– How is the <1% fatality rate reported in some media for COVID-19 calculated?
Looking at the numbers as of now, there have been just over 88,000 cases and 3,001 deaths in the COVID-19 outbreak so far. This gives a fatality rate of around 3.3%. When looking at cases which have been closed (either recovered or died), the rate is closer to 7%. This seems hard to reconcile with the media reports saying the rate is below 1% and at worse maybe 2%?
In: Mathematics
It is thought that most of the infected presents with none or small symptoms and therefore the patients does not seek medical attention and does not get counted. This is based on instances where they tested a select group of people that are suspected infected where it is shown that a lot of them tests positive and even spreads the infections on without having noticed any symptoms. If that is representative of the large infection centers then there are likely hundreds of thousands of people who have been infected without being part of the official statistics. The death rate is therefore likely much lower then the raw data would suggest.
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