It is the gross overreaction of certain government and business leaders to the Wuhan coronavirus of 2020, otherwise known as COVID-19, that is the danger to the United States, not the virus itself. The abundance of data show that the virus is far less dangerous than the seasonal flu, and if the overreaction is not stopped and reversed immediately, it will severely damage the economy and the lives that depend on it.
Number of people who will die of COVID-19 illness will be a small fraction of those who die of the flu every season
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that during the 2019-2020 flu season since September 29, 2019 approximately 23,000-59,000 have died of the flu out of 231,654 confirmed cases. That’s a confirmed case fatality rate (CCFR) of roughly 10% to 25%. As of April 1, there have been 5,157 fatalities among 216,529 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States. That is a CCFR of about 2.4%—which is only about 10% to 24% of the CCFR of the flu. However, because most people with non-life threatening symptoms don’t present themselves to health facilities to be tested or counted for statistics, the CCFR for both illnesses vastly overestimate the actual chance of dying if infected: the infection fatality rate (IFR). To calculate the IFR, the number of fatalities is divided by the estimated number of people infected.
So how can we know what the IFR is for contracting COVID-19? If people who manifest similar symptoms are both hospitalized and tested for COVID-19 as they would be for the flu, then we can make a rough comparison between them. It is estimated by the CDC that about 38 to 54 million people have contracted the flu during the 2019-2020 season. If we divide the flu fatalities stated previously, by the estimated number of infections, it would mean a flu IFR that ranges from about 0.04% to 0.16%.
The Staff: The truth is out there somewhere, always doubt the politicians.
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