Notice from this pink graph that in the USA, technicians are still detecting twenty to 25 THOUSAND new cases of COVID-19 per day. These folks didn’t all get sick; they just all tested positive for antigens and/or antibodies. Some did get sick, some less so, and some more so, and some died.
One of the key questions is, what is the fatality rate? We now have some idea, which we can get by comparing the total number of cases reported so far with the total number of deaths. This yellow graph shows the cumulative ECDC-reported number of cases in the USA. Right now it’s a bit over 1.7 million people – roughly one half of one percent of the population, which is roughly 330 million.
One half of one percent of the population is nothing like herd immunity! You need 70 to 90% or more of the people to have been exposed to reach that level according to JHU.
Now let’s compare that to the total deaths each day and cumulative.
As you can see from the white graph above, the US is recording something like 1000 to 1500 deaths from COVID every day. (My guess as to why it’s going down has to do with the fact that the vast majority of the population is engaging in social distancing.)
Total, cumulative deaths can be seen below:
The above graph shows that at present, a bit over a hundred thousand people have been killed in the United States so far by this virus at this writing. Now let’s compare that total number of deaths, namely 102,836, with the total number of detected cases, which is 1,747,087. Get out your favorite calculator and divide. If you divide the big one (~1.7 million) by the smaller one (~103 thousand), you get roughly 17 — which means that about ONE OUT OF EVERY 17 PEOPLE IN THE USA WHO HAS TESTED POSITIVE, HAS DIED.
Let that sink in.
If you are infected, it looks like you have a one-in-seventeen chance of dying.
And there is neither a vaccine, nor a cure, nor herd immunity, nor any contact tracing to speak of. Testing is still rationed tightly, or else you have to pay a LOT for it. Will that ratio continue to hold in the future? I don’t know, but it’s alarming all the same.
If you divide the little one by the big one, you will get about 0.05886. That means 5.886% chance of dying – nearly 6% fatality rate!
That is one hell of a lot more lethal than the flu.
If we open up again without contact tracing and effective and humane quarantine and/or medical care of those who test positive, I am really afraid of what will happen.
5.886% of the population of the USA is over 19 million people.
I’ve checked about a dozen other countries, and their fatality rates range from about 2% (Taiwan) up to 19% (France).
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Look at Vietnam’s mortality rate. When you find the answer, it’s zero, then find out what Vietnam did to make that happen.
Compare what Trump did (basically nothing but lies and misinformation) to what Vietnam did.
The US under Trump: more than 100,000 dead and counting
Vietnam: no one has died from the virus yet
Trump’s deplorable supporters will call that fake news because their false chosen one will say that’s what it is.
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Thanks, that’s helpful but it might be useful in a follow up to distinguish between the case fatality rate and the infection fatality rate (where the denominator includes all those who had the virus but have not been reported as infected, most of whom were relatively asymptomatic)… Many analyses seem to put the infection fatality rate at closer to one half of one percent.
Then again, the number of COVID-19-related deaths may well be undercounted.
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