Mortality rate

There are some critics that say that this pandemic has been overblown and the mortality rate isn’t accurate.

And they would be half right. It isn’t accurate.

The mortality rate is a measure of how many deaths in a given population. It is a basic number to calculate:

Mortality Rate = Number of Deaths / Number of Cases

So, why is it so difficult to get an accurate number with COVID-19?

It is difficult because not everyone is receiving a test, incomplete reporting, you have people who can’t be accounted for because they are not systematic, overrun of hospitals and a myriad of other reasons. The more testing completed, the more likely you are to drive that number down.

But when we ask about the mortality rate, we are asking the wrong question.

A mortality rate of say 3.5% versus 2.5% should not be enough to change our behavior. These are numbers used for experts in the field trying to make sense of an unpredictable entity like a virus. The virus doesn’t care about these numbers—we do.

What is your narrative about the virus?