https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/is_coronavirus_less_fatal_than_early_predictions_suggested.html
The coronavirus is an icky disease that takes a cruel toll on the elderly, the sick, and the unlucky. In this modern era, we can outwit many things that once routinely killed people, but the Grim Reaper is still out there, and he’ll eventually get all of us. Scary headlines have hinted that the coronavirus is now the Grim Reaper’s preferred method.
Media reports have told us that the coronavirus is significantly more deadly than the flu, which annually kills 30,000 to 60,000 Americans. Based on the speed with which it killed in China, Italy, Iran, and Spain, it looked as if the American death toll could easily top two million people annually. While that’s small potatoes compared to past pandemics (e.g., the Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, Spanish Influenza), it’s a staggering toll in modern America. Any actions seemed worthwhile to keep America from turning into a viral slaughterhouse.
But that might not be what’s happening.
At the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall), Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, two medical professors at Stanford, propose that we’re using the wrong math and that we are still missing the numbers we need to do the math correctly. However, by extrapolating from available data, one can argue that the coronavirus’s mortality rate is significantly lower than the early estimates.
