New estimate by CDC reduces COVID-19 death rate to just 0.26% (IFR) from WHO’s 3.4% (CFR)

The new CDC estimates for the severity, complications and deaths of COVID-19 bring down the numbers much lower making the overall scenario very optimistic. There is an ever-growing confusion between the two terms used for the death (fatality) rate. Read the addendum to understand the difference between the two numbers – CFR vs IFR. The original WHO numbers give an estimate of Case Fatality Rate (CFR). The new CDC numbers represent the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR).

For the first time, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has given a realistic estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, which in its most likely scenario is 0.26 %. They estimate a 0.4 % fatality rate among the symptomatic cases. If you consider their projection that 35% of all infected cases remain asymptomatic, the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) drops to just 0.26 %. This is almost exactly what the Stanford researchers had projected in April 2020.

John P.A. Ioannidis, a professor in medicine, epidemiology and population health, biomedical data science, and statistics at Stanford University had earlier calculated the reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population to be in the range of 0.05% to 1%.

Click here to read the March 2020 article by Prof. John Ioannidis: “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data”

Prof Ioannidis had also stated that “the reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless.”

Click here to read the WHO estimate of case fatality rate of 3.4% where the WHO said “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected.”

Also, Dr Anthony Fauci had earlier estimated that the fatality rate of the coronavirus was about 2 %. Dr Anthony Stephen Fauci is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. Since January 2020, he has been one of the lead members of the Trump Administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Fauci is considered one of the most trusted medical figures in the USA.

Click here to read Dr Anthony Fauci’s editorial on 26 March 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)

In short, the new report released by the CDC on 22 May 2020 shows the best estimate for overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVIDー19 to be 0.26 %.