> "The case fatality rate (CFR) depends on the availability of healthcare, the typical age and health problems within the population, and the number of undiagnosed cases. Preliminary research has yielded case fatality rate numbers between 2% and 3%; in January 2020 the WHO suggested that the case fatality rate was approximately 3%, and 2% in February 2020 in Hubei. Other CFR numbers, which adjust for differences in time of confirmation, death or remission but are not peer reviewed, are respectively 7% and 33% for people in Wuhan 31 January. An unreviewed preprint of 55 deaths noted that early estimates of mortality may be too high as asymptomatic infections are missed. They estimated a mean infection fatality ratio (IFR, the mortality among infected) ranging from 0.8% to 0.9%. A peer-reviewed article published on 19 March estimated the overall symptomatic case fatality risk as 1.4% (IQR 0.9–2.1%). The outbreak in 2019–2020 has caused at least 335,974 confirmed infections and 14,641 deaths."
Current predictions are that letting the disease run wild would result in millions or tens of millions of deaths, and on top of that another large number of people walking around (slowly) with serious lung damage. Consider this:
> "The Hong Kong Hospital Authority found a drop of 20% to 30% in lung capacity in some people who recovered from the disease, and lung scans suggested organ damage."
But in any case, the CFR estimates are also changing as a function of learning more about how to treat, and hospital capacity relative to caseload.
I was replying about the "let it rip through the population" scenario, without slowing it down, which basically means don't treat the majority of severe cases in hospital (because the hospitals would be totally overwhelmed in that scenario). The CFR would be higher.
If the shutdowns/lockdowns go for more than 4 weeks, I think we'd have been better off just letting the disease run wild. More people will die from the economic issues at that point. Might be too late already.