(02-28-2020, 11:07 AM)oldalum Wrote: the latest from the CDC and NIH on the case fatality rate, articles published today in the New England J of Medicine: free NEJM article
On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%. In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.
That is heartening but much lower than the estimates being produced elsewhere using more robust analytic methods (like this one: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperia...2-2020.pdf ). The authors of the NEJM article include the head of CDC and the head of a major NIH division, and they have made clear that they are not permitted to interact with the public without approval from politicians. So, there is reason for major skepticism about that article (not saying they're lying, but they are cherry picking).
