[DouglasKC]

“Your own link also says that the death rate is somewhere between 1.4% and 2.3%. That’s around half a million dead.” This is wrong despite being in the piece I linked to. For the last time it is NOT POSSIBLE to even GUESS the death rate until the thing has mostly burned itself out. You cannot know the death rate without knowing the infection rate. There can be 10 or 100 or 1000 times as many people infected who either show light symptoms or non at all.

Argue that point all you want. But this is the number that is consistently cited by experts. I think it's low and based on the fact that the first people who get critically ill in an area get good medical treatment. It won't be that way for long.

[Mr. K]

You cannot know the total number of people infected, who never show symptoms.

That number is impossible to know,

The mortality rate is calculated this way ALWAYS.

(Number of people dead/ number infected with symptoms)

You can test a whole bunch of asymptomatic people, and find some that are infected too, but that would give you a lower number that is deceptive, since you can never know how many OTHERS are infected with no symptoms, unless you test 100% of the population.

[billyboy15]

“But this is the number that is consistently cited by experts.”

They are NOT experts because if they were they wouldn’t say such provably ignorant things. If you would take 2 minutes and actually THINK about what REAL experts say about how to compute death rate you would would agree it is the only way.

Believe whatever you ant but the actual kill rate of this or any other virus can really never be known with certainty and the closest we can ever come is to take an informed GUESS and then only AFTER the contagion has stopped spreading.