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Continue reading at: Study: Coronavirus Fatality Rate Lower than Expected, Close to Flu’s 0.1% |by EDWIN MORA 13 Apr 2020 | Breitbart

The fatal and highly contagious novel coronavirus has spread faster but is less deadly than official data imply, the Economist magazine reported over the weekend, citing a new study.

On Saturday, the Economist reported that the fact that the illness caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread across the United States could be “good news.”

“If millions of people were infected weeks ago without dying, the virus must be less deadly than official data suggest,” the magazine determined, using graphs to suggest the faster the disease spreads and hits its peak, the fewer people will die.

The Economist article cited a new study by Justin Silverman and Alex Washburne that used data on influenza-like illness (ili) to show that the coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) is now widespread in America.

Silverman and Washburne found that the coronavirus mortality rate could be as low as 0.1 percent, “similar to that of flu.

”The Economist further explained:

COVID-19 takes 20-25 days to kill victims. The [Silverman and Washburne] paper reckons that 7m Americans were infected from March 8th to 14th, and official data show 7,000 deaths three weeks later. The resulting fatality rate is 0.1%, similar to that of flu. That is amazingly low, just a tenth of some other estimates. Perhaps it is just wrong, possibly because the death toll has been under-reported. Perhaps, though, New York’s hospitals are overflowing because the virus is so contagious that it has crammed the equivalent of a year’s worth of flu cases into one week.

The new study’s coronavirus death rate estimate is much lower than what Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, predicted in early March. […]

A study from Britain published at the end of last month in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases also found that fewer people are dying from the novel coronavirus than previously estimated.That study estimated the coronavirus death rate could be as low as 0.66 percent and as high as 1.38 percent. Fauci’s estimate is higher than both figures.

Continue reading at: Study: Coronavirus Fatality Rate Lower than Expected, Close to Flu’s 0.1%