i told you why south korea is an outlier.
Because they are testing drastically more than everyone else.
They actually have drive through testing.
There are far more people infected with coronavirus than people think. And the death rate is far, far lower than the estimate by WHO for the reasons i gave. It’s like you say, numerator vs denominator. If there are far more people infected than people think, the death rate is far lower than people think. Take a look in amazement at how few people have been tested, then you will realize what bunk the death rate estimate is. But it’s still dangerous for old people.
Lots of healthy people will get infected by coronavirus and not ever report in or get counted. Many of them might suspect they had something else. Remember the evacuation of US citizens from the cruise ship to anchorage? None of them on the flight had symptoms. On landing, tests revealed quite a number had it. But they had flown together, side by side. (duhhh!!!!)
How many disease vectors is that and what percent of US infections will result from it?
I am not dismissive of the potential of this virus to be terrible until may or june. The growth rate in Iran and Italy is bad right now. It probably is bad in a lot of other countries not reported and not tested.
It could overwhelm the health care system in places with too many old people requiring ventilator support. It could cause severe economic disruption with greater impacts abroad. A rare chance it mutates into something awful.
I think you’re missing a critical point here..
The CFR is # dead / # infected.
It is NOT # dead / # tested.
So, S. Korea testing more people does not matter. It’s still dead / infected. Not dead / tested.
Ergo, the CFR does not go down (as you think it will) unless the number of CONFIRMED infected increase compared to the # dead. And that, AFAIK is not happening in S. Korea or elsewhere.
PS - while S. Korea does have a lower CFR than the global average of 3.4%, it’s not explained by a larger # of tests (for reasons mentioned in my earlier post).
S. Korea does appear to be an outlier when compared to China (3.8%), USA (4.8%), Italy (3.9%), Iran (2.5%) and other global hot spots.