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IN BRIEF
- The Facts:There’s a lot of information hinting to the idea that we may not have the exact number of people who have passed away as a result of the new coronavirus correct.
- Reflect On:Could infection rates be higher, and mortality rates be lower than the numbers we are seeing? Who knows, when this is all over we may have a better idea.
As the lockdown measures in multiple countries, including here in Canada, continue to become more intense, it raised many red flags for a number of scientists. For me, it also raised a red flag given what we’ve seen from global pandemics of the past, like the swine flu, which infected more than a billion and killed more than half a million around the globe. I am not comparing the new coronavirus to the flu, I’ll leave that to the scientists. According to an article recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Dr. H. Clifford Lane, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the case fatality rate may be less than one percent, and the clinical consequences of COVID-19 may be more similar to that of a severe seasonal influenza. You can access that study and read more about it here, but at the end of the day we really don’t know yet, and with screwed numbers, we may never know for sure.
Dr. Eran Bendavid and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, two professors of medicine at Stanford University recently published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Is the coronavirus as deadly as they say?” In it, they provide reasons for why the fatality rate might be significantly lower than the projection given by the World Health Organization (WHO).
John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford, recently published an article entitled “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.“ In the article, he also argues that there is simply not enough data to make claims about reported case fatality rate. He states that rates, “like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless.
A paper recently published in The International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents titled “SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data claims “that the problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably being overestimated.” (source)
There is information going around the that infection rate of the new coronavirus is most likely higher than what the data we have so far has shown. That opinion is being shared quite a bit, which would ultimately drive the death rate down. But what about deaths?
An article published in Psychology Today written by Robert Bartholomew Ph.D, points out that,
