COVID-19 fast facts: fatality rate
As of September 10, 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published on their website five COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios (Table 1). According to their website, Scenarios 1 through 4 are based on parameter values that represent the lower and upper bounds of disease severity and viral transmissibility (moderate to very high severity and transmissibility), while Scenario 5 represents the current best estimate about viral transmission and disease severity in the United States.
Table 1.
Now, if we look these data from a different perspective (survival rather than fatality rate), we see that the survival rate across different age brackets is as follows:
0-19 years of age – 99.997%
20-49 years of age – 99.98%
50-69 years of age – 99.5%
70+ years of age – 94.6%
Median survival rate – 99.74% (since the median fatality rate is 0.26%).
Further, the median fatality rate estimate of 0.26% agrees very well with the estimate obtained by the Stanford’s epidemiology, population health and biostatistics expert John P.A. Ioannidis who estimated the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 based on published national seroprevalence data (i.e., data on the proportion of people with a positive COVID-19 antibody test). In particular, Ioannidis identified 36 published studies on seroprevalence covering 32 locations across the globe in the PubMed database as of July 11, 2020. He then estimated the infection fatality rate of COVID-19 by dividing the number of COVID-19 deaths at a relevant time point by the number of estimated people infected in each relevant region. Across 32 different locations, the median infection fatality rate was 0.27%. Importantly, Ioannidis noted that most of the sampled studies were conducted in pandemic epicenters with high death tolls. In fact, 23 of the 32 locations had a population mortality rate (deaths per million) higher than the global average (73 deaths per million as of July 12, 2020). He further observed that although such hot-spots were unusual across the globe, they were nonetheless overrepresented in the seroprevalence estimates which were available for his analysis. And therefore, if one could have sampled equally from all countries and locations around the globe, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate estimate would have very likely been even lower than the one observed in his analysis! I have no doubt indeed that the real COVID-19 death rate is even lower, since the way in which COVID-19 was attributed as a cause of death on death certificates violated all international medical guidelines – namely, every deceased person who tested positive on a PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 virus entered the official records as a coronavirus victim, even if they suffered from terminal cancer, or worse still, if they died in a car accident, from a gun shot wound, or by drowning!! It is not therefore surprising that under these new rules the COVID-19 fatality figures in the U.S. were overinflated by as much as 1,600%!! It seems therefore that there was indeed a global “coordinated attempt to vastly over-inflate the number of deaths caused by COVID-19, and to drive home how [allegedly] deadly it is.
However, even if we take the U.S. CDC fatality estimates as reasonably accurate, it is almost superfluous at this point to state the obvious, yet I am compelled to do so nonetheless since the myth prevails, thanks to the alarmist propaganda served by the mainstream media, that SARS-CoV-2 is a huge existential threat that warrants the suspension of most of our civil liberties, killing of businesses, closure of schools, prohibition of church assemblies, and if necessary, putting of the vast majority of the world’s population under a house arrest, at least, until everyone is vaccinated with fast-tracked experimental vaccines! Now, I cannot better express the sheer lunacy, recklessness and utter futility of the mass-vaccination with experimental drugs (that by the way, cannot prevent the transmission of the virus which would be the only logical reason to justify mass vaccination), than America’s Frontline Doctors:
“Even if the COVID-19 vaccine is really 95% effective in the real world, the survival rate of those contracting the disease is already so much higher than that. If you are less than 70 years old you have a 99.5% chance of survival, if you are less than 50 years old you have a 99.98% chance of survival, and if you are less than 20 years old, you have a 99.997% chance of survival.”
The bottom line here is that even if you are 80 years old with diabetes and heart disease, taking the Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine which is touted to have 95% effectiveness would offer you NO extra benefit!! There is thus absolutely NO rational, medical or scientific ground for taking any of these experimental vaccines, unless you fancy being a human guinea pig!!
To bring it closer to home, consider that here in Canada, as of March 13th 2021, according to the Government of Canada vital statistics on COVID-19, there are 22,434 recorded COVID-19 deaths. Since Canada’s current population size is just under 38 million, that means that 99.94% Canadians have survived the “dreadful” pandemic!!
And so again, I am sorry for the spoiler, but NO, SARS-CoV-2 is not an existential threat to mankind, it is in fact a virus that “makes some people sick, proves fatal to a few, and does nothing to the rest. Just like any annual flu.” In other words, the whole mainstream media-fomented corona-scare was one giant False Alarm, and the emergency measures against COVID-19 akin to a ghost hunt – i.e., utterly pointless.
As America’s Frontline Doctors so eloquently put it: “The data is unequivocal: COVID-19 kills very rarely and is mostly limited to the medically fragile”, and “COVID-19 is less deadly than influenza in children.”
COVID-19 indeed kills very very rarely and according to the U.S. CDC data, 0-19 year olds have several manifold lower risk of dying from COVID -19 than 70 plus year olds, in fact, the fatality rate for the youngest age group is 0.003% which is exactly 1800 x lower fatality rate than the one estimated for the 70+ age group. Moreover, what is significant is that the 0.003% fatality rate figure is 33x lower than the fatality rate associated with seasonal influenza which is ~0.1%. What we can therefore plainly gather from this information is the utterly unscientific nature of current lockdown policies. For we see here that though influenza represents a 33x higher risk of death for the school-aged population than COVID-19, yet we have not adopted a policy of yearly school closure in response to seasonal influenza!
It is not surprising therefore that scientists who really follow the science rather than only pretending to do so, and those who make conclusions on the basis of real world data, as opposed to hypothetical math model-based predictions, have concluded that controlling SARS-CoV-2 is not a one size fits all strategy. And they are likewise concerned that the current lockdown approach to COVID-19 is causing more harm than good.
If someone should now say that the reason for the low COVID-19 mortality rate are the lockdowns, I am sorry to give them another spoiler – no, that is not the case, for, as any sound epidemiologist will tell you, lockdowns can only at best slow down or delay the spread of the virus (i.e., they can “flatten the curve”), but they cannot and do not lower the total number of infections or overall mortality. And by now we have a great body of research showing that lockdowns had no impact in lowering mortality associated with COVID-19. But of course, don’t expect to hear that from Trudeau’s lackeys – the CBC.
In fact, the greatest fiasco of the lockdown strategy is in that it brought destructive restrictions upon entire populations of individuals the vast majority of whom were at no greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than from the ordinary flu, while at the same time failing to protect those who were most at risk (the elderly with comorbidities), and who could in fact have been successfully protected with targeted measures and without destructive lockdowns. Moreover, note that in Canada the average life expectancy is 81.7 years while at the end of April 2020 the median age of those who died from COVID-19 was 84. Currently, as of the time of this writing, the average age at death from COVID-19 in Alberta is 81, and so equal to Canadian average life expectancy. Similarly, the average age at which people die from COVID-19 in the U.K. is 82.5 years, and the average life expectancy is very slightly less! In other words, COVID-19 does not even reduce average life expectancy, which means that those who ordinarily die from COVID-19 are those who are already on the way out of this world, and who would therefore die regardless of COVID-19! And as sad as such human deaths are, they are not tragedies. Dying at old age is normalcy. However, when a child dies, that is tragedy. And there is no doubt whatsoever that the lockdowns are killing far more young lives than the virus. What we are dealing here therefore is not a dreadful pandemic but an artificially manufactured crisis which shrewd politicians are using to further their own selfish totalitarian ends.