We are also not counting deaths due to overwhelmed health care systems.

In Madrid, in 2019, 794 people died total in March. In March 2020, it was 1318, with 192 COVID-19 deaths. 542 more than 2019 due to an overwhelmed medical system.

In Catilla-La Mancha, 534 in march 2019, 938 total deaths in 2020, 206 officially from COVID-19.

In Spain and Italy, total mortality is around 2-3 times more than direct COVID-19 mortality.

https://elpais.com/sociedad/2020-03-27/el-coronavirus-causa-...

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/this-is-very-important-...

https://pandemic.substack.com/p/the-elephant-in-the-room-und...

To put all of this into perspective, our public health system is VERY sensitive to shocks. Just having a marathon in your city can increase the overall mortality of hospitalization by 3.3%.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1614073

Articles like this are incredibly dangerous, bordering on criminal negligence.

sure, the CFR will probably fall sharply.

our hospitals are still drowning in patients who require potentially weeks of advanced care, though. Seven billion people times a lower than anticipated death rate but a relatively high needs-lots-of-care rate is, empirically, still a total clusterfuck.

Both under detection and the lag between detection and death are important. China’s case fatality rate slowly increased from 1% to over 4%. Assuming a pessimistic 50% of cases where detected that’s a 2% fatality rate. More optimistically, if 20% of cases where detected it’s 0.8% fatality rate.

However, China has a much younger population with only 10.8% of the population over 65. So, US numbers will likely look much worse even if age adjusted mortality is similar.

South Korea has much better population testing and currently has a 1.5% CFR, which IMO is a good benchmark.

PS: Under 50% of infections are asymptotic based on cruse ship data not the 80% mentioned here. However, a lower percentage needed hospitalization.

The numerator is also obviously underestimated.

Some notes

- COVID-19 is name of the disease caused by virus SARS-CoV-2. You always get sick with COVID-19

- I would not rely on data from China. I think only future will show how those are misreported even today.

- Germany and some other countries are planning to do random drag-net testing, to find true infection rate in population. Results will be in a week.

- Some countries (Korea, Germany) already tested wide population.

- Death rate varies by several factors. Population age, lung diseases (air pollution...), TB vaccination... It is impossible to make any conclusions.