We May Be Underestimating the Coronavirus Death Toll
Many people believe we're under-counting the Covid-19 infection rate, but Italian data suggest we may be getting the death numbers wrong too.
Grieving in Bergamo.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergThe Covid-19 epidemic is a fight with an invisible enemy. What’s also worrying is that we just don’t know how bad the disease really is.
Many people wonder whether we’re overestimating its deadliness, since countries find it impossible to test those with few or no symptoms. The case fatality rate is the ratio of coronavirus deaths to the number of infected patients. If we underestimate the latter, the detected fatality rate will look much higher than the real one. That’s why there’s such huge interest in scientific models that suggest the overall infection rate is far in excess of the official numbers. If that were true, the mortality rate across the population would fall to less worrying levels.