[82lsju]

"Based on that data, the fatality rate in Hubei, the province in which Wuhan sits, was 2.9%. Outside Hubei it was 0.4%.

There are various reasons why the rate in Hubei would be expected to be genuinely higher than elsewhere. Its hospitals had no warning of the sudden influx of covid-19 patients and were thus overwhelmed, whereas hospitals in other cities had more time to prepare, laying in respirators and oxygen. Hubei’s doctors had to work out how to treat a brand-new disease, whereas those elsewhere have been able to learn from both their successes and failures.

But many experts think that a lot of the difference stems from the early-stage small-denominator problem. In other places there has been time and an incentive for less severe cases to be diagnosed, and so the fraction that has proved fatal is lower. At the moment, epidemiologists reckon the true rate for covid-19 is in the range of 0.5-1%. For SARS, a disease caused by another coronavirus which broke out in 2003, the rate in China was never fully ascertained; but worldwide, the WHO put it at about 10%. The rate for seasonal flu in America is typically around 0.1%.

The fatality rate is not an inherent property of the virus; it also depends on the care received. This puts poorer countries at particular risk. They tend to have weaker public-health systems in the first place, and thus can expect higher levels of serious disease and death—including, sometimes, among overstretched and inappropriately protected front-line health-care workers. "

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/...sebriefing

[82lsju]

"Based on that data, the fatality rate in Hubei, the province in which Wuhan sits, was 2.9%. Outside Hubei it was 0.4%.

There are various reasons why the rate in Hubei would be expected to be genuinely higher than elsewhere. Its hospitals had no warning of the sudden influx of covid-19 patients and were thus overwhelmed, whereas hospitals in other cities had more time to prepare, laying in respirators and oxygen. Hubei’s doctors had to work out how to treat a brand-new disease, whereas those elsewhere have been able to learn from both their successes and failures.

But many experts think that a lot of the difference stems from the early-stage small-denominator problem. In other places there has been time and an incentive for less severe cases to be diagnosed, and so the fraction that has proved fatal is lower. At the moment, epidemiologists reckon the true rate for covid-19 is in the range of 0.5-1%. For SARS, a disease caused by another coronavirus which broke out in 2003, the rate in China was never fully ascertained; but worldwide, the WHO put it at about 10%. The rate for seasonal flu in America is typically around 0.1%.

The fatality rate is not an inherent property of the virus; it also depends on the care received. This puts poorer countries at particular risk. They tend to have weaker public-health systems in the first place, and thus can expect higher levels of serious disease and death—including, sometimes, among overstretched and inappropriately protected front-line health-care workers. "

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/...sebriefing