Expression of concern about SARS-2 death rate

by monotreme1000 March 15, 2020 

The percent of people infected with SARS-2 who later die has been a hot topic since the beginning of the pandemic. Most sources are settling on 1 - 4% death rate. I am concerned that this estimate may be wrong.


As I have discussed many times, the proper way to calculate the death rate is to divide the number dead by the number of cases that have been resolved (recovered plus the number dead).

We cannot include cases that have not recovered because they may still die.

One objection to doing this is that there may be missing mild or asymptomatic cases which result in an inflated death rate. However, in South Korea, authorities have been assiduous in testing large numbers of people, including those with few symptoms. The claim has been made that this has driven their death rate down to about 0.6%. This claim is false because it is based on an incorrect calculation. The people who claim this are dividing the number of deaths by the number of total positives, not by the number of resolved cases.

According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource, there have been 72 deaths and 510 recoveries in South Korea. To get the death rate, we divide 72 by 582 (72 + 510) which equals 12.4%. This is very similar to the death rate for SARS. This is not good news.


Large numbers of patients in the Life Care Center nursing home in Washington State have died after being infected with SARS-2.

It is not clear how many people there have been tested and how many have recovered. And it is certainly true that many of those who have died were truly old. However, the 3-4% death rate cited by the WHO suggests that only 15% of those over 80 will die after being infected.

Is that the number that is observed at the Life Care Center? I'm concerned that the number may be much higher. If the number for the over 80 age is wrong, might not the numbers for other age groups also be wrong?

For the Diamond Princess Cruise ship, Johns Hopkins reports 7 deaths and 325 recoveries for a death rate of about 2%. This would be within the range of the conventional estimates. However, many patients have still not recovered from their disease despite the fact that the first infection was reported on January 20, 2020 and everyone had disembarked by March 1. What is the condition of these, approximately 364, passengers? Are they almost well and just waiting a few more days before they are released? Or are some of them quite ill?

The Life Care Center nursing home and the Cruise ships with SARS-2 infections provide ideal opportunities to calculate unbiased estimates of the death rate cause by SARS-2 since presumably everyone has been tested and their fates will be known.

It is urgent that such studies be done and reported quickly. Results should include mortality at different ages as well as time from infection to death. Decisions are currently being made with incomplete data and often totally wrong assumptions about the proper way to do calculations.

We need to fix this.