[BostonCard]

Best estimates I've seen are between 0.5% (if you use confirmed COVID-19 deaths) to about 1% if you use excess all-cause mortality in areas where rigorous sampling has been used to calculate the seroprevalence using a random sampling method (Spain is the best study).  Because of the strong age gradient, to a large degree IFR will be very dependent on the age distribution of the infected population.

BC

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@Burger, if you have never been the victim of confirmation bias, you are a better man than I am.  Rather than attribute malice to Ioannidis' motives, maybe consider the possibility that a contrarian by nature got caught up a bit in his contrarianism, and accept that he was correct directionally; the ultimate IFR is substantially lower than the initial estimates from the WHO, though probably not as low as his estimates.

@Lex, even guys with the credentials of Ioannidis make mistakes.  HEre's a Nobel Prize winner who retracted a Science paper because the results were not reproducible.  I still admire and respect Ioannidis a ton, and in my response to Burger, I note that he was directionally correct, though (probably) wrong on the magnitude.

BC

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Lastly, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz and his co-author, Lea Merone have their own pre-print paper:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...20089854v4

Their conclusions:

Based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of published evidence on COVID-19 until May, 2020, the IFR of the disease across populations is 0.68% (0.53-0.82%). However, due to very high heterogeneity in the meta-analysis, it is difficult to know if this represents the true point estimate. It is likely that, due to age and perhaps underlying comorbidities in the population, different places will experience different IFRs due to the disease. Given issues with mortality recording, it is also likely that this represents an underestimate of the true IFR figure. More research looking at age-stratified IFR is urgently needed to inform policy-making on this front.

Would love to see a mixed-effects meta analysis adjusting for age of the seropositive population to see if that would get rid of the heterogeneity.

BC

[BostonCard]

Best estimates I've seen are between 0.5% (if you use confirmed COVID-19 deaths) to about 1% if you use excess all-cause mortality in areas where rigorous sampling has been used to calculate the seroprevalence using a random sampling method (Spain is the best study).  Because of the strong age gradient, to a large degree IFR will be very dependent on the age distribution of the infected population.

BC

---

@Burger, if you have never been the victim of confirmation bias, you are a better man than I am.  Rather than attribute malice to Ioannidis' motives, maybe consider the possibility that a contrarian by nature got caught up a bit in his contrarianism, and accept that he was correct directionally; the ultimate IFR is substantially lower than the initial estimates from the WHO, though probably not as low as his estimates.

@Lex, even guys with the credentials of Ioannidis make mistakes.  HEre's a Nobel Prize winner who retracted a Science paper because the results were not reproducible.  I still admire and respect Ioannidis a ton, and in my response to Burger, I note that he was directionally correct, though (probably) wrong on the magnitude.

BC

---

Lastly, Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz and his co-author, Lea Merone have their own pre-print paper:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...20089854v4

Their conclusions:

Based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of published evidence on COVID-19 until May, 2020, the IFR of the disease across populations is 0.68% (0.53-0.82%). However, due to very high heterogeneity in the meta-analysis, it is difficult to know if this represents the true point estimate. It is likely that, due to age and perhaps underlying comorbidities in the population, different places will experience different IFRs due to the disease. Given issues with mortality recording, it is also likely that this represents an underestimate of the true IFR figure. More research looking at age-stratified IFR is urgently needed to inform policy-making on this front.

Would love to see a mixed-effects meta analysis adjusting for age of the seropositive population to see if that would get rid of the heterogeneity.

BC