. This means the new coronavirus’ fatality rate is probably somewhere in between 0.2% and 0.5%. This is a wide range, but it is still narrow enough to make very educated guesses about the future. One implication is that only one out of every 200 to 500 infected people will die due to the new coronavirus. This means this new coronavirus isn’t as deadly as what most people currently believe. This also means that there are far more infected people than we identified. For example, Iran identified less than 400 infections, but the actual number of infections in Iran at this moment is anywhere from 6800 and 17,000.

Please keep in mind that our coronavirus mortality rate in humans is an estimate for the entire population. Coronavirus fatality rates for different age groups, genders, and co-morbidities are different and will be shared in other articles. Please subscribe to our daily newsletter below to receive free daily email updates.

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Thank you for sharing this article.

Turveyd · Mar 1, 2020

What is is, when 10Mil people have it and 5Mil need medical care and the system just can't treat 4.9Mil of them ??

That's the real worry!

Overnight · Mar 1, 2020

dozu888 said:
forget Kleenex etc.

the best immune booster is a dog.. that thing carries so much bacteria/virus home your immune will always be kept up!
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Have you mortgaged every house you own to go long by now? The news keeps getting better, so keep on piling into those longs!

dozu888 · Mar 1, 2020

Overnight said:
Have you mortgaged every house you own to go long by now? The news keeps getting better, so keep on piling into those longs!
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dude do you want free virgins or not.... time to buy is NOW!

Overnight · Mar 1, 2020

dozu888 said:
dude do you want free virgins or not.... time to buy is NOW!
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NO

dozu888 · Mar 1, 2020

Overnight said:
NO
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idiot

ironchef · Mar 1, 2020

dozu888 said:
dude do you want free virgins or not.... time to buy is NOW!
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No offense, didn't you say NOW a month ago, a week ago?

Maybe you should hold your thoughts till the 1st of April?

Bugenhagen · Mar 1, 2020

Overnight said:
Have you mortgaged every house you own to go long by now? The news keeps getting better, so keep on piling into those longs!
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Yep. See how clean the air is in China! Trump fixed everything.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/i...ation&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=83339382

Overnight · Mar 1, 2020

Bugenhagen said:
Yep. See how clean the air is in China! Trump fixed everything.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/i...ation&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=83339382
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This is the worst news possible that we can ever hear. It just adds scientific proof/weight to the bad manufacturing numbers, and will reinforce to the world that China has basically shut-down production. Markets are not going to like that satellite imagery.

Turveyd · Mar 1, 2020

Overnight said:
This is the worst news possible that we can ever hear. It just adds scientific proof/weight to the bad manufacturing numbers, and will reinforce to the world that China has basically shut-down production. Markets are not going to like that satellite imagery.
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Plus that annoying 16year old know it all Greta virgin for life will be happy and nobody wants that.

You should all stop driving cars to work and going on holiday in airplanes and instead use your 3Mil carbon fibre boat with a diesel engine, totally living in the real world, NOT!!!