How to work out the real COVID death toll
Maybe the most important questions of all: how lethal is SARS-COV-2? Whom does it kill? Are the death counts accurate — and, if not, are they over- or understated? Estimates for the lethality of the coronavirus have varied widely since January. Early Chinese data suggested the virus might have an ‘infection fatality rate’ as high as 1.4-2 percent. A death rate in that range could mean the coronavirus might kill more than six million Americans, although even under the worst-case scenarios some people would not be exposed, and others might have natural immunity that would prevent them from being infected at all. As we have learned more about the virus, estimates of its lethality have fallen.
