The basics of epidemiology will help explain why some of the believable but incorrect propositions about the pandemic are wrong.
Understanding the level of fatalities is another area of significant confusion. There is broad agreement on some things — age is a significant factor, as are comorbidities. The biggest confusion is over the fraction who die and potential worst-case scenarios in the face of inaction.
Counting deaths as a fraction of confirmed cases is unreliable because standards and coverage of testing also vary widely. Case fatality rate is also misleading when cases are increasing fast, because there is a lag between reporting cases and death. The best we can do is look at a scenario where the disease is relatively far advanced and take that as a base for estimating. In, more than 0.3% of the population has died. Testing for antibodies suggests that about 20% of the population in New York City has been infected. This suggests that more than 1% of the population could die if the disease is not checked by nonpharmaceutical interventions.
The number of active cases has not peaked, so we are not in the same place as countries like Germany and New Zealand. Without effective contact tracing, the more likely outcome is a long slow road to bringing Rin South Africa fluctuating in a narrow band above 1, the number of cases continues to grow exponentially — if at a much lower rate than without nonpharmaceutical interventions.
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