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Good question, and there is actually a good answer:

It’s a function of the delay it takes to die.

Suppose it takes 12 days for a coronavirus patient to die. Suppose the number of infections doubles every three days. So on March 1, there are 100 infections. On March 13, 12 days later, there will be sixteen times more infections, or 1,600 infections.

Now suppose 1 in 10 of the people infected on March 1 will die. That’s 10 deaths. 10% mortality rate, right? Well... not according to the early data. See, they’ll die on March 13, when there will be 1,600 infections. So at that point in time, only 10 out of 1,600 people have died, so the death rate will be less than 1%.

Eventually, as the number of people infected stabilizes, the data will trend towards 10%.