Infection fatality rate
A new study from Germany showed extremely few deaths among healthy children overall — including zero deaths among children 5 to 11 — suggesting some studies are designed to distort the risk to kids.
While citizens focus on the latest issue the government directs our attention to, many of us have lost sight of the big picture and grown accustomed to severe limitations on our rights like the proverbial frogs in hot water.
18 months on from the world’s fearful response to the arrival of SARS-CoV-2, we provide an alternative to New Zealand’s elimination strategy to one of ‘living with covid-19’. We are now back in level four lockdown indefinitely with escalating PCR positive ‘cases’.
Prof. Ioannidis is one of the 10 currently most cited scientists across all disciplines, receiving more than 6,000 per month. He has published extensively on the COVID-19 pandemic and was one of the first experts to speak against school closures, social distancing measures, and lockdowns.
Study Selection SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence studies with ≥1000 participants aged ≥70 years that presented seroprevalence in elderly people; aimed to generate samples reflecting the general population; and whose location had available data on cumulative COVID-19 deaths in elderly (primary cutoff ≥70 years; ≥65 or ≥60 also eligible).
COVID-19 has been a major crisis worldwide with severe repercussions from the pandemic itself, the impact on health systems (especially for vulnerable countries) as well as the measures taken to handle the pandemic.
First, initial data falsely suggested that the infection fatality rate was up to 2-3%, that over 80% of the population would be infected, and modelling suggested repeated lockdowns would be necessary. But emerging data showed that the median infection fatality rate is 0.23%, that the median infection fatality rate in people under 70 years old is 0.05%, and that the high-risk group is older people especially those with severe co-morbidities.
Istanbul – Turkey has the biggest coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East, with more than 117,000 confirmed infections. More than 3,000 people have died. But the government claims to have a lower fatality rate than the global average estimated by the World Health Organization at over 3%.
As Ioannidis and others have pointed out, we do not even know the actual death rate for Covid-19. Terrifying and widely cited case-fatality rates like ‘three per cent’ come from comparing known fatalities to the small pool of people who have officially been tested.