But one difference with the Spanish documents is they don't estimate their IFRs.
And if I'm not missing anything, doing it yourself is not trivial if possible at all. It's not enough to know that 5% (an arbitrary number, just to give an example) of a country's population developed antibodies. You'd also need to know the age structure of those 5%, which may or may not match the country's age structure.
Yes, modeling prevalence is complex but once you have the total estimated infected then finding IFR becomes trivial. Calculating SMR would be much more difficult.
Many (most?) countries do not produce reports in English but only in their native language.
When you search in the native language then it is easier to find relevant data. Especially when you catch the right keywords they use.
I haven't seen any other IFR estimate that included a breakdown by age group from a government or another authoritative source. Do you have anything particular in mind?
Is it a certain thing the risk for people under 70 is close to zero? Strictly speaking, no, it isn't.
It's unlikely we're going to see precise IFR numbers any time soon. But countries around the world are lifting lockdowns. Where I am, they're lifting it too. So I'll have to evaluate my personal risks without full information.
Why do I tend to rely on Spanish numbers?
- They are one of the hardest hit countries. If they had relatively few fatalities in the age group under 70, it must be reasonable to assume other countries aren't going to have significantly more.
- Don't have a link handy, but numbers published by Italian government had similar numbers of fatalities per each age group. (They didn't try to estimate IFR, though.)
- I don't think Spanish govt manipulates their numbers. But -- if anything -- they have an incentive to overestimate the IFR to justify one of the strictest lockdowns and a high number of dead.
I'm privileged enough, to be working from home. And staying as safe possible. I just think bad economy can ultimately take lives (not only livelihoods) of more people than COVID-19.