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From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, estimates of COVID-19's death rate have been all over the map. They have ranged from less than 1% to as much as 25% in some countries.
Even Anthony Fauci, MD, the nation's chief infectious disease specialist, has gone back and forth on his assessments over time.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has achieved rock star status in the media, told Congress on March 11 that the new coronavirus "is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu," putting the death rate at about 1%.
But just 2 weeks later, he adjusted that estimate downward, reporting in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 26: "[It] 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)."
Since then, Fauci and other public health experts have put the COVID-19 death rate at about 0.6% — six times that of a typical flu season — which is the latest CDC projection.
www.medscape.com
Even Anthony Fauci, MD, the nation's chief infectious disease specialist, has gone back and forth on his assessments over time.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has achieved rock star status in the media, told Congress on March 11 that the new coronavirus "is 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu," putting the death rate at about 1%.
But just 2 weeks later, he adjusted that estimate downward, reporting in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 26: "[It] 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)."
Since then, Fauci and other public health experts have put the COVID-19 death rate at about 0.6% — six times that of a typical flu season — which is the latest CDC projection.
What Changing Death Rates Tell Us About COVID-19
The truth is that the bouncing ball of mortality projections has more to do with the inconsistent quality of the data from medical surveillance around the world.
www.medscape.com