Pandemic Death Rate Calculation

How it works

Comparisons

Evidence quality

Highlighted claims

• A reported pandemic fatality percentage is not a fixed truth about a virus; it depends on whether deaths are divided by confirmed tested cases, estimated true infections, or the entire population. — Coronavirus Pandemic Death Rate Math
• Dividing deaths by confirmed tested cases produces an artificially small denominator, making the resulting percentage appear higher than the true infection fatality rate. — Coronavirus Pandemic Death Rate Math
• Treating the confirmed-case fatality rate as the true fatality rate for all infected people is a mistake, because early confirmed groups are biased toward people sick enough to be tested. — Coronavirus Pandemic Death Rate Math
• Early pandemic death-rate figures are unstable because the denominator is especially uncertain due to infections invisible to testing systems. — Coronavirus Pandemic Death Rate Math
• The same number of deaths can represent vastly different fatality rates depending on the denominator chosen — for example, 5 deaths out of 100 confirmed cases is 5%, but 5 deaths out of 10,000 true infections is 0.05%. — Coronavirus Pandemic Death Rate Math
• The true number of infections is estimated to be at least four times, and possibly five to ten times, larger than confirmed tested cases, based on patterns from other epidemics. — Coronavirus Pandemic Death Rate Math