Apparenty the death rate is declining. Even Fox News can dig up stats. Who knew? Death rate dropped from 4.06% to 1.84% in 7 days, and that was 8 days ago. Could be much lower now.
Even the reality challenged Brit Hume told some truth it seems:
In the fact-challenged world of the coronavirus COVID-19, there are still actual facts out there, and Fox News analyst hit a homer with a single post on Twitter.
“As the number of cases has expanded, the mortality rate has declined. It will likely decline even further if and when those without symptoms can be diagnosed and counted,” Hume tweeted.
He included a tweet from another Twitter user that laid out the death rate in the U.S. from COVID-19.
4.06% March 8 (22 deaths of 541 cases) 3.69% March 9 (26 of 704) 3.01% March 10 (30 of 994) 2.95% March 11 (38 of 1,295) 2.52% March 12 (42 of 1,695) 2.27% March 13 (49 of 2,247) 1.93% March 14 (57 of 2,954) 1.84% March 15 (68 of 3,680)...
4% death rate now below 2%. At this rate the number dead may be below or not much above the death rate from the flu last year of 80,000.
This is a result of the increased testing. Before, you had people dying from COVID-19, but you didn't know how many others had the disease. Now, you are starting to learn how many others have the disease without them dying first. The problem is, it's just getting started.
Those percentage comparisons are totally bogus. The number of cases diagnosed is expanding rapidly both from expanded testing and, presumably, continued spread.
But it takes weeks to move from infection to death. The absolute death rate is still clearly rising.
Ok, great! Looks good on paper, what’s going to happen when people start dying all over the place?
Every number I’ve crunched in America has put the death rate at around 1.2% for the last 4 days.
Scaredy cats will come up with all sorts of excuses why that isn’t right. But I think it’s actually high. This virus is out there in huge numbers and people are just living with it and moving on with their lives already.